The Washington Corrections Center for Women is both the largest and the only maximum and medium security prison for women in the state. It’s surrounded by barbed wire, and you have to go through five locked gates to get to the main population.
The pandemic has forced us to embrace digital technology (Zoom, etc.) like never before, but in many places that has looked a lot different to what it looks like in the USA.
The pandemic has stretched the Church in many ways — but we are still very much … here. Although it was hard at first, we have expanded our thinking, and our doing, in new and innovative ways to close the distance and be together. We have continued to worship. We have continued to build and shape community; we have continued to take care of one another. And on top of all that, we have continued to come together to serve those in need; both here in our own community and all over the world. Despite the difficulty, struggle and loss, the Church continues to declare its presence in the world, through different means, certainly, but toward the same purpose.
I couldn’t wait for the livestream of “Take Me to the World” to begin. The show was touted as a once- in-a-lifetime Broadway event, featuring a star-studded lineup of performers coming together to celebrate the 90th birthday of Stephen Sondheim, the prolific lyricist and composer of such musicals as “Into the Woods” and “West Side Story.”
Has anyone ever come into your life to help you, just when you needed help and had nowhere to turn? Have you ever been that urgent helper for someone else?
The canvas before us looks to be from a surrealist artist.
In the center, a figure in a beaked plague mask rides a green horse. To one side, bed-sheet banners with the message “No Job, No Rent” hang from apartment windows. To the other side, shirts on marching protesters bear the inscription “BLM.” And scattered through the scene are darkened churches painted upside down.
During a recent fast-paced two-hour Zoom conversation, the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow led more than 100 participants in a discussion on “The Scattered Church: Pastoring in a Time of Pandemic.”
When I close my eyes, I can see Mr. Rogers changing his shoes, putting on his sweater and singing … “Won’t you be my neighbor?” Growing up in the early 1970s, “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” was one of several PBS shows my younger sister and I watched. And when I reflect now on over 30 years of educational ministry, it’s easy to see how he influenced me, whether through his gentle, direct, respectful voice or the use of puppets and music or his emphasis on neighborliness, inclusion and peacemaking.
“Necessity is the mother of invention” is a term that we often hear when talking about those who have become successful in their endeavors. There is no doubt that the yearning to resolve difficult situations inspires ingenious solutions! Les Brown, a motivational speaker who overcame overwhelming odds of poverty and family tragedies, says, “you gotta be hungry, and when you are hungry, it is necessary, and when it is necessary, you understand and believe it is possible!”
International Women’s Day is a day set aside each year to address challenges that are unique to women and girls. For 2021, U.N. Women has chosen the theme “Women in Leadership: Achieving an Equal Future in a COVID-19 World.” According to U.N. Women, this theme “celebrates the tremendous efforts by women and girls around the world in shaping a more equal future and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
