8th Day Center for Justice

Creemos (We Believe)

Introduction

In a world torn open by violence legitimated by extremists of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam, we, women of Christian faith, make a declaration of beliefs to challenge the manipulation of the sacred.

We believe now is Kairos time, an urgent and holy moment, which is the opposite of colonized time where time itself is another market commodity. We declare Kairos time because we refuse to be caught in the cage of violence that ensnares present time and imagination. We reject civil theology as espoused by our current US administration, and we challenge, too, liberal theology, which lacks the moral imagination to repudiate both church and state's violence as a solution to the global, social, moral, and ecological catastrophe we face.

We are dreamers who believe another world is possible. Kairos time is urgent and demands action now. We affirm with the U.S. Leadership Conference of Women Religious that “God’s call is written in the signs of our time…(and), inspired by the radical call of the Gospel, led by God’s Spirit, and companioned by one another, we embrace this time as holy…”

Creemos

We believe in the Holy One of Life and Peace who calls us to overcome violence everywhere. We believe that we are accompanied in the struggle for life even in the midst of cultures of death.

I set before you Life and Death. Choose Life. (Deuteronomy 30)

We reject the Warrior god whose rise is always preceded by acceptance of violence as normative or necessary for national security. For example, in the United States, the Bush administration's architects of war have executed the Project of the New American Century (PNAC) the stated purpose of which is to "ensure American global preeminence" by: 1) positioning permanent military bases in the Middle East; 2) utilizing preemptive warfare; 3) controlling "international commons" of cyberspace, as well as, strategic dominance of space; and, 4) increasing defense spending. In the name of the Holy One of Life, we reject this plan for world and space dominance through permanent war or threats of war.

We believe in the Holy One of the Cosmos who calls us to a covenant with creation, all of which is holy. We believe that the breath of Life fills all creation and coalesces the energy that fuses green shoots, two- and four-footed creatures, stars and galaxies---all life. We affirm the sacred spark in each person and in the cosmos.

“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,

The desert shall rejoice and blossom;

Like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,

And rejoice with joy and singing.” (Is.35: 1-2a)

We reject the destruction of the earth through pollution, through devastation of rain and arctic forests, through wars for geo-political and economic dominance of earth's resources, in particular, non-renewable energy sources such as oil. Building the beloved community is impossible on an earth whose fundamental systems are toxic.

We believe in Sophia Wisdom, who stands with the oppressed, the brutalized and the raped. We believe that any church, synagogue or mosque, which suppresses women, suppresses the Holy One’s wisdom. We affirm the mystery of the Holy One that cannot be caged in static images that affirm one group of power, one gender, or one interpretation of the sacred.

. “Can a woman forget her nursing child,

or show no compassion for the child of her womb?

Even these may forget,

Yet I will not forget you.” (Isaiah 49:15)

We reject the patriarchal violence that rapes the earth and ignores the rape and abuse of women, especially women who are poor and women who are silenced and made invisible by denying them decision-making power. Of the 1.3 billion people who live in poverty, 70 percent are women. Worldwide, women and girls are denied education, nutrition and welfare. In the United States, domestic violence is a primary precipitating factor, which leads to homelessness.

We believe in the Sacred Spirit that burns in the hearts of all peoples and is revealed in the wisdom of all faith traditions. We believe that hope and compassion are always signs and symbols of the divine presence in history. The spirit of Sophia is more, too: spirit is ordinary courage, hope and vivacity.

“Create a clean heart in me, O God.

and put a new and right spirit within me.

Do not cast me away from your presence,

And do not take your Holy Spirit away from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

And sustain me in a willing spirit” (Psalm 51:17)

We reject a Jesus, who has been domesticated, commodified and bought; a Yahweh who annihilates; an Allah who is murderous. In the spirit of the Barman Declaration made by churches in 1934 against the claims of the Nazi State, we, too, wish to declare ourselves over and against the manipulation of the Holy One for purposes of dominance and control. In the year of 2005, when the Religious Right backs almost half of the U.S. Congress, we wish to declare ourselves against such accommodation to false gods and unequivocally for the Spirit of the Holy One.

We believe in the Holy One of Justice. We believe in economic systems that are equitable rather than systems of accumulation and profit that benefit the rich and exclude and punish people who are poor.

“This I require of you: that you do justice, love kindness and walk in God’s way.” (Micah 6:8)

We reject theologies that sacralize hierarchies of power (class, gender, race, caste, sexual orientation, and ability) that destroy just relationships. We reject economic or ideological systems such as the current world economic order imposed by neo-liberal capitalism, which excludes and impoverishes major populations of the developing world. We reject the false god of fatalism, which accepts as destiny a daily death toll (from preventable illnesses, malnutrition or starvation) of 30,000 impoverished children.

We believe in the Holy One of Mystery who is spiritually present in history in surprising and transformative ways. The spirit of courage, generosity, joy and willingness to suffer for justice that we live into is the mistica* that reveals the sacred. Mistica is a relational, intangible, deeply felt, inscrutable dimension of all liberation processes in which people struggle to build a world of justice and peace.

The Spirit of God is upon me

Because God has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

God has sent me to proclaim

release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free

to proclaim the year of God’s favor. (Luke 4:18-20)

We reject theologies that distort or reduce the mystical to orthodoxies that exclude or condemn others because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, culture, or beliefs. Mystery exceeds canons, laws and orthodoxies.

Conclusion

Finally we believe our task is one of resistance to the killers of the Spirit. Such resistance is a communal task both imaginative, strategic and prophetic. The building of a movement that resists the appropriation of the sacred is a mystical and practical task. Where such resistance exists, so does the Divine. Yvonne Gebarra marks such break- throughs of hope and vision as resurrections---a task of the human spirit that refuses, in impossible times, to become numb. We believe that in creating collective locations of refusal and hope, we reveal divine love.

Blessed are you who are poor

for yours is the reign of God.

Blessed are you who are hungry now

or you will have your fill.

Blessed are you who weep now

for you will laugh. (Luke 6: 20-21)

Following the path of Kip Tiernan--the 80 year old, irrepressible, founder of Rosie’s Place in Boston, one of the first shelters for homeless women-- we cast our lot with the outcasts, the voiceless and the forgotten who are the locus of resistance to the false gods of church and state. “Years from now, “ Kip said, “the church will look back on what the “outcasts” have done and theologize about it and put it down on paper and say ‘This is how it should have been done, of course.”

*For Central Americans facing martyrdom, torture and imprisonment during the war years of the 1980s, mistica was what they called the profound expression of their resistance to death and struggle for life.