Save Darfur video by Green Day

Sojourners' Presidential Forum on Faith, Values, and Poverty

Coalition of Immokalee Workers win against McDonalds

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community-based worker organization, are immigrants working in low-wage jobs picking tomatoes throughout the state of Florida. They have been taking on major fast-food companies that use their tomatoes, and last weekend they celebrated a huge victory against McDonalds.

McDonalds agreed to:

• A penny more per pound to workers harvesting tomatoes for McDonald's;


• A stronger code of conduct based on the principle of worker participation;


• And a collaborative effort to develop a third party mechanism for monitoring conditions in the fields and investigating workers' complaints of abuse.

Here in Chicago they had a "Concert for Fair Food" to celebrate the victory, where Zach de la Rocha and Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine) played, among others. Tom Morello had this to say:

"We worked the entire set up 20 minutes before we went onstage, but it went pretty well. It was very exciting for everybody in the room, myself included. I mean, the place was just packed to the rafters and even the stage was packed with this ring of 25 photographers two feet away from us while we were playing, so it was kind of a trippy, you know, way to do our first show. But it was a great cause and we were happy to be a part of the Immokalee farmworkers victory."

Find out more here:

http://www.ciw-online.org/CIW_McDs_Agreement.html

Mourning with Virginia Tech

As the nation mourns with Virginia Tech after the mass killings there last Monday, our inability to understand such a tragedy burns inside of us. In the Virginia Tech memorial convocation Tuesday evening, professor and poet Nikki Giovanni said:

"We are Virginia Tech.We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.We are Virginia Tech.We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.We are Virginia Tech.We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.We are Virginia Tech.The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.We are the Hokies. We will prevail. We will prevail. We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech."
http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/giovanni_transcript.php



As we struggle to undertand this tragedy, our prayers go out all those who mourn at Virginia Tech, that God's healing presence would be felt.

Christian Peace Witness for Iraq

Christian Peace Witness for Iraq

On Friday, March 16 I traveled with over 20 seminarians, mostly from McCormick Theological Seminary, and a couple from Chicago Theological Union to the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq gathering in Washington DC. We were a part of over 3,000 Christians uniting in response to our faith, to call for an end to the War in Iraq. This was the first of a weekend of protests around the country to mark the fourth anniversary of the war. The CPW gathering started with a service at the Washington National Cathedral at 7:00pm, where we sang songs of hope and heard from several speakers, including Celeste Zappala, who lost her son in the war, and shared the following words:
“Tonight we’re in the National Cathedral, the alter of the nation, and we lay before God the sorrow that lives in all of us because of this war. Since Sherwood (her son who died in the War in Iraq) died protecting the Iraq Survey Group as they looked for the weapons of mass destruction 2,483 more American lives have been lost… And how many limbs? And how many eyes? And how much blood? And what about the souls of soldiers who pick up the pieces of their friends? Or fearfully fire into a car and discover a minute later a shattered Iraqi family? In Iraq shamefully no one could say how many children and old people have died, those counts are only kept in the hearts of the people who lost them, keep these people in your heart. An Iraqi mother searches a morgue for the familiar curve of the hand of her child beneath a pale sheet. An American father watches his son beheaded on video tape. An Iraqi child wakes up in a shabby hospital in excruciating pain, because of the loss of his arm. An American girl writes letters to her dead soldier father. An American vet wraps a garden hose around his neck, and leaps away from the nightmares that beset him. And the ocean of tears spreads across both countries along with the numbers: 1,950 US kids have lost parents, 25,000 wounded and struggling through the VA system, scores and scores of suicides, 500,000 and more dead in Iraq, 2 million refugees, a wail rises from the throat from all who love these people and shakes our hearts as it reaches the crucified open arms of Jesus. We’re here tonight as the church, each one of us is a witness to this war and to our own complicity in it, when were we silent when we should have spoken, whose eyes would we not meet to face the truth? Now we are prostrate at this alter, begging: ‘Lord, help us, war is our failure to love you, and peace is your command, peace isn’t the easy way out, its creation is the most confounding, the hardest thing we can do, help us, we lay our souls open to you and question, how can we follow your command to love each other?’ Surely it cannot be by mindlessly sending the children of others to kill people we don’t even know. I know that nothing I say, no amount of logic or protest will bring my son back to me, or any of the lost ones home. Yet I ask the Lord to help us, we lay this grief before the Lord, our souls broken open, ready to rise to witness, ready to love God’s world to peace. Bless you and thank you.”
Other speakers included Rev. Dr. Raphael Gamaliel Warnock, Senior Pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church (home of Martin Luther King Jr.); Rev. Dr. Bernice Powell Jackson, President of the North American Region of the World Council of Churches; and Rev. Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners/Call to Renewal.
After the service we marched in the snow and cold with battery-operated candles to the White House singing hymns of peace and hope. When we arrived at the White House, 222 people prayed on the sidewalk (an area where it is required to keep moving), and were arrested, and put on buses to be processed, and fined $100.
It is hard to believe that this war has gone on for four years. This gathering gives me hope, and the bill the House of Representatives has just passed (March 23), is a good start. May our faith call us to sing in choirs of peace, and speak out against this war, and plans for surges of troops. As Rev. Raphael G. Warnock said: "Mr. Bush, my Christian brother, we do need a surge in troops. We need a surge in the nonviolent army of the Lord," he said. "We need a surge in conscience and a surge in activism and a surge in truth-telling."

For the full story, see: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WAR_PROTEST_CHRISTIANS?SITE=TXHOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

I am Barabbas

"I was sitting in chains, both hands and feet, in a dirty, cold and damp prison. I had robbed. I had murdered. I knew someday I would be caught, but until then I had always been able to slip through their fingers..." This is a part of a monologue from the perspective of Barabbas. What happened in Barabbas' mind once he heard the news that he would be set free after all the terrible things he had done? How did he respond to this radical grace? How do we respond to grace in our lives?

This monologue was part of a Lenten Wednesday worship service series I am doing with Lara (another LSTC student) at St. Andrew Lutheran Church in West Chicago for our Ministry In Context (field education) project. Each week I memorize and perform a different monologue from a Lenten drama series called "Am I Guilty?" by Audrey Surma (published by Contemporary Drama Services). The monologues have been from the perspectives of Caiaphas the High Priest, a moneychanger, a member of the mob, Barabbas. Next week I will be Cornelius a Centurion and then Peter for Easter. I perform these monologues in first person story form, walking around the room, and then inviting discussion. Each monologue has sparked discussion on the parallels between these biblical characters and us today. Do we seek power like Caiaphas? Do we practice unethical business like the moneychangers? Do we follow the crowd like members of the mob? Do we still see a lot of these tendencies today? What does this tell us about sin? What does this tell us about grace? These are many of the questions the people of St. Andrew and I have been reflecting on and engaging during this Lenten season. Peace and grace to all of you.

Nicaragua trip summary

NICARAGUA: COFFEE WITH A CONSCIENCE- LWR COFFEE PROJECT
My J-Term Visit with Coffee Farmers in Nicaragua

For my January term course this year I made a week-long visit to Nicaragua with the to learn more about Fair Trade and the lives of small-scale coffee farmers. My trip was made possible by a scholarship for seminarians to go on Lutheran World Relief study visits. I traveled with a delegation of 20 people sponsored by Lutheran World Relief and the Center for Global Education of Augsburg College. Representatives from Equal Exchange, a Fair Trade organization that imports coffee, tea and cocoa, were also with the group. We heard from several people working with farming cooperatives, and the positive impact Fair Trade has had on their lives. We spent two nights with a gracious family from a coffee farming cooperative. I joined the nine year old son Julito (see picture) in picking coffee from the trees. We were able to observe all the steps involved in producing the coffee, which I will attempt to summarize. After picking the coffee, it is brought in burlap bags down to a Wet Mill, where it is de-pulped. Later it is brought to a Dry Mill where it is preserved and then cupped and tested for quality.
Coffee is a vital source of income for hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers and their families in some of the poorest countries in the world. In Nicaragua, coffee has been a leading export and one of the pillars of the national economy. Consequently, coffee growing communities have been devastated as the world market for coffee collapsed from $1.40 per pound in 1999 to just 45¢ in the summer of 2001. Prices have gained some ground in the past two years, but years of low prices have caused massive disruption in farming communities. As a consequence, rural incomes have plummeted, thousands of jobs have been lost and many people are migrating into the cities or out of the country. It is estimated that approximately 300,000 Nicaraguans, many of them coffee farmers, have migrated to Costa Rica to look for work.
“When small-scale farmers can’t get a fair price for their coffee, it has a ripple effect in their communities, their country and even the world,” said Aaron Dawson, Equal Exchange Interfaith Program representative on the trip. “Without a stable income, they can’t afford to invest in their farms, they can’t pay for their children’s education, they can’t afford medicine and they can’t plan for the future.”
Meanwhile in the U.S., the ELCA is part of a movement promoting an alternative: Fair Trade Certified coffee. The coffee is imported by Equal Exchange, a worker-owned cooperative founded to create a more equitable model of trade with small-scale farmers. The company imported its first container of coffee from Nicaragua in 1986, launching “Café Nica”. In 1991, Equal Exchange became the first coffee trader in the U.S. to adopt internationally recognized Fair Trade standards. Today, Equal Exchange is one of the few companies that follows the Fair Trade standards of TransFair USA, an independent certifier, on 100% of their coffees.
Since 1996 Equal Exchange has worked in partnership with Lutheran World Relief to promote Fair Trade to U.S. Lutherans. Lutheran World Relief has funded a number of coffee farming initiatives in the region, including training for Cecocafen women members who run an eco-tourism project that hosted the delegation in farmers’ homes. In 2005 Lutheran World Relief and Equal Exchange launched Organic Sisters’ Blend, a blend containing Nicaraguan coffee, honoring women coffee farmers and U.S. Lutheran women who promote Fair Trade in their communities. Equal Exchange’s Interfaith Program also works with other faith-based relief, development and human right organizations.
Does Fair Trade work? This is the frequent question I asked myself while I was in Nicaragua, and I’ve been asked since I’ve been back. My answer is: Yes. Reason #1- Perhaps most importantly, given low market prices, Fair Trade ensures farmers a fair price, Equal Exchange ensures a minimum of $1.41 per pound of organic coffee. For the high quality coffee which comes from their cooperative partners in Nicaragua, the company often pays considerably more. For small-scale farmers, a fair price is just the beginning of the benefits of Fair Trade. “We do not want people to buy our coffee, to pay a fair price, because we are poor. We want you to buy our coffee because of its quality,” said Blanca Rosa Morales, the President of Cecocafen, the coffee co-op visited by the group. “And this quality translates into many other qualities: not just the quality in your cup, but our quality of life, the environment, and of our children’s education – it is total quality.”
Reason #2- By trading directly with farmer co-ops, Equal Exchange cuts out layers of “middlemen,” who small scale farmers are usually forced to sell to because they are isolated from markets. This ensures that more money reaches the people who do the hard work of growing and harvesting coffee. Reason #3- Another important Fair Trade standard is to provide the cooperatives with loans so that the cooperatives can pay their members for the coffee well before the coffee is shipped to the U.S. This provides the farmers with funds between harvests – money for farm improvements, seedlings, and training programs, as well as family expenses such as medicines, clothing and school supplies – helping them to stay out of debt. In 2005, Equal Exchange arranged for pre-shipment financing of $1.7 million to its cooperative partners. This was one of the most frequent benefits of Fair Trade that we heard in the cooperatives we visited. Especially since the Central American Coffee Crisis hit Nicaragua about six years ago, where sales went down significantly, the instability of the coffee market haunted our hosts. One story that is still burning inside me is a testimony about a nearby community that suffered the deaths of 25 children because of the Coffee Crisis. Therefore, Fair Trade in some instances even means the difference between life and death.
During our time we also experienced a huge day in the history of Nicaragua, as Daniel Ortega was inaugurated president. He was the president elected by the revolutionary Sandanista party after the revolution in the 1980’s, until the CIA sponsored Contras took him out. We watched the ceremony and speech on TV, since it was in Managua and we were in Matagalpa, but the city was sounding with fireworks. In his speech he spoke about how his presidency is for the campesinos, the small scale farmers. He signed the ALBA agreement with Venezuela and other countries, which counters the disadvantages of CAFTA. Most of the areas we visited were of Ortega´s Sandanista party and have hope in the new government. It was quite an exciting time to be in Nicaragua.
After this trip, when I drink coffee I can remember the nine year old boy Julito picking each coffee cherry off of the tree, and all the subsequent labor that was invested in it. This is the type of solidarity that Fair Trade offers. I will close with a reflection on the sermon we heard from the Lutheran bishop of Nicaragua who talked about the star that the Magi followed, and the ways that God’s revelation encounters us. I saw Christ’s presence revealed in countless ways in the hope and resilience in the people we met in Nicaragua, which had a profound impact on my faith, and will certainly have an impact on my future ministry.

Please take a look at my trip pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/JoshEbener/Nicaragua
To get a day by day synopsis of our trip, visit our online study diary at: http://www.lwr.org/studydiary/itinerary.asp?VisitID=13
For more information about Equal Exchange, Fair Trade and Equal Exchange’s Interfaith Program visit http://www.equalexchange.com/, or call (774) 776-7366. For more information about the Lutheran World Relief Coffee Project, visit http://www.lwr.org/coffee/index.asp, or call (410) 230-2800.

Saludos de Nicaragua

follow me in Nicaragua...

I am leaving tomorrow for Nicaragua (Jan 5-14). Our group will be keeping an online study diary, so please check it out:

http://www.lwr.org/studydiary/entry.asp?ItineraryDate=1/5/2007&VisitID=13

¿Donde esta Jesús?

Yesterday I delivered a sermon at my “Ministry In Context” (field education) church. It was great experience for me getting to preach in Spanish. The Gospel text was Luke 2:41-52, where Jesus at 12 years old goes to the Temple in Jerusalem, and his parents go frantically searching for him, and finally find him three days later. We can picture Jesus’ parents frantically searching for him while he’s dazzling all the professors of Systematic Theology.

When Jesus’ parents find him, he says: “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” He must be in his Father’s “house” or “engaged in his Father’s business.”

Sometimes we can “loose Jesus” too, leaving us frantically searching for him. It is in our searching that Jesus finds us and invites us to join him in being engaged in his “Father’s business.” As we enter this season of Epiphany and this New Year, may Jesus encounter with radical and abundant grace, in ways that are fresh and new, that we never would have expected. May our faith keep us with eyes wide open.

back to CHIcago

I'm leaving Davenport IA tomorrow (Fri), first to go to my grandparents 60th wedding anniversery (wow!) and then to give a couple sermons at my teaching parish (I'm still translating them into Spanish). Then, on the 5th of January, I'm off to Nicaragua! I will be going for my January term course. I'm going with to visit fair trade coffee farms with Lutheran World Relief. I'll tell you all about it when I return.

the donkey dung manger

It may seem strange, but as I reflect on Christmas this year, I’ve been focusing on the donkey dung that surely surrounded the manger in which the baby Jesus laid.

Seminary has been a journey full of theological formation, and my Christmas theology has been no exception. In my Systematic Theology 1 course last semester, my professor Dr. Vitor Westelle was teaching on “revelation” and was discussing God’s revelation in unexpected ways. He pointed out: Who would have expected that the manifestation of the divine would be in a manger filled with donkey dung?! Only faith can see the Savior in the middle of a smelly manger.

Christ appeared in the smelly manger, into the rough city of Bethlehem, and into a harsh and struggling world. Sometimes I get caught up in the smelliness and harshness of the world today. I think of the War in Iraq, the genocide in Sudan, AIDS in Africa, and the homeless on the streets of Chicago. Although when I reflect on the smelly manger, I am filled with hope. This Christmas I reflect upon the grace of God, that like the little baby appearing in a smelly manger, still shows up today amidst the smelliest circumstances we could ever fathom. This grace may not appear where we would expect it, but it comes where we need it the most. May Christ’s Spirit bring you all the grace and peace of Christmas.

The Josh Ebener Blog...

My name is Josh Ebener, and I am starting my own personal blog...this is it!