[Dialogue] Spong on The Emerging Church

[Chagnon@comcast.net]

Dick Kroeger, 
   Thank you for today's article on The Emerging Church.  As lengthy as the Spong pieces are, I have missed them these past couple of weeks.  And this one today tops all the others--which takes some doing.  
  
   I have a hunch that if Bishop Spong visited churches pastored by our colleagues or in which our colleagues are vibrant, participating members, he would find a whole slew of other examples.  We get glimpses of them now and then in a variety of e-mails, and I would love to hear more from some of those congregations here on the Dialogue.
  
 Let me tell you my story.  
   Since 1979, the year after our marriage, Richard and I have had a strong relationship to Sacred Heart Church in south Camden, NJ where I was an interim principal during the 1986-87 school year and where Richard was the organist for the 8:30 Mass for many years.  Most of the 200+ students are not Catholic, mostly Black and Vietnamese from the neighborhood in a city which leads the lists for poverty and violence.  Fr. Michael Doyle refuses to take money from the diocese which has closed most of the RC schools.  He raises every bit of it by urging over 2000 sponsors to donate $300 per child, and every year Sacred Heart School meets it goal. 
   There's a school Gospel choir, which I'm proud to say I started, a health clinic, a food pantry, and after-school programs.  Heart of Camden Housing has rehabbed dozens of row homes with labor donated Saturday after Saturday from the suburbs and from urban neighbors who now own the homes and whose monthly mortgage payment soon covers the $5,000 or so that Sacred Heart paid the city for the abandoned property.  
   Individual members of the congreation are involved in a multiplicity of tasks, programs, you name it.  This past week-end I participated in the annual day-long Woman's Spirit Rising Retreat open to well over 100 women from the community and the congregation, free of charge and funded with donations.  After a morning of song led by Mother Brown, sacred dance, prayer, Scripture, and a marvelous lunch prepared by a group of suburban men of the parish, there were nine two-hour workshops to choose from in the afternoon, ranging from dance, to food and spirit, to journal writing, to earth medicines, to women and earth: beautiful bodies.  
   Mother Teresa visited Sacred Heart.  And on May 22nd, Jeremy Sullivan, 26, set out alone from south Camden to ride his bicycle to California over six-months.  He decided to do it to raise money for a project that will cost a million dollars: to change traffic patterns, erect buffers of evergreen trees, create water effects, and plan an abundance of dust-diminishing vegetation--all to replace the damaged air that the children breathe every day from the neighborhood air-polluting facilities, businesses, and their diesel trucks that go down the length of the church and school.  He plans to talk about Camden and ask for hospitality.  
   If you folks in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and California hear about Jeremy Sullivan and the 50 pounds he pulls in a one-wheel cart behind him, run to meet him and invite him in.  
   There's much more going on there, but that's enough for now.  I hope I got the ball rolling as Jeremy rolls across the country. 
Grace and Peace,
Lucille Chagnon
in Wilmington, DE 
where the butterflies are finally visiting our butterfly bush this summer