Submitted by Rev. Kieren Bourne

This song was written a couple of years ago in response to the apparent reduction in wearing and promotion of the red ribbon.

Tune: Where have all the flowers gone?
Words: Rev Kieren Bourne

Where have all the ribbons gone, long time passing?
Where have all the ribbons gone, long time ago?
Where have all the ribbons gone?
Wearers lost them every one.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where has the awareness gone, long time passing?
Where has the awareness gone, long time ago?
Where has the awareness gone?
Lost the focus every one.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where should all the ribbons be, no time passing?
Where should all the ribbons be, right here and now?
Where should all the ribbons be?
Proudly worn by every one.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where will all the ribbons be, no time passing?
Where will all the ribbons be, right here and now?
Where will all the ribbons be?
We shall wear them every one.
Through Christ we’ll ever learn.
Through Christ we’ll ever learn.

Submitted by Rev. Danny Spears

I Am Accepted is both a worship service and educational event sponsored by Chicago Theological Seminary’s LGBTQ Religious Studies Center, the Heyward-Boswell Society, achurch4me? MCC, Holy Covenant MCC, and MCC Illiana.

Submitted by Rev. Leigh Neighbor

This year MCC Brisbane wil host the Multi-Faith Service on the 1st December for World AIDS Day.
This is the secound year  we have held this service.
We gather as a people who have experienced the reality of AIDS in our lives, this gathering seeks to strengthens our hope and spirit in love and peace.

Dear MCC Friends:

As we observe World AIDS Day this year, we are aware that there are many reasons for hope:
• Progress is being made for a vaccine
• The travel ban to the US, for those with HIV/AIDS is being lifted
• In the US, Ryan White funding is being renewed, just barely!
• Through the generosity of the Elton John Foundation, MCC was able to offer the seminar, Deconstructing Meth, to many churches and communities in North America this year.

All over the globe, people like you, and churches and organizations like Metropolitan Community Churches continue to be on the front lines, caring, advocating, educating, raising awareness, raising our voices, praying, never forgetting.

We also know that for every victory there are countless injustices and losses which we must overcome and grieve in order to bring about lasting change in the lives of all who are infected and affected by HIV and AIDS.

In Uganda, a law is being introduced that would make it a crime for an LGBT person with HIV to have sex. Even public advocacy would be criminalized. We must stand up for our brothers and sisters in Uganda to demand their safety and equality.

In Zimbabwe, Mother of Peace orphanage mourns, along with all of us, the death of Dr. Bob Scott, and American doctor who worked with the Flunder Foundation in San Francisco, who staffed the clinic at the orphanage. Dr. Scott’s loss leaves an incredible need to keep our commitments to serve the children and adults of Mother of Peace.

The rates of HIV/AIDS infection in Washington, DC is at an all time high. We can make a real difference by bringing healing and justice to our nation’s capital and all the many, many places where people are left without medical support services, where stigma and shame keep people from testing, and where undiagnosed infection is permanently changing the course of individual’s lives.

We must be vigilant and committed, for as long as it takes, to do whatever it takes to overcome.

What you and your church community can do to make a difference:
1. Observe World AIDS Day – in your Sunday services, with a community group, with a prayer vigil. And, not just December 1s, but all year long, remember those affected and infected with HIV/AIDS in your prayers, sermons, liturgies.
2. Take one step this coming year, to be more present for and welcoming of those with HIV/AIDS in your community.
3. Create a partnership with one organization or agency in your community that serves those with HIV/AIDS, their families and friends.

We are proud and thrilled to make a special announcement this World AIDS Day of the publication of Uncommon Hope, a dynamic, small-group curriculum designed to support people of faith in answering God’s call to end the silence and inaction magnifying the human suffering and death wrought by HIV and AIDS. Thanks to Joshua Love and our MCC staff for your perseverance in producing this unique, moving resource for all of us!

Grace and Peace,
Rev. Nancy Wilson

As a Hospice and Palliative Physician, I continue to have patients come into my care dying of AIDS. In America. Today. They are for the most part young, minorities and immigrants, suffering on the margins of society from poverty and/or addictions, whose lives were already too broken to take notice of the symptoms of progressive illness or to seek more than serial emergency room visits or hospitalizations for acute expressions of the underlying virus.

Often the HIV diagnosis was made during one of those brief encounters with health care, yet denial, shame, or the burden of a disorganized and oppressed life, or of caring for others swallows up all good intentions for follow-up and treatment, even when it is available. Eventually there is a last encounter, when a body is beyond response to all that might have helped earlier, when comfort and dignity is all that medicine can offer.
As a Priest, I grieve for those on the margins in our world whom we as a society do not see fit to care for, until we trip over them on the side of the road, those for whom AIDS is only one of many sources of suffering. And within my despair at the injustice and the waste, I am ever surprised by the transforming power of God’s love even within a dying life.

This poem was written to tell the story of one of these children of God, a woman in her last days of life, facedown on a hospital bed and held there by the weight of her struggle to survive.

DRY BONES

No description prepared
For the sight of you lying prone on the bed Arms stretched flat above your head Skin taught over hint of skeleton Failing over piteous caverns Of sinews and flesh long gone

Knees surrender at obtuse angles
As you refuse to be turned on your back
To dress your ischial wounds
Skull fixed to left shoulder
Bulging eyes scan a narrow sphere
And strain to see the television

I squat beside the bed
Seeking entrance to your cave
For your long abandoned son
Come as a pilgrim
Looking for his mother
In this valley of dry bones

As you bare your teeth and say
“I am not dying”
I prophesy to your breath
But your bones are dried up
Your hope is lost
You are cut off completely

And yet this man child
Lays aside his fear
Lays aside your waste and desolation
To feed you tenderly with a spoon
To remove from you a heart of stone
And give you a heart of flesh

When I find you dead
I stand a helpless mortal waiting to tell him He drops the bag carrying his offering to you And runs away Leaving me alone to hear the rattling And the breath of the four winds © 2009, Rev. Ellen Richardson, M.D.

World AIDS Day 2009 – Uncommon Hope and the Open Heart Joshua L. Love, Director Metropolitan Community Churches Global HIV/AIDS Ministry

Amidst the rapidly moving rush hour crowd he stood watching and waiting, almost a stranger. When we last met I was his chaplain and he was my patient at the end of lengthy hospitalization and near death experience. On the street, that day weeks later, his color had returned, bright red hair and peach complexion. His countenance expressed survival…and revelation.

It was 2009 and he had almost died of complications from AIDS. I asked him how things were going. He told me of his time in the skilled nursing facility and eventual return to home. His eyes filled with wonder and tears as he said, “This whole experience has been heart-opening, really.” The visceral truth of those words seemed to resonate from him and echo off every surface of the Castro. We stood on sidewalks teeming to overflow with life but it had not always been so. Not so long ago that community hub had been a place of tremendous loss. Life into death into life again, that is the cycle which reincarnates our hearts anew.

AIDS is a heart-opening experience. Some hearts are cracked apart by the pain, suffering, and loss. Other hearts are unlocked by compassion and understanding. These openings are gifts of the Spirit, blessings that may be shared and multiplied many times over.

The poet John O`Donohue wrote, “Because we are so engaged with the world, we usually forget how fragile life can be and how vulnerable we always are. It takes only a few seconds for a life to change irreversibly. Suddenly you stand on completely strange ground and a new course of life has to be embraced. Especially at such times we desperately need blessing and protection.” So it was for this man, Lazarus awakened, having stepped into the chasm of his own mortality unfettered by false promises of longevity that he found a new heart to live by.

It is these moments of lived blessing that continue to inspire me to feel an UNCOMMON HOPE in our communal and individual walks with HIV and AIDS. This World AIDS Day marks a transition in my own journey. After several years of travel and intense work with faith communities around the world seeking to engage in the hands-on ministry of HIV and AIDS, I have added chaplaincy to my own journey.

Here, in the crowded halls of this hospital, real people are wrestling their own angels in the hopes of one more blessing, perhaps another chance to live or a peaceful transition through their death. While a year ago, I felt confident saying that “AIDS is not over” I am now sure of it in a fresh way. This week, I will pray with someone whose body is being overcome by HIV and AIDS. Next week, I may help a family grieve their lost loved one. And once in awhile, I meet someone on the street who held on until life bloomed again.

“Still bless me anyway. I want more life. I can’t help myself. I do.” Those words written by Tony Kushner in his landmark work Angels in America are a call to each of us this World AIDS Day. There are so many here among us, on every continent, in huts, hospitals, and houses of worship, who crave the blessing of Uncommon Hope which we can offer in our remembrance of all that happened in this long journey with HIV and AIDS and in our celebration of the renewal that is still happening in lives like the patient in this story.

I pray that this year, you will find your own heart opening in a new and fresh way. May the power of the Holy Spirit fill you up to overflowing with UNCOMMON HOPE until you find yourself unable to resist the call to life.

Beginning in the 1850s the Hawaiian government began a segregation policy for people suffering from Hansen’s Disease, commonly known as leprosy. It was believed that this malady had arrived from China, but little was known about its etymology. The devastating effects of this affliction contributed to widespread panic and a desperate need to contain the disease. The only solution, it seemed, was the complete isolation of men, women and children who seemed to show early signs of the disease. Everything from acne to cellulitis was treated with suspicion. Families were separated and children were orphaned unnecessarily. This paranoia also created a situation in which those who had mere blemishes eventually caught the disease because they had been quarantined with those who actually had Hansen’s disease. Of course, this created psychological trauma that shattered lives while the disease ravaged bodies.

It took five to six hours by kayak to reach the island of Molokai from Oahu. This was a safe distance from civilization in the minds of most Hawaiians. As the first boatloads of lepers approached the island, one story relates that they were dumped overboard along with crates of supplies, and told to swim to the shore. Those who successfully navigated the choppy waters arrived on the beach in a fertile valley called Kalawao on the peninsula of Kaluapapa. The tropical valley consists of deep woods and dangerous predators. For people suffering from tubercular complications, this was the worst possible environment. The sixteen hundred-foot high cliffs separate the peninsula from the relatively flat, sun-baked topside area of the island. In addition to the twenty-eight switchbacks from the top of the mountain to the beach, the trail is three miles long.

When I hiked down the steep mule trail in 2006, my able body was sore for three days. Escape to the sun-drenched fields above would have been impossible for those whose limbs were compromised or even missing. The dark, moist recesses of the fertile valley where the lepers were trapped received only about an hour of light per day, thus hastening the progress of the disease. Over the years, the Hawaiian Board of Health gave little thought to the comfort and dignity of Molokai’s residents. A mile from shore supplies were cast into the ocean and left to drift onto the beach. During the exile of the lepers, extensive measures were taken to protect the clean from the unclean, resulting in a humanitarian vacuum. The island’s residents were forced to bury their dead under the most difficult circumstances. Those whose hands had decayed used their forearms to carry the stones that formed walls around the cemetery. This was a necessary measure due to the presence of wild boar that regularly unearthed the bodies of loved ones and neighbors.

In 1864 the Sacred Heart priests in Belgium volunteered one of their young men to live among the lepers and to minister to their various needs. On October 11, 2009 the Roman Catholic Church quietly canonized this missionary priest, baptized Joseph de Veuster. Taking the religious name Damien, de Veuster worked tirelessly among the lepers on the island of Molokai in Hawaii for two decades. He served as co-worker in constructing a school and a hospital as well as numerous houses. He attended to the spiritual and physical needs of the dying, heard their confessions, and celebrated Mass as a faithful servant to the poor and forgotten. He adapted to the congregation’s pluriform needs in creative ways. For example, the parishioners regularly had to step outside during Mass in order to excrete sputum due to their respiratory problems. In order to accommodate their desire to participate fully at Mass, Damien drilled holes into the wooden floor. He distributed long banana leaves which were rolled up and used as tubes so that people could spit during Mass without having to leave the church. I have often wondered whether they held a mental image the blood of Christ dripping into the soil as they released their own bodily fluid into the earth beneath the floorboards.

The Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, New York heard about Fr. Damien’s ministry and resonated with his calling. Some attributed the stigmatization of St. Francis to leprosy, believing that he had caught the disease while working among the lepers in thirteenth century Italy. In 1888 Sr. Marianne Cope joined Damien, providing some relief for this overburdened and lonely cleric who, by this time, was personally affected by leprosy. He endured for six years and died ministering to those who had become his beloved community in Christ.

With the invention of sulfone drugs beginning in 1941, it became possible to control the devastating effects of leprosy. For those affected by the disease, its progression was halted by the drug, yet many had to live with the damage already done to their bodies and souls. More than one hundred years after the deaths of Damien and Marianne the residents of Molokai and other Hawaiians revere the man who has come to be known as Damien the Leper, along with Blessed Marianne Cope. A case for her canonization is also underway. Many of the residents of Molokai technically still have leprosy and today the Hawaiian government fiercely protects their privacy from tourists. For example, a permit is required to visit the island and it is illegal to photograph residents. These small measures are a step toward making reparation for the way that those affected by Hansen’s disease were treated during many decades of isolation and abuse.

One can hardly overlook the parallels between the social stigmatization experienced by the victims of Hansen’s disease and the deplorable ways that those affected by HIV and AIDS are often treated. In fact, Damien has been claimed as the patron saint of people with HIV and AIDS. The stories of Fr. Damien and Mother Marianne are a powerful witness on behalf of those who today are disparaged and ostracized by prejudice, apathy and judgment due to their HIV status. Damien’s placement among the saints of our own day means that one branch of the Church, despite its many shortcomings, still stands with Jesus at the side of the poor and marginalized. Christians of all denominations can be encouraged by the stories of Damien, Francis and others who followed Jesus’ mandate to love and live with those who are ignored, despised and labeled for having a socially stigmatic disease. A minister’s minister, my hope is that Damien’s compassion will support and enliven your invaluable, life-changing commitment to the beloved people of God. May Christ bless you in your tireless efforts to confront the kingdoms and principalities of our own day.

<< Go To World AIDS Day

“Living Between Hope and Peace”
A sermon by Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson

World AIDS Day, December 1st, comes early in the Christian season of Advent. For many MCC churches, it has come to be an integral part of that “penitential” season of reflection, preparation, tradition, memory, and going deeper spiritually. Living with HIV/AIDS, being the Church with AIDS has made all of the gifts and disciplines of Advent a necessity.

This year I noticed that World AIDS Day comes between the first two Sundays in Advent, whose key words/concepts are “Hope” and “Peace.”

What does it mean to live between and balance Hope and Peace?

In the Advent lectionary readings for the first Sunday, the Psalmist says, “No one who hopes in your will ever be put to shame!” (Ps. 25:3a). I cannot read that verse without feeling, deep in my spirit, that it was intended, in a truly mystical sense,  for MCC and for those with HIV/AIDS. With all the shame heaped upon our communities, for decades or for centuries, we know what it means to hope in a God who is not ashamed of us, and who will not allow us to be “put to shame.”  Healing and shame may be the beginning of hope, after all.

And, from the “little apocalypse” in Luke 21, we hear the words of eternal hope, “When these things (persecution, trials, struggles) happen, lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near.” These are Jesus’ words that, in themselves, lift us to the hope that transcends every earthly calamity and sorrow.  What if the hell we are going through is not the end of the story, but a prelude to resurrection, redemption, vindication?

This is a powerful part of the Jesus story and message.

Hope is revolutionary, especially for those with little of it. To hope is to be discontent with the status quo, to believe that there is a better way, a more just, and righteous way to live. It is to trust that we are not alone, abandoned, or forsaken; and that the God who created the heavens and the earth is also the God of the prophets who railed against the status quo. Prophets who insisted that God’s vision and expectation for human life and community did not include hunger, un-treated disease, injustice, crushing poverty, war, rape, racism, religious intolerance. . .

Hope that, for those who suffer, it will not always be thus:  that healing, relief, and comfort will come.

Hope is dangerous, it sparks revolutions and dramatic social change. People who have no hope just accept the status quo, and tune out as best they can. Hope gets underneath the anesthetizing despair that cripples the oppressed.  It is not reasonable or rational. It goes beyond the boundaries. It reaches out for allies and co-conspirators to shake the foundations.

World AIDS Day is a testimony to dangerous hope. I have been in this long enough to remember when there was no hope at all, except in God and community. When there were no meds, and, then a bit later, highly toxic meds that did not work for most people.  I remember when hope was taking to the streets, screaming at the top of our lungs, touching our dying friends, and letting them touch us, defiantly.

Rev. Steve Pieters was “our” poster boy of hope then, in MCC. He was one of the first MCC clergy to be diagnosed with AIDS in the early 80’s, and later served 10 years on staff as our HIV/AIDS Field Director. My partner, Paula, was the editor of an MCC magazine Journey. Her way to encourage him was to push him to write about his hope in a series of journal-like essays. Steve’s message was expressed in the simple slogan, “God is Greater than AIDS.”  He started to write, and his writing touched many around the world.

Hope was contagious, even more contagious than the virus itself. It was what we lived on for many years. It is what people with HIV/AIDS, and their families and friends still need – dangerous hope!

In a time when the Church Universal was colluding with others in a conspiracy of silence, (and it still does, all too often), MCC was loud, brash and out there. Rev. Troy Perry and I had the experience in 1987, before there were protease inhibitors, of wearing our “God is Greater Than AIDS” buttons to the service with Pope John Paul II in South Carolina. We were included with 500 Protestant and Orthodox clergy, who recoiled from us and our buttons in that too small waiting room for hours before the service. We were not ashamed, and they didn’t get that.

Today, a generation of those who survived the initial onslaught of AIDS are experiencing long-term effects from the disease or the medications they take to combat it: premature aging, cognitive issues and other complications. Hope is still needed, every day. Young people still think they are immune, and people who have no hope for life itself are not so concerned about contracting AIDS. Millions are walking around with undiagnosed, untreated HIV - they’ve never been tested.

My partner does school tutoring for a 14 year old immigrant girl, who is beginning to be sexually active - a girl who has never heard of AIDS.  How does that youngster get some hope for her life, her future?

On the second Sunday in Advent, we hear the Benedictus, from Luke’s Zechariah, who prophesizes One who will “Guide our feet into the paths of peace.” (Luke 1: 79).

Peace is not just passive non-aggression, or the absence of conflict. True peace, shalom, is a more powerful and nuanced concept. It is about a state of well-being, both individual and collective. It is as big as what can happen between nations, and, as small as “the way we answer the phone.”

Peace is a path, it is a way of being, of relating, in micro and macro realities.

Peace is not denial, it is not pretending that everything is OK when it is not.  It is living in a vision of the realm of God, the “peaceable kingdom,” where those who are “natural” enemies become friends, where the things that separate and frustrate us can be overcome. Where forgiveness can be offered and received.

We live in a world of “divide and conquer,” where some people benefit from enmity, and will do all they can do to foster it, to foster fear of and hostility toward those who are different. Difficult economic times, as well, foster an “us and them” mentality, in which we act like we are all on a episode of “Survivor,” forming temporary, fragile alliances and making promises we have no intention of keeping, just to win. In our world, “loving one’s  neighbor as oneself” is a radical act of peacemaking, as radical as when Jesus preached and lived it.

Peace is a verb, not a noun. It is a way of being, not a possession. It is a practice. It takes practice.

For me, personally, to practice peace means I have to remember who I am: a beloved child of God. I am safe with the God who created me. And, as I breathe, I must let go of my fear, my desire to control things that I cannot control.

It means being available to be an active partner with God’s intention of “tikkun olam,” repairing the world. To be willing to offer myself in that moment, to God’s purpose.  To take risks in order to have healthy relationships – even with those who see themselves as my enemies.

The church must balance it too – on one hand the times when we must push, challenge and agitate; and on the other, the times we must allow peace to embrace us, calm us and assure us.

Years ago, in the midst of many challenges as pastor of MCC Los Angeles and during the worst of the dying from AIDS, in a particularly frantic time after our building had collapsed in the earthquake, a woman in our church died. She was indigent, and had a huge family, who had few resources, but a lot of opinions and needs. They had insisted she be taken to a funeral home that I knew would overcharge and that they could not afford. Sure enough, after three weeks, the family was not able to pay the bill, and our church member was still unburied and her body held hostage at the funeral home. The family made it difficult for me to help, and I was at the end of my rope, at the end of a very long day. Our church receptionist, Lexie, just looked at me, touched my arm and said, gently but firmly, “Pastor, she’s dead, you’re alive, go home.”  I obeyed, and owned that sometimes, there is nothing I can do but claim my aliveness and go home in peace. I had peace that evening. I remembered that I was not God, I could not fix everything, not that day.

Hope agitates, while peace grounds us. At times I must agitate out of the hope I have been given: but I never control the results, and must be at peace about the long-term outcome.

Peace is living as if hope is fulfilled, now. In the midst of agitating in hope, we must create space for peace. Today, there are people who have no hope and no peace. For their sake, and for ours, we must find the delicate balance between the two as we live and minister in Jesus’ name to the world “God so loved.”