Weekly Meanderings, 21 August 21
Schoolchildren are back in school, the nights are longer, and the veggies are pick-able. Good morning!
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has received dozens of soccer jerseys and game balls during his eight-year pontificate but he got a new football-themed toy on Wednesday: his very own foosball table.
Francis played a round on the table that was presented to him at the end of his general audience by representatives of a Tuscany-based table football association, Sport Toscana Calcio Balilla in Altopascio.
The mayor of Altopascio, Sara D’Ambrosio, wrote on Facebook that the table was designed to be inclusive and work well for people with physical disabilities to encourage their participation in sport.
The Argentine-born pope is a well-known lover of soccer and his beloved San Lorenzo soccer club in Buenos Aires. He has long promoted sport as a way to promote solidarity and inclusion, especially for young people.
LOS ANGELES (RNS) — Homeboy Industries, believed to be the world’s largest reentry organization for formerly incarcerated and gang-involved men and women, is undergoing what board member the Rev. Allan Figueroa Deck, a Jesuit priest, sees as a ‘quantum leap’ in economic stability.
The Los Angeles-based nonprofit founded by the Rev. Gregory Boyle has received $15 million in long-term funding from the state of California and a $20 million gift from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, the former spouse of Jeff Bezos.
This is the first time the organization has received this level of funding and monetary gifts, which, Deck said, will “really bring the organization to a new level of capacity” to serve people who have been in prison and involved in gangs.
“It will assure a level of stability in this really important work that it never has had before,” said Deck, who serves on Homeboy Industries’ board of directors.Founded in 1988, Homeboy Industries draws nearly 9,000 people every year, all seeking a range of services, from anger management and job training to domestic violence support, legal assistance and tattoo removal. It also employs people in its own social enterprises, including a bakery, cafe and diner, as well as a silkscreen and embroidery shop, farmers’ markets and catering services.
More than 450 men and women go through the organization’s 18-month job training and healing program annually and get paid while they do. About two-thirds of Homeboy’s senior staff are graduates of the program. In addition to Boyle and Deck, actress and activist Jane Fonda and business people such as Oscar Gonzalez, co-president of Northgate Gonzalez Markets, populate its board.
With the funding from Scott, leaders say, the organization will be able to establish an operating reserve, develop supportive housing and create more jobs by expanding its social enterprises.
Bethlehem Baptist — church, college, seminary — is now under scrutiny for its misuses of power. One who talked explains why he did so:
Why did you speak “on the record” with her?
Julie gave me the option of speaking “off the record” and I think that if I had, I could have spared myself some of the inevitable reactions. This was tempting, but the feeling that I could talk to her in secret and thus avoid the consequences of doing so felt disingenuous to me. Because of this I felt strongly that if I was going to speak to her, my name should be on the record, and to let the consequences come what may. I wish to be able to say with Paul “But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God” (1 Cor 4:2). In a situation where there is so much hiding, so many secrets, so much prevarication, equivocation, and impression management, speaking on the record was a way of actively resisting this for my own self. Obviously not everyone has to come to the same conclusion, and others can speak off the record with completely clean consciences, but for me, this was important.
How long have you been working on Saysh?
So it’s about a year and a half now. It actually all came together during the pandemic, and we were able to kind of build everything remotely. So it’s kind of crazy just how fast everything happened, that we were able to put the whole team together and have it come to life.I feel like that’s probably one of the most exciting aspects, putting that team together. Because you’ve been in this industry for so long that you know who all the brilliant minds are at different brands, or who’s worked where, and how they can kind of put these pieces together.
Exactly. I mean, it wouldn’t have happened without that. And it’s such a purpose-driven kind of mission that I really felt like it was important that people connected over that, and that it made sense, and that everyone was really passionate about that. And so, yeah, it totally was being able to connect with the right people, obviously, because I had no idea how to make shoes or build shoes. But I felt like I learned so much. But yeah, we have an incredible team that came together.How far into that decision did you decide that you were going to wear the spikes at the Olympics? Was that always the goal?
It kind of came about naturally. The footwear aspect was the reason that we decided to bring Saysh to life, just because I didn’t have a footwear sponsor. And it was crazy to me that at this point in my career, for whatever reason, maybe because I was so strongly branded as a Nike athlete, or whatever, the interest wasn’t there. And so it was like, “OK, can we do this ourselves?”
(RNS) — The Rev. Liz Rios has a simple philosophy of ministry: What God wants her to do, she’ll do.
“I’m from the school that if God called me, can you please get out the way?” said Rios, a longtime Pentecostal pastor and president of Passion2Plant, an organization that trains pastors on how to start new churches.
That sense of God’s call has sustained Rios through more than 30 years of ministry as pastor of startup congregations known as “church plants.”
In that role, Rios is an outlier in a world primarily populated by eager young, white men, many of them mentored by megachurch pastors and backed by evangelical Christian church planting groups such as the Send Network, Acts 29 and Exponential, or by denominational support programs, also led largely by white men.
With Passion2Plant, which began training its first cohort of church planters this summer, she has joined a small but growing number of women of color who are trying to open up more opportunities for women to lead.
Many of the traditional networks, due to their theology about gender, only back male pastors. And while they encourage new churches to include women in their core startup groups, those women often serve behind-the-scenes with little decision-making authority.
Yet, said Rios, “Without women, most churches wouldn’t function. Unfortunately, they get sidelined to the kitchen or to Sunday school teaching, but never to pulpit ministry.”
The implications of this for the Middle East are enormous:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Built and trained at a two-decade cost of $83 billion, Afghan security forces collapsed so quickly and completely — in some cases without a shot fired — that the ultimate beneficiary of the American investment turned out to be the Taliban. They grabbed not only political power but also U.S.-supplied firepower — guns, ammunition, helicopters and more.
The Taliban captured an array of modern military equipment when they overran Afghan forces who failed to defend district centers. Bigger gains followed, including combat aircraft, when the Taliban rolled up provincial capitals and military bases with stunning speed, topped by capturing the biggest prize, Kabul, over the weekend.
A U.S. defense official on Monday confirmed the Taliban’s sudden accumulation of U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment is enormous. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and so spoke on condition of anonymity. The reversal is an embarrassing consequence of misjudging the viability of Afghan government forces — by the U.S. military as well as intelligence agencies — which in some cases chose to surrender their vehicles and weapons rather than fight.