Words from the World

WEEK 3

Monday

Anticipation

With race in mind, Christians reconsider language of dark and light at Advent
By Emily McFarlan Miller, Religion News Service, December 7, 2022

The Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow has always been bothered by Advent’s emphasis on the imagery of light and darkness.

For at least the last decade, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastor has been urging other clergy to be thoughtful in how they use the language — often equating light with good and dark with bad — during the liturgical season of Advent in the roughly four weeks leading up to Christmas.

“My annual plea to preachers that during Advent we be aware of how much and how often we equate dark with bad and light with good,” he tweeted last year as the season began.

“The idea that darkness is inherently bad needs no reinforcement, so let’s let go of the confining imagery and embrace creative reimagination.”

Last year, Reyes-Chow abandoned the imagery altogether at the congregation he was pastoring, [in] Palo Alto. With everything happening in the world at the time, he didn’t want to perpetuate the idea that darkness was bad in any way, he said. “Once you choose to see that dark and darkness and lightness are perceived in a certain way, I think you can’t go back,” he said. …

This Advent, he’s taking a further step. A decade into urging his fellow Christians not to center whiteness in their observance of Advent, Reyes-Chow blogged earlier that he realized he was doing that very thing.

Literally.

When he pulled out his Advent wreath, he realized he had placed the traditional white candle at its center — “the LAST one, the BEST one, the MOST IMPORTANT ONE,” the one symbolizing Jesus, whose birth Christians celebrate at Christmas, he wrote. …

Reyes-Chow replaced his with one that is dark brown and urged others to consider what might happen if they did the same in their churches.

… It makes sense to him, he [wrote], when Jesus himself … would have been dark-skinned.

“The thing is, the light is not generated by the color of the candle but from the light that that candle gives to the world.”

Tuesday

Incarnation

USC researchers use AI to help translate Bible into very rare languages
By Fiona André, July 5, 2023, Religion News Service

Out of the 7,100 languages that exist, the Bible has been translated into more than 700, making it the most-translated book in the world. Yet, those remaining languages — many of them extremely rare — have vexed Bible translators for decades. Two scientists are looking to new advancements in artificial intelligence to help close the gap.

“We want to reach all the languages on earth; the goal is to reach everyone,” said Joel Mathew, a research engineer who alongside Ulf Hermjakob recently launched the Greek Room, an AI-powered technology to help streamline the highly technical process of biblical translation.

Combining Hermjakob’s long experience with natural language processing technologies and Mathew’s field knowledge of Bible translation, the two USC Information Sciences Institute researchers developed the technology with an aim to target “very low-resource languages that are not even in the top 500,” said Mathew.

With their project, Mathew and Hermjakob want to work on languages that do not even have a written system, grammar codes, dictionaries or spell-checkers.

“We are thinking of languages like Uyghur or Oromo (Oromo is spoken in Ethiopia and Northern Kenya),” said Hermjakob.

Recently, they have been approached by an Indian consultant specifically interested in the spell-checking and world-alignment tool for Bible translation in Kolami, a language spoken in western India that counts 130,000 native speakers.

Matthew explained, “Local churches and local language communities are asking for translations of the Bible in their heart language.”

Wednesday

Epiphany

The Work of Christmas
Howard Thurman

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.

Thursday

Wilderness

Reclaiming Land
From Liturgies from Below

Land, land, land, our treasure
God gave us land to till
God gave us seeds to sow in the land
Whose land is it anyway?
Land, land, land, our treasure.

Land, land, land, our treasure

Some call it the land of our ancestors
Some Call it the land of the Great Spirits
The Empire has taken the land for itself
But the land is our land, our treasure.

God has created the earth and all its fullness
Land, land, land: this treasure belongs to God
We all belong to God, as land belongs to God
Come share with him, her, them, me this treasure
Land, land, land, our treasure

Economy depends on our land
Our future as Africa depends on this treasure
Our fears concerning our economy and future are real –
Why steal our land, our treasure?
Why sell and privatize our land, our treasure?

God, bless our land, your land, our treasure
God, quench the fires of human greed that inspire the privatizing of land
God, grant us strength and wisdom to be good stewards of the land
Land, land, land, our treasure

Friday

Resurrenction

The search for gender identity, say trans seekers, brought them closer to God
By Emma Ryan, June 27, 2023, Religion News Service

As opposition to recognition for transgender Americans has increased in recent months, so have clashes between people with transgender identities and faith leaders. But it’s not always the case that faith and transgender don’t mix. Some transgender seekers … have found that the search for a gender identity can often come with a more profound sense of spirituality.

The Rev. Shannon T.L. Kearns, a playwright and Old Catholic Church priest was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church in rural Pennsylvania. Kearns said he was always unsure why he felt different from those around him.

“I grew up in a tradition with very strict gender roles, but also where we didn’t really talk about gender,” said Kearns. “It was a mess! I grew up with no language to talk about gender, but also consistently feeling like I was messing up my gender. It led to a divorce between my soul and my body, which left me feeling hollowed out and disconnected.”

Despite this split, Kearns never fully let go of his faith. As he continued to explore Christianity, he learned that fundamentalist readings of Scripture were not the only way to interpret the Bible and, through reading other people’s stories, saw how differently he had experienced faith.

It was realizing he was trans, though, that helped Kearns repair the rift between his identity and his faith. “Reading Scripture as a trans person opened up the texts in new ways and gave gifts to the church and the world,” said Kearns. “I had new understandings of bodies and scars and resurrection that opened up windows for other people to understand their bodies and scars and resurrection.

This journey culminated in his ordination in the Old Catholic Church, a denomination that is independent of the Vatican, becoming its first openly transgender priest. In 2013, he helped to found Queer Theology, an online resource guide for LGBTQ+ Christians.

Saturday

Community

Shashank Sharma sets record for visiting most houses of worship in one month
By Bhavya Dore, June 28, 2023, Religion News Service

MUMBAI, India (RNS) — Shashank Sharma walked past the green sign that said “Imamia Hall” and pushed the metal gate to enter a tree-filled compound. The white Shiite mosque inside was latched and padlocked, so someone came to open it for him. He entered, surveying the prayer space, the light flooding through the windows, the green carpeted floor. He silently said a prayer.

“It was unbelievable that I am a Hindu, and the mosque is being opened just for me to enter it,” Sharma, 34, said of his visit to the mosque in Delhi, where he is based. “It was an overwhelming feeling being in a big mosque all alone. It was a very touching experience.”

This is one of 76 houses of worship that Sharma visited last year in June as part of his effort to visit the most places of worship by anyone in a month. In May this year, Guinness World Records certified his record. Sacred spaces Sharma visited included Hindu, Buddhist and Jain temples, Sikh gurdwaras, mosques and churches, as well as a Baha’i place of worship.

“I don’t want to make any political statement, but I have been troubled by the way that communal harmony has taken a hit in the past few years,” said Sharma, who works as an education consultant and researcher. Sharma sees his personal crusade as a small step toward spreading the message of communal harmony. “With this record I want to tell the common man: Visiting a place of worship that is different from yours should not be seen as something anti-Hindu,” he said. …

Sharma ended up visiting more than 100 spots, but for the purposes of the record he sent proof for 76. He also had to send videos and photos of each visit as evidence, as well as have a witness accompany him.

For Sharma, the entire experience has been rewarding. “It was exhausting, but also satisfying, and I felt proud,” he said. “Even if not for the record, I felt like I did something.”