“I am so excited,” said the Rev. Samuel Son, the PC(USA)’s Manager of Diversity and Reconciliation, “that we get to hear from this philosopher, prophet and preacher.”
The Presbytery of New Covenant in southeast Texas has had a strong youth ministry for decades. A highlight has been its Youth Conclaves weekend retreats that are led by the youth themselves. These retreats are a time to meet other Presbyterian youth and a time to grow as disciples. Our presbytery also recognizes that youth is a time of exploration and identity formation — including gender or sexual orientation. This became apparent in February 2020, when a request was received regarding a young person who was hesitant to attend a retreat weekend because of who she is. Katrina is transgender. She had attended the previous year when she hadn’t fully come out, and she stayed in the boys’ cabin. While she knew she didn’t want to stay there, she wasn’t sure she would be able to stay with the girls. The presbytery’s General Council made a quick decision, with a hastily written policy, that Katrina could attend and stay with the girls. We felt that, at the very least, she could feel comfortable, and we were covered legally. We knew, though, that inclusion of transgender youth in church events had to be addressed because there were more teens like Katrina among us.
I was born in Nazareth, but spent five years of my childhood in Haifa, Israel’s third largest city, where my father was the Anglican priest.
In some ways, living on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea was idyllic. I remember with joy road trips to Nazareth and fishing excursions with my grandfather. But I also remember having to speak my mother tongue, Arabic, in hushed tones on the street, lest we attract unwanted attention from our Jewish Israeli neighbors and always sensing that somehow, we might be seen as different.
We fear so many things, the Rev. Dr. Cláudio Carvalhaes told worshipers during the recent celebration of 35 years of ministry by Presbyterian Border Region Outreach.
We live in a scary world. Every morning, the news is filled with stories of natural disasters, carnage on roadways and diseases that we have not yet found a way to control. The beat goes on, and the reality of our own finitude is too intense to deny.
We fear so many things, the Rev. Dr. Cáudio Carvalhaes told worshipers last week during a celebration of 35 years of ministry by Presbyterian Border Region Outreach.
When I was little, my family took me on a trip to visit my uncle and aunt in Africa. They were both medical missionaries in Rwanda. We visited a game preserve where we watched lions, elephants and other wild animals from our Jeep. One night, my parents told me that the house we were sleeping in was right on the equator. I asked, “What is the equator?” My dad said it was an imaginary line running around the world. But what I heard him say was that it was “a lion running around the world!” I imagined the lion running around our house all night. I didn’t think it was Aslan, but more likely the devil, waiting to devour me.
