So, what does it mean to really LIVE the revolution?

Anyone got ideas? What is the "revolution"? What would it look like to win the revolution?

I work as the Chaplain of the Church Center for the United Nations and am intrigued with Marta Benavides' expression "I don't want to die for the revolution; I want to LIVE the revolution". It's very provocative given the text I'm working on from the book of John. In that book, Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd who dies for his sheep. He's not the hired hand. He's the shepherd who loves his sheep so much that he will die for them. I know this ideology like the back of my hand. Our whole country and its aggressive military, its ability to be a colonial power, its sense of patriotism and its religious underpinnings are part of this ideology.

I know that Marta has taken alot of criticism because when the Civil War hit in the 80s in El Salvador and her friend and mentor, ArchBishop Oscar Romero was shot and killed, she had an all out argument with her God. Her conversation went like this: "I don't want to die! I want to LIVE. I am in this revolution because I want to LIVE and I want others to LIVE; this is ridiculous this killing and being killed; this martyrdom . . ..this possibility of rape, torture . . all these things . . .I do not believe that you want me to die . . . You gave me life. I believe you want me to live ." She then fled the country, came to the U.S. and lived outside the land and the people she loved for the next 10 years until the Peace Accords were signed in 1991. She chose in that time to work in other areas in Central America and the U.S. developing an agenda for peacemaking for the time when the war would end. It was immediately following her return to El Salvador that I met her as part of a seminary experience in 1991. And I watched her deep commitment to transform the horrid things that war had done to her people into places of beauty and prolific life over the next 18 years.

What is Jesus really saying? Untainted from years and years of traditional paintings, stained glass windows of buccolic Jesus' with sheep over his shoulders . ...or a country whose ideology of sacrificial death is so ingrained and necessary for its political and economic strength, is Jesus really saying the best thing we can do is die for our love? Is that the most loving of actions?

Sometimes its harder to live in a way that does not contribute to the deathly powers of this world. Sometimes its harder to live with a deep and conscious commitment to life. Sometimes its harder to day by day contribute to creating, hoping, loving rather than fall prey to the consequences of this unjust greed systems from which some of us have benefitted and many have not. . . .Sometimes its harder to live than to give in to a spiritual, emotional, psychological, or physical death of a system which values martyrdom.

I find this sculpture in this picture hilarious. It's from El Salvador. There's Jesus all bored with his scarred knees, and an ambivalent crown -- is it a halo or is it thorns? . . . . . .

Every Sunday, the Ecological House in Nahuilzalco hosts all the area indigenous grandmothers for lunch. Women come from miles around, attend church, and then gather at the house. Beyond the food, there is respect and community to be found. This work is part of Marta's larger efforts to bring the needs of the growing elderly population to the political foreground. She networks with other activists around the country and travels to San Salvador to work on national policy issues regarding the elderly.

Welcome to the official blog of People for the 23rd Century.

We would like this blog to be a place where friends, colleagues, family, and everyone in between can keep in touch with our groups progress as we learn about each other and begin to tackle the issues of community that we struggle with everyday.

First, so you can get to know us a little better, is our Mission Statement:

We are a 14 people from various geographical regions, of different ages, cultural backgrounds, religions, and occupations who have determined to "journey" together. We have realized that we are anxious about the ingrained and systematic patterns of irresponsibility, injustice, fear and apathy that is destroying our environment, our financial support systems, and our communities. We have resolved to take action and to empower ourselves to unleash our local and extended communitys' power to create both personal and systemic change.

Because these patterns of behavior are so ingrained, we realize the need to “meet” those whose lives are unfamiliar to our own and to allow what we “meet” to change us. As ‘westerners’ we have much to learn from the struggles and the riches of the people of El Salvador, a country devastated by war and poverty and yet hosting pockets of extraordinary perspective and hope.

So, from June 25-July 6th, 2009, we will be traveling to El Salvador to immerse ourselves in the creative and inspired work of Marta Benavides (see sidebar link for a video on Marta's work).

While in ES, we will learn practical skills and grassroots techniques for community organizing at the local, national and international levels and we will together wrestle some of the fundamental questions confronting our generations so that we can hone our direction towards personal and communal sustainability.

• What is “our” community; how do we fit into it?

• How might we be more accountable with our responsibility to compassionate and engaged community involvement? How do we support each other in steps forward?

• What best practices are there to help us towards more sustainable lifestyles in both our human and natural communities?

• With a growing anxiety around limited financial resources, how might we work to improve the world around us, build community and explore communal sustainability where we prioritize communal sustainability over individual survival?

• How might we use the arts (10 of the persons on this trip are extraordinary artists) to strengthen our communal life?

• How might we most-fully dialogue with the diversities of religion, faith, philosophies, ideologies and their practices that exist in our communities?

As we return home, we expect taht we will be better prepared to promote the creation of good community, through commitment to practices of ‘presence’, empowerment, sustainability, activism and organizational initiatives for justice. We are committed to continuing this engagement with ourselves and our communities and holding one another accountable to personal and community empowerment for the sake of ourselves and our planet.

Marta Benavides is a spiritual leader who has led many initiatives towards peace in El Salvador. Marta has faced great dangers and lost many friends to violence. She currently centers her work in Sonsonate, one of the most violent cities in El Salvador, and in Santa Ana. In both places, she works with local people, manifesting peace through the creation of opportunities that nurture life, including training for livelihoods, cultural activities, education for sustainability and planting butterfly gardens. It is difficult to find things to say about Rev. Marta Benavides because communicating the breadth and depth and expansiveness of Marta’s vision and the consequential revolution in the life and purpose of rural persons in El Salvador is almost impossible to do in written form. At the heart of Marta’s work is a spiritual approach to peace, achieved through conflict transformation. “I understand now that you cannot force things, you have to work with problems. Things simply do not change from one day to another. You have to transform from one stage to another, by always focusing on what form you want to take. It’s not about fighting and living, it’s about living and being. How can we work to create conditions so that the best of everyone is evidenced? The Decade for Peace was not good enough, we need to educate for peace. So all of our work in the community has to include discussing peace and showing the transformation we desire.” However, “Peace is not built, peace is something within us. What we need to build are the processes to manifest it. We cannot buy or obtain it, because peace is inherent.” Those words speak of how deep Marta’s faith reaches. Peace is inherent. We need only build processes which manifest it.

How can we in the United States find those processes in our own country? How can we look at ourselves and find that peace that lies within us? The depth and richness and revolutionary quality of this work started by a single woman with faith, hope, love, boldness, risk and vision in a time where her country’s people suffered overwhelming hurt and injury is the inspiration for this trip. We hope that by observing her initiatives we will begin to discover how to live our daily lives fighting for ideals of peace and community.