The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America October-December 2017 - 8

summer ConFerenCe

A Redemptive Moment in Mexico
by George Williamson

passing up and down the long tables; the mountains all around.
When 20 of us gathered 34 years ago and founded this
movement, we were invaded by the Spirit and a passel of outlandish dreams. But not in the wildest of these dreams could we
have imagined what was accomplished in mexico.
the passion of it received ironic potency from the glowering,
overhanging cloud of uS President donald trump and the nasty
"Build the Wall" culture he has unearthed. "The Wall" was our
metaphor for the current world crisis, its grim political reality-
and its ultimate spiritual unreality-our defining challenge.
our discovery this week was that, for this political time, this
Spirit, this challenging work, we, on both sides of the border,
need each other. We, especially from the uS, particularly need
these mexicans and their friends who were with us from across
latin America.
you heard it in the chatter, in Spanish, English and Spanglish, with and without translation: mexicans proposing a Baptist peace-and-justice organization like ours; gringos jabbering
about how we could facilitate that process, then come down and
persuade them to let our organization join theirs; buzz about
dropping "North" from our English name (how about "Baptist
Peace Fellowship of the Americas?"). A uS couple proposed to
increase their pledge to open a "southern office," meaning, not
"Dixie," but the southern hemisphere.
With all this uproar, you'd wonder if we had time to sing.
But sing we did! How we sang! Accompanied by a dozen gui-

Andy Smith Photography

fter six decades of being serially upended by grace, it
happened once more in mexico. I was converted again.
But, more to the point, our changing, charismatic history as
a peace-and-justice movement was as well. having already
roared through a series of momentous changes in its 34 years,
our beloved community was born again in mexico.
When news came that Peace camp would be in mexico-in
Spanish!-I confess to a flash of weariness and disappointment.
Sure, it's the right thing to do. But do I have to do it? Sermons
filtered through translators? Dormitory living? Summer cold
at 10,000 feet above sea level in heaterless buildings? And this
without my annual fix of Movement family ritual, built up over
three decades of doing it the same way; half of my friends not
there? But I always go to Peace camp. So I went-again-dragging an attitude.
Was I ever wrong!
The first couple of services did nothing for my attitude.
But then something began happening-to all 200 of us, half
from above the border, half from eight countries below, mostly
mexico. It began with wide-eyed mexican toddlers bobbling up
and down the aisle; gringos surmounting comfort-level entitlements; mealtime conversations in comical Spanglish; the youth
in gringo/latino soccer and volleyball games; mexican food

Baptist Peacemaker

Oct-Dec 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America October-December 2017