The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America January-March 2018 - 8

Peace BreakFasTs

Practice of
Peace,

continued from page 7
Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel
Peace Prize, and the first Kenyan woman to earn a doctoral degree, used her nudity as a powerful tool in Kenya's pro-democracy
struggle. She was a consistent thorn in the side of an autocratic
administration and was described by it as "not a good woman."
But a spokesperson added, "But kenya needs more of them."
literally stripping ourselves naked, though, isn't likely
going to achieve the same effect here in the US. However,
we need to be willing to strip away those things that that we
think define us and give us status and social esteem, and to
lay ourselves bare in the pursuit of peace and justice. We may
need to strip away our need for the pronouncement of titles
and pedigrees, our need to be the smartest or most wounded
in the room, our ethnocentric habits, our privilege, our need
to be the dominant voice or the resident expert.

"We may be tempted to say,
'The hell with it; I can't take it
on. I can't do it. I give up.' Let
me say, Don't do it. DON'T DO
IT. Take your rest and then take
up the mantle again."
for some clergy, we may need to strip away a tendency to
hide behind collars or clerical uniforms of various forms. We
have to strip away these things until the time that we know
what garments we might later put back on.
Are we willing to strip away who we have been, or who
we thought we were in the beginning of the movement? I am
willing to strip away those things in my demeanor that defy or
contradict my commitment to peace. To not "arm up" with
unkind words and arrogant postures.
There are rewards in stripping down. you can't hide the
truth. Isaiah, in his nakedness and bare feet, was demonstrating
the eventual state of humiliation that the communities' oppressors would experience in their eventual departure. enslaved
to the accoutrements of power and dominance, they would
depart in the apparel of slaves. Stripped of dignity and agency,
they reveal they have nothing left.
When we strip away our put-on identities, we make room
for a deeper or truer identity that demonstrates God's vision

Baptist Peacemaker

JAN-MAR 2018

for the people of the earth. A vision where the wolf will live
with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the goat;
where the calf, the lion and the yearling lie together; where
the infant plays near the cobra's den; where the elephant and
the donkey build each other up; where the evangelical and the
transgender enjoy non-threatening friendship. A vision where
"Black lives Matter" is a given, and where the language of
heaven is every tongue uttered on the earth.

We have to be prepared to take some other
things on. What are we are willing to take on-not fueled
by ego, but out of obedience to God? What do we need to
take on for the sake of our own souls, our communities and
the call God has given us?
I am willing to take on deeper kindness. To remember
the strength that God gives us for the journey is rooted in the
earth-the humus. humus shares the same root as the word
humility. our rootedness in the earth is the kind of humility that
I believe God is calling forth: To behold the whole of creation
as holy ground, to be willing to walk on filthy and soiled streets,
as well as the still and unsullied places of creation, knowing
that God is in all of it, and with us in it.
During the great post-inauguration women's resistance
march held in so many communities around the country on
January 21, 2017, I looked around at those who were there. I
thought, "What do all these people have in common besides
being mad at the election outcome?"
So many differences, I thought, almost overwhelming
in scope. do they see me, too? Am I willing to take on all of
this, some of which I don't understand or agree with, yet is
the burden of my brother and sister? Am I willing to be in
solidarity with them? pope John paul II said, "Solidarity is not
a feeling of vague compassion...it is a firm and persevering
determination to commit oneself to the common good...of
all and each individual, because we are really responsible for
all." Being in solidarity is linked to our co-relationship with
one another on this earth.
deciding what new areas in which to accompany one
another is serious business, and not done lightly. yet justice
for some is a partial, false and imperfect peace. We have to be
in solidarity with each other. We may be tempted to say, "The
hell with it; I can't take it on. I can't do it. I give up." let me
say, don't do it. don'T do IT. Take your rest and then take
up the mantle again. We haven't been given this ministry of
peace to keep it to ourselves. It is our work for our whole lives.
As our brother lance Muteyo, a Zimbabwean peace activist who has gone many places we would not go, taught us:
Amani Milele! Milele! Amani! Amani! Milele! Milele! Amani!
(peace forever, forever peace). let's keep doing this thing.
-Cheryl Dudley, in addition to her years leading the BPFnA~Bautistas
por la Paz board, is a Baptist minister, an activist "on good days," a peacemaker and poet who grew up in Arizona and "is still growing up" in New
york City, ny. She is a member of Madison Avenue Baptist Church, a

BPFNA ~ Bautistas por la Paz Partner Congregation in Manhattan.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America January-March 2018