CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL An Episcopal Community in the Heart of Houston, Texas
SEPTEMBER 2021 CHRISTCHURCHCATHEDRAL.ORG
AFTER-HOURS EMERGENCY CARE LINE | 713-826-5332
The lines we draw
“Combatting Anti-Semitism” a focus for fall at the Cathedral This fall, the Cathedral is offering a slate of programs focused on “Combatting AntiSemitism,” meant to highlight and inform the community of this ongoing and growing issue. A May 2021 BBC news report noted that 2020 saw the third-highest number of reports of assault, harassment and vandalism toward American Jews since the Anti-Defamation League first began keeping count in 1979. And during the May fighting between the Israelis and the Palestinians which killed more than 200 people, there was also a huge uptick in anti-Jewish violence in the US, with a 75 percent increase in anti-Semitism reports. Dean Barkley Thompson said that with anti-Semitism is again on the rise, the famous quote of philosopher George Santayana comes to mind – “Those who cannot remember the
past are doomed to repeat it.” He hopes the upcoming programming which includes a tour of the Holocaust Museum Houston and an interview with a Holocaust survivor as well as a presentation from the Houston Anti-Defamation League and a conversation with Seminary of the Southwest Professor Dr. Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski will shed some light on the problem and offer ways to help. “We owe it to our Jewish sisters and brothers, as we owe it to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not to become complacent in the face of this rise,” said Dean Thompson. Danielle Santori who chairs the Justice and Peace Council — and works on the diversity and inclusion campaign for her
COMBATTING ANTI-SEMITISM, page 6
Make a difference: support Kids Hope Kids Hope volunteers man a table in the cloister for several weeks at the first of the school year to collect new and gently used uniforms, books for preschool and elementary-school-aged children and school supplies as specified by their teachers. Throughout the year, Kids Hope at Christ Church Cathedral partners with public schools with high need populations in Cathedral neighborhoods. Members and friends of the Cathedral act as mentors and reading buddies for students identified to the program by their teachers, counselors, or parents.
KIDS HOPE, page 8
I love satellite photos of the earth. I love to see them in daylight and dark, and to attempt to identify points on the earth that I recognize and have visited. It’s not easy, because from orbit the land masses flow together. Mountains and river are discernible, but what is not present in satellite photos—unlike on the maps we draw—are lines. The world map is covered and crisscrossed with lines, arbitrarily dividing that which, from a bird’s-eye point of view, THE VERY REV. BARKLEY is one whole. Sometimes THOMPSON the line-drawing on the map is the result of conquest, of one people encroaching upon and overwhelming the living space of another. Other times, as in the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, line-drawing is the result of a few men behind closed doors creating new nation states and making often arbitrary but always seismically life-altering decisions for millions of people. The blith arrogance of those decisions made in 1919 at Versailles is mind-blowing, and the world is still reeling with the consequences today, both in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe. The map is not the only place in which we draw lines. We also draw lines in the proverbial sand, akin to the legendary line William Travis drew at the Alamo. Lines in the sand are artificial, fabricated “Rubicons,” that declare “No retreat, no surrender.” Perhaps there are rare, actual battles in which such lines are unavoidable, but most often in life such lines create unnecessary division that is sometimes impossible to repair. Irish author Kerri ní Dochartaigh writes, “We are a race that has long sought to break things up, to divide, to separate, to draw lines between things that otherwise have remained as one.” Dochartaigh
LINES, page 2