Author Archives: Rev Barb Weza

I have just returned from sabbatical and nearly four months away from work. I am deeply grateful for the Lilly Grant that allowed us to do this and for all the hard work that made this possible.

This Sunday, I will return and look forward to seeing many of you again.

My time away was much needed– it was an opportunity to get a wider perspective and spend some time writing, thinking, and travelling. I feel like there is pressure coming back to name some great revelation or great learning, but what I really learned is how to pace myself and live in the moment. Here are some things that marked my time away:

The effects of Covid: Covid has loomed large over my life during this time. Not just in all the changes to global travel and all the new restrictions for health and safety, but also personally. Both my parents and my aunt contracted covid during the last outbreak and they are dealing with significant health issues in the aftermath. My dad was hospitalized for nearly a week. Get vaccinated if you can, folks! While traveling, it was clear that covid had changed how people interacted all over the world and so many people were affected directly by illness and loss.

Perspective: The last decade and a half have shown the serious fault lines in capitalism for average, working class people. And nothing will highlight how difficult life has become in the United States quite like leaving it.

In Iceland, the 2008 crash damaged their economy deeply, but the silver lining was the serious social safety net they had in place. There was very little visible homelessness, children were well cared for, and it was probably the safest place I have ever visited. It is a small country, but even so, they seem to be deeply committed to some basic level of care for their people.

In Ireland, hit hard by economic downturn, the poverty levels in Dublin were shocking– homelessness, children on the street, addiction, all of it on the rise. Even so, Ireland still has a better social safety net than the U.S. and health care is much more accessible. Ireland is deeply marked by a history of colonization, by the Great Famine and emigration, but it also has a strong history of an organized working class. While we were there, there were huge protests for better housing and a great deal of activism to uncover the abuses of mother and baby homes. Ireland seems ready for some big changes.

Searching for spiritual roots: We were able to visit some incredible places important to Christian and pre-Christian faith. It was clear, everywhere, the harm the church had done in terms of colonization and oppression around the world. But we also found the places where churches met the needs of pilgrims and the people around them. Similarly, we also found traces of pre Christian faith in ancient burial mounds and temples, as even Europe traces back to traditions and ceremony that were once indigenous to that land.

Finding beauty: We were able to see some incredibly beautiful landscapes and art and music and eat some amazing food. Even with all the stress of sick parents and new travel restrictions, we were blessed with so much beauty and we were so grateful to be alive.

Dedication to place: It was amazing to delve into the history and traditions of another place, and places to which I have some ancestral connection, long ago. It reminded me of the beauty and ancient history of the place I live now. It made me think of the grave injustices perpetrated on this land and its indigenous people. And increased my commitment to support indigenous sovereignty and work to be in right relationship to this place and its original stewards.

I ended my sabbatical this week with a visit to Squaxin Island Museum, deepening my understanding of the true history of this place I live.

As I come back, I hope I come back with fresh perspective, a renewed sense of purpose, and more to give the world.

One of the things I am thinking a lot about on this sabbatical pilgrimage is the role the natural world can play in spiritual practice. In Western thought, the spirit and the body, the natural world and the spiritual world are separate. This is most often the case in Christianity as well. 

However, for most of human history, land and spirit, body and soul were one. People saw the land as a living thing and themselves as part of it. In many cultures, humans were stewards of the land, not its conquerors, like Western thinkers believe. 

Here, in Iceland, the deep human connection to land is very evident. 

Iceland is a stark landscape, the land of ice and fire, where the tectonic plates of the American and Eurasian continents meet, where volcanoes erupt often, and huge glaciers dominate the landscape. People have been living here on this island continuously for not quite 1,200 years. 

They have not always been good stewards, as is often the case, and the fact that the island was deforested almost completely centuries ago is one example of that. However, Icelanders care deeply about the land they live on and clearly have a long history of connection to it. Also, reforestation efforts are underway and there are small birch forests (Iceland’s only native tree) everywhere.

The first thing that struck me is how every rock formation and lava field has a story. There is a long folklore of the huldafólk and elves living in the lava fields and hillsides. They are supposed to be the wise ones, the hidden people who help humans, who have their own farms and homes and churches. Not too long ago, a local woman lobbied to save lava fields from a road being built across it. A sweet documentary called The Seer and the Unseen just came out about it. 

When we visited the Snæfellsness Peninsula, a small hill to the north on the Reykjanes Peninsula, overlooking the water, is called Helgafell or holy mountain. The first family to settle there believed that they would all go into the hill when they died and some people say its the doorway to Valhalla. According the the sign, you are supposed to walk up the mountain without looking back or speaking, and make three wishes on the top. It is maintained by the local farmer, whose dogs love to come and play with tourists, and the hill is covered in crowberries. 

On the west side of the peninsula, on a lovely black pebble beach, a rock formation is said to be a troll woman carrying fish on her back. She stayed out too long and the sun turned her to stone. If you look close, you can see it!

And where the two continental plates meet most visibly is †ingvellir. This was the place of the first Althing, where all the local chieftains and go∂an would gather to read the law and settle disputes every year. A river runs through it and it is sheltered by rock cliffs and tumbling waterfalls. 

It is not hard to imagine that every tree, rock, and plant is alive and inhabited by spirit in a place like Iceland. And, even after centuries of Christian teaching that emphasized the distinction between nature and spirit, the culture of believing that everything is alive persists in this place.

One way this is expressed is the explosive growth of the Ásatrú fellowship here in Iceland, a heathen group that practices the faith of the old Eddas, the oldest written manuscripts-written in Icelandic- detailing the belief system of the early Norse inhabitants. Ásatrú as practiced here in Iceland is a faith deeply aware of the natural world and our connection to it, deeply invested in preserving the environment, deeply supportive of queer people, and a blend of the best of Icelandic scholarship and the oldest faith of its people. 

I feel honored to be able to witness all of this beauty and reminded of how deeply we are connected to the land. It reminds me too, in a time of deep division and hatred and destruction in our world, of the value of seeing everything as alive. In this way of looking at the world, every plant, every rock, every person is a living soul, deserving of respect and honor. 

Jim Campbell

I first met Jim on July 4, 2009. I will remember that day forever, as I was leaving a difficult past behind, coming back to my hometown, and it was the first time I stepped into St Mark’s Episcopal Church, the church that would become my sponsoring parish for ordination to the priesthood.

It was Jim who welcomed me that day and made me feel a part of the service. Over the following year, he was my guide, as I learned more about the Episcopal church, was confirmed, and then started on the path toward discernment for ordination. He was kind, he was always interested in what I was doing, and he always went out of his way to support the path I found myself on.

When I left for seminary, St Marks (and Jim) stayed in touch, paid for my health insurance, and cheered me on.

On my return, St Mark’s was still there with open arms and so was Jim. When I started Chaplains on the Harbor, he generously agreed to keep the books. I’m sure he (or I) had no idea what we were getting ourselves into! For the next eight years, Jim kept our books, from the days when I wasn’t even paid to our graduation as an incorporated organization with 16 people on staff, a farm, a community center, extensive outreach, and six feeding programs. It was a heady eight years and, in one of my last conversations with Jim, we reminisced on how far we had come.

Jim wasn’t just there for COH, though. He has also been there for me over the years– always the cheerleader, at my wedding when my own parents didn’t come, a father figure I appreciated perhaps more than I was ever able to tell him.

Jim was one of the most direct communicators I have ever known, be it in face to face conversation, facebook, or email. It occasionally got him into trouble, but I adored him for it. He provided a compass for me in the Episcopal Church, where communication styles are so much more unemotional than the ones I grew up with.

When I got the call that Jim had died suddenly while talking to his daughter on the phone, when I prayed over his body and talked with Bonnie, it still did not feel quite real.

Jim leaves a huge legacy: a family he loved and cherished, the extensive work he has done in the Diocese of Olympia on committees and boards and with the Circles of Color allies group. He was ever seeking ways to practice his faith that were more in tune with the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth and he constantly and consistently chose to be on the side of poor and oppressed people whenever he found them.

I will miss him. I am so grateful for him. I will really miss him.

Rest in peace, Jim, and rise in power.

Next week, I start a seventeen week sabbatical, where I get to take some time to study and rest, with the support of the Lilly Foundation. This is an opportunity for deeper learning for me and I am so grateful.

Eight years ago, I started Chaplains on the Harbor. So much has happened since I first started handing out sandwiches and building relationships with people.

I have witnessed and stood with people through so much hardship and pain. I have seen the scars and suffering of so many people struggling to survive late capitalism. I will never forget the bruised and battered bodies, the hunger, the grief. We have lost so many people to violence, to addiction, to lack of medical care, to the prison system. I have seen so many children on the street and sat with so many moms who have lost their children to the state when they cannot care for them. The suffering of this place is real.

I have also seen so much resilience and love. I have been honored to walk with people as they recover and find new ways of living. I have watched people rebuild their lives out of nothing. We have built leadership together, as we learn together how to fight for the liberation of us all. We have stood together at the river, at the state house, at the National Capitol, demanding justice. We have also learned to take care of each other and stand with each other.

People in this community either love me or they hate me. I’ve had my share of threats and I get a lot of mud slinging and hate from community members who refuse to actually meet me or talk to me. Sometimes the level of hate, not just toward me, but toward homeless people or anyone who stands with them, is exhausting and soul crushing. But a friend always reminds me that love always conquers hate. If I pray anything for this community, it is that our community learns to prioritize human life over possessions, learns to love and care for each other, because only then can we truly heal and be free. I think that most people simply want a good life for themselves and those they love; something we will never have until we love and care for every single one of us.

As I step away for a time, I hold all of you in love and prayer. I look forward to learning more about nature and earth based spiritualities and how they can help us heal from trauma. I look forward to having some time to process the last eight years. I plan to update this blog from time to time and will have someone post to Facebook so you can keep up with me if you like.

I will be back November 28. Between now and then, I will be completely away from phone, email, Facebook, Messenger, and Jpay.

Until then, may God hold you in the palm of her hand.

St Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle is projecting the names of people who have been murdered by police. George Floyd’s name will be centered, along with 35 other names of people who have died in Western Washington at the hands of police. 

Today, June 5, the projection will read, for part of the day: “Patrick West should still be alive today.”

I wanted to post this today, because Patrick West was from my community. 

There is a lawsuit in federal district court right now, filed by his wife and daughter. 

Because the prosecutor ruled that his death was justifiable, even though he was shot in his own home, in the back, as a response to a mental health crisis.

Because case workers, usually with very little training in rural areas like this, called for backup during a mental health crisis, and the county’s police forces responded with a SWAT team and armored vehicle and a sniper.  

Because, a father and husband and friend is dead. 

His wife told me that she watched the protests that swept Minneapolis after George Floyd’s murder with tears, in part because, in this community, she was too often met with ridicule and hatred by other community members. 

When we held a vigil to remember both George Floyd and members of our community like Patrick West, men with guns screamed at us that Patrick deserved to die. 

What kind of self hatred must a community have to believe that one of their own deserved to die in the middle of a mental health crisis? 

A few weeks ago, during Derek Chauvin’s trial, I was talking to a white guy who is homeless and he wondered out loud; “Why don’t we ever show up in the street when white people are killed?”

Fox News routinely points out that more white people are killed by police than Black people. They do this, however, not to express sympathy or solidarity, but to say; “See, white people die more by police and we don’t care.” This ignores the fact that, while there are more white people killed in sheer numbers, black people are far more likely to be killed. For example, while police violence is the 6th leading cause of death for young men 25-29, Black men are 2.5 times more likely to die than white men.

In this community, where poor white people and poor Native people and poor Asian and Black people all struggle together, it is hard to believe that anyone really does care. 

It is also hard to push back or to show up in the streets or to take action for accountability.

Why?

There are many reasons, I think. It is safe to say that poor people in rural areas are more likely to believe their poverty and their mistakes and their illness are entirely their own fault. Our communities are also fragmented. Respectability politics play a large role: if you make enough to get by, you do not want to identify as poor or as in need of any kind of help. 

It is also dangerous. Small communities, as fractured as they are, as divided as they are between classes, have less opportunity to publicly protest state violence, whether on the street or on a blog post. I will likely get threats on my life for even posting this. Small, struggling communities are not much different from dysfunctional and abusive families: you don’t talk about the unpleasant things. You keep your mouth shut.

There are whole systems that keep us in our place, as we die of untreated illness, medical neglect, drug overdoses, suicide, police violence, gun violence. To speak out is dangerous. To speak out costs something. 

And, if we do, we are not guaranteed an audience. Lawmakers, even in liberal Washington state, are not all that concerned about what happens here on the edge of the earth. 

But, today, Patrick West’s name is on the Cathedral in Seattle. And a federal lawsuit is filed by his brave family members, who want to see some accountability for his death. 

Along with the names of Black men and woman shot by police like Charleena Lyles, who was also shot in her own home in Seattle, and Native men and women, like carver John T Williams, and so many others. 

Patrick West should still be alive today. 

All my love and respect to his family. 

I remember driving with a young, white homeless man who often worked on boats during the Westport fishing season and was complaining about tribal members being able to fish out of season. I explained how important it was for Native people to have access to their traditions and traditional food sources. Then, he commented on how unfair he thought it was that tribal members sometimes receive cash payments from their tribe. While this is not true for most tribal governments in the region, I commented; “I wonder what it would be like to be part of a culture that valued sharing wealth instead of accumulating it all. I wonder what it would be like for you to get what you needed, just because you were alive and deserved to be cared for.” I remember he stopped short and looked at me for a moment. “Yeah. That would be cool.” 

Manifest destiny has led to the continued genocide of Native peoples in this country. And it has not turned out so well for poor whites either. If the tents lining riverbanks and the high percentages of homeless people in our towns is any indication, poor whites and poor Natives have ended up abandoned in a Western society that does not care if they live or die. Poor whites were often promised land, but it was Weyerhaeuser and companies like it who got most of it. And, now that our labor is not needed, we have a hard time getting even employment. 

The dominant cultural response to the crises of homelessness and poverty is generally to blame poor people for being poor. As more and more people end up on the streets, we open more and more jails and prisons. Public forums are quick to say that “druggies don’t deserve help,” “they should just leave town,” and “why don’t they all just die?” Local governments often oppose any social supports, whether it is harm reduction like needle exchanges or housing projects. Social services can be spread so thin that it takes forever to get any kind of help– whether treatment, housing, or anything in between. 

As I have navigated these social services and systems with people I love and care for in Grays Harbor, I have noticed the ways that First Nations in this region have stepped up for all people. Even though local tribes are criminally underfunded and the U.S. government has not made good on treaty rights, and even though health care and treatment and resources are woefully inadequate for tribal members and non tribal members in this region, sometimes the only care available is funded by Native nations. The only treatment center in the county that accepts medicare funding is run by the Squaxin Island Tribe. Northwest Indian Treatment Center is also the only treatment program I know of that incorporates native wisdom and trauma based healing. Shoalwater Bay’s chemical dependency program, before the pandemic, was one of the few ways I could get anyone, white or Native, signed up for treatment beds for many years. The Quinault Indian Nation is proposing to put in a treatment center with multiple resources in Aberdeen, a program that would revolutionize access to healing in this community, and they are proposing to fund it themselves. This is not to dismiss any of the other agencies in town that are working to make a difference, but I do have a great deal of gratitude for the resources that Indian Country so often shares so generously with the community. 

I am also grateful for the ways that the Quinault Indian Nation and many other tribes have advocated for the land itself– taking on a lengthy lawsuit to restore salmon habitat on our waterways, opposing dams, opposing oil trains that posed a threat both to our communities and the land itself. They have led the way in discussing sea level rise and sustainable ways to live on this land that belongs to them. Northwest Indian Treatment Center teaches its graduates how to grow and use native and healing plants, information that some graduates now use on our farm. Small businesses like Jean Ramos’ Tribal SovereigNDN Tea bring healing plants to the community and teach us how to use them. 

No one can live in a community like this one– plagued by poverty, job loss, landlessness, addiction– and not see that we are in deep need of healing. And at the root of our suffering lies a system that values profit over people’s lives, over the land itself, a system that set in motion the destruction of indigenous lives and culture. Yet, hundreds of years later, they are still here and still fighting for life.

I want to offer my thanks to the indigenous people and tribal governments of this region. Under incredibly hard circumstances and with all the odds against them, they have managed to forge paths toward healing. I know that their efforts have been incredibly instrumental toward my own healing, as a non indigenous person. 

I cannot quite imagine what is next here on this land. I follow and root for land back movements. I am in awe of the water protectors of Standing Rock and their fight for the water that is indeed life. I am incredibly grateful for the leadership of women like President Fawn Sharp. I do what I can to support my many homeless friends and loved ones, white and brown and black and Native. I hope we can find some way toward healing for us all. 

I do know that we will not find it without the leadership and daring of Indian Country. And I am profoundly grateful. 

I have two Facebook worlds that show up on my feed every day. My first is the hundreds of people who are poor and struggling and disenfranchised, here in Grays Harbor and around the country. The second is people I know through church and university connections around the country. 

I love all of them, but I am often struck by the different worlds, the two Americas, they sometimes represent. I myself have a foot in both worlds and I see, over and over, the truth of The Rev Liz Theoharis’ words when she says that there are Two Americas. Never was that more apparent to me than this last week.  

As a new president was inaugurated last week, and the final transfer of power did prove peaceful, I saw two realities.

My first Facebook went into mourning for three people who died. They posted urgent requests for food or shelter or rides. A few funny political memes, but the transfer of power honestly went barely noticed. They were too busy mourning and too busy surviving. 

My second Facebook was overjoyed, posting everything from beautiful pictures of the amazing women at the inauguration (and amazing they were) to Bernie Sanders and his very cool mittens. What stopped me in my tracks was when one of my Facebook friends noted that he is so grateful that, for the first time in four years, he doesn’t have to wake up in the morning wondering what new horror awaits him in the news. 

And I realized that, for one America, what happens in the political arena matters very much, in part because their interests are represented. 

For the Other America, I realized that I am still going to continue to wake up every single morning wondering who died in the night, wonder every time I open my phone if there is another preventable crisis or tragedy, wonder if another young life will be cut short. In this other America, death stalks us at every turn, in form of despair, suicide, lack of access to health care, overdoses, infection, chronic disease, violence, cold, hunger, abandonment.

Transfers of power mean a lot less on the bottom. Whatever party is in place, the everyday struggle for survival is much unchanged in our current political climate. 

Before I go on, let me say: it is a huge relief to have a president that does not openly identify with white supremist organizations. It is an incredible thing to have a black and Asian woman as vice president, making history. We should celebrate that.

But white supremacy is not defeated solely by symbolic victories. Written into the fabric of our social structures, white supremacy ensures that black and brown communities stay majority poor. White supremacy ensures that failed white people, poor white people, continue to stay poor. White supremacy, so closely paired with capitalism, ensures that the white men who own the land, the businesses, even the government itself, continue to stay in power at the expense of millions of workers, millions of homeless people, millions of children. Particularly, in this late stage of capitalism, we are seeing the fault lines that will plunge the world, and the earth itself, into ruin. And poor people stand directly above that fault line. 

In every single political campaign I have ever heard in my lifetime, not a single one has issued a comprehensive strategy to deal with poverty. Even now, as 43.5% of Americans are poor and low income, and this was before Covid, not a single candidate talked about poverty with any seriousness or depth. 

There are always a few policy measures that reach us, here in the Other America, in ways that are often unpredictable and confusing. For example, Biden just increased food stamps, by a rather slight margin in the face of the need, and this will have a slight but direct impact, especially on poor families who are going hungry in record numbers. When Obamacare was passed (perhaps the most useful legislation for poor people in my lifetime), people could suddenly go to the hospital, although care was still difficult to get. When Trump was elected, everyone rushed to get their teeth fixed before medicaid ended (thankfully, in Washington state, it didn’t). When the Trump administration finally sent out a $1,200 stimulus, people could get hotels for a little bit or they could pay rent for a month, but it did little to stem everyday poverty. Recent stimulus packages forbid evictions, but landlords find ways around that, and they also provide relief funding for emergency housing, which will make a difference. When Obama increased immigration enforcement, our cannery workers found themselves running from increasing numbers of ICE raids. When Clinton expanded youth incarceration, our county soon reached staggering incarceration rates for our children. 

But, aside from those policy jolts, over the past several decades, the decisions of the president or congress reach us randomly, as if only by accident. Public services are already so defunded, and poverty is at such record heights, that transfers of power have very little practical, material repercussions for poor Americans. There have been no comprehensive, systemic efforts to address poverty in my lifetime, since the War on Poverty in the 60s, even as poverty itself has steadily increased until nearly half of Americans find themselves unable to reliably meet their basic needs. Nor have any politicians in either party unveiled or even signed on to any systemic efforts to end poverty in that period. Even Bernie Sanders stopped short of a comprehensive plan to end poverty in his platform.   

I am not saying these things simply to be a naysayer. Nor am I saying them because I wish for some kind of ideological purity or perfection from our political leaders. 

I am saying them because the actual, material conditions that people endure year to year, endlessly, in our social structure, will not change with scraps alone, or even with good faith alone. Nor will they change without actual, comprehensive efforts to end them. 

Poor people, even as they are a near majority of people who live in this country, are always peripheral in any political discussion. Politicians invoke them occasionally to sound compassionate- or to admonish them- but never address poverty in a systematic way. We get crumbs, randomly, as it meets a political agenda in which we have no part, no priority.

And so, every single morning, I wake up and check my news, the news that never makes a single paper or headline, and wonder who died. Too often, someone did. This last week, while we watched an inauguration, a Native woman in her 30s. A Samoan man around my age. And a white man in his 20s. 

For those of you who do not live with this horror, I am not asking you to cease celebration this week. 

But I am asking you not to forget the Other America. I am asking you to join me in demanding a systemic, comprehensive response to the deadly crisis of poverty. 

It is not enough to give leaders a chance. The crumbs falling down from on high, after over 60 years of austerity and dismantling every social program of the last century, are not enough. Not nearly enough. 

We are dying. And we need you all to notice.