Phoenix Affirmations in Australia and Ireland
by eric
Do you ever wonder if the word about the Phoenix Affirmations and CrossWalk America is spreading? I don’t.
I don’t because I am in the fortunate position to receive emails from all over the United States from people who encountered our message and are responding enthusiastically to it (OK, once in awhile there’s the UNenthusiastic email, too, but not many compared to the former). Less frequently I or the CWA site receive emails from abroad. A few weeks ago I received two such emails in one week - one from Australia and another from Ireland.
The Australian email was actually “penned” by a Phoenix-area pastor who was attending the progressive “Common Dreams” conference in Sydney. He wrote because he couldn’t contain his joy over seeing what an impact the Phoenix Affirmations has had in Australia. He had met people excitedly talking about them and found a number of copies of The Phoenix Affirmations: A New Vision for the Future of Christianity at the book tables.
Then I heard from an Irish documentary television crew. They are producing a series on life at the grassroots in the US which will be hosted by the “Peter Jennings” of Irish news television. The major point of the series is that, when you scratch below the surface of America, you find that Americans aren’t nearly as cold-hearted, blood-thirsty, and religiously fundamentalist as the Irish (not to mention much of the rest of the world) seem to think we all are. They’d heard of the Phoenix Affirmations and were quite enthusiastic about featuring this expression of faith as demonstrating their point with respect to religion!
Soooo …. If you happen to be in Ireland in January, watch for it! They were here last Friday filming. They shot some of us walking along Shea Blvd in Scottsdale as a way of visually representing our commitment to walking our talk of the Affirmations.
CWA Exec. Director, Rebecca Glenn, and Finance Secretary, Alice Stambaugh with film crew behind them getting set up for a shoot.
The film crew interviewing CWA Board Chair, Brad Wishon, and Ray Gentry (our RV driver on the Walk) about the Phoenix Affirmations and environmental stewardship.
They also shot members of Scottsdale Congregational UCC and some CWAers meeting for “Theology on Tap,” discussing the Phoenix Affirmations in a Kazimier’s World Wine Bar (My church has met there for years to talk theology. We started at the Papago’s Brewing Company and grew too large for it.). We had a tremendous time with the film crew, who were genuinely enthusiastic about our mission and message of inclusion, compassion and intellectual honesty.
Documentary co-producer, Ruan Magan, speaks with Donna Gentry at Theology on Tap.
It was great to be joined by CWA core walker and blogger, Merrill Davidson!
In an ironic twist of events, after the Theology on Tap taping, I took my doberman, Keta, to a local park for a walk. As we pulled into the parking lot, we encountered a motorcyclist excitedly pacing back and forth on the phone to the police. “What street is this?” he called out to me. “McDonald Drive” I responded.
As it turned out, he was calling the police because he had been driving his Harley Davidson along the freeway near the park minding his own business when a green minivan pulled alongside him and starting harassing him. The minivan came up on his left and tried to force him into the SUV on his right. When the motorcyclist got nervous and sped up to 80 mph to get away from the minivan, the driver sped up, too, coming up behind him rapidly and applying his brakes just inches before colliding with the motorcycle’s back tire!
Understandably, the motorcyclist was quite shaken by the experience. “I’ve been riding for ten years and I’ve never experienced anything like this before!” he said, shaking his head in disgust.
So there we have it: One powerful message that American’s aren’t so bad after all, and one powerful message that reminds us that we’ve still got a long way to go before we truly learn to love our neighbors as ourselves as a society.
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