"Babies:" A bit of Inspiration for Kiddo Kiemde!?

Week 39. Day Four of contractions, intensifying from cramps on Monday to squeezing on Tuesday to bowl-me-over "Here we go!" pangs on Wednesday, to today's on-again-off-again rollercoaster "Let's do this!" lower abdomen ouchies! I distract myself sitting on my blue ball, working on blog posts for the Visitation Sisters, and imagining a delicious Davanni's pizza is about to arrive any moment and assuage my cravings. (If a pizza can magically be delivered, might a baby come on out and enjoy the party? Please!)

Something else to distract and entertain for the time being: A clip from this documentary about BABIES! Watch. Laugh. Giggle. Sigh. Weep. Imagine my child will soon join this beautiful ensemble of babies!




LOVE!
Melissa Borgmann-Kiemde

Blessingway Poem by Becca Barniskis

On Sunday, May 16th, sixteen women and one small boy gathered in my St. Paul living room to extend blessings over me and this child that I am about to birth. Lead by doula Alisa Blackwood, these women shared prayers, good thoughts, and poems aloud. The following is one poetic piece that arrived via email that afternoon. I share it now as a source of inspiration for not only me, but all expectant moms. I am grateful to the author, Becca Barniskis. Love!

Dear Melissa:

It is spring and your baby is coming.

As holy as God.

But more accessible than he.

Smoother, cuter, able to fit into your arms.

I wish for you a mind of prayer

when your baby decides he is ready.

I wish for you deep strength

and patience for yourself and your body.

I wish for you courage

to not doubt what your body is capable of doing.

And when Baby arrives

may you be awake and enlarged

by the experience.

May your love give you the energy

to figure out who Baby is

and what he needs.

May the journey be joy-filled.

You are a mother.

You are made to mother.

You will mother this child in the best way.

Love,

Becca

****

Becca Barniskis lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she works as a poet, teaching artist and free-lance writer and consultant in arts education. She edits the Resource Roundup section of the Teaching Artist Journal and is a founding member of Artist to Artist.

She is the mother of Earl and Lulu. And someone I claim as dear friend.

Making Way for Baby K!

As we head into week 39 of this journey, Francois and I are enthusiastic to share more images from this period of preparing for Kiddo Kiemde. The following provide a window into our world making way for our son or daughter, revealing some of our cleaning, organizing, nesting instincts, as well as the amazing support of friends and family. (Oh! If we only had pictures of all of you who have been helping us along this path!) Do you know how excited we are to meet this child? Do you know how thrilled we are for you to share our joy? We recognize none of this would be possible without faith, family, our larger community and circles of support.

BLESSINGS! GRATITUDE!
Melissa, Francois, Baby Kiemde

Perhaps many new parent's friend? Target Store, USA!

Home with a baby crib to assemble!

My guy and directions!

Be Still My Heart! I love watching Francois in action!

The Living Room Corner BEFORE:
(On the heels of our documented "Spring Cleaning" work, we have some more re-arranging to do in order to make way for the baby and crib.)

From the office to the Living Room: The bookshelves find a new home!

Baby K's Crib! Yes, where those bookshelves once stood, is now our child's sleeping spot!

In case you are desiring a glimpse of me.
(Here at 35 weeks, just days before Kiddo K sinks into my sciatic nerve, and keeps me from walking properly upright. LOVE!)

What would Baby Prep be without a Baby Shower? Friends Jody and Ann arrange for many church friends to convene at St. Jane House. Here is some of the decor!

Friends from St. Philips, Kathryn, Mom Toni, Baby Geert and Leslie!

How to graciously receive so many gifts? This is my challenge!

Ann Shallbetter returns from St. Jane House to
Golf View Home to help organize the many gifts...

So much stuff for this lucky boy or girl!

A first official "toy box!"

Organizing clothes by months, sizes. Here, a container of new and gently used baby items from Friends and family, many courtesy of Gina Woods Mann.
Merci! Merci! Merci!

Meet our doulas: Colette DeHarpporte and Alisa Blackwood!
Oh, the support!

My "Rejoice" stone, received at the closing Discernment Workshop Ritual with the Vis Sisters: How could I not connect this with our child's upcoming arrival!?

Turning back to the Office/ Bedroom/Baby Room transformation:
Clearing wall space for Baby shelves.
(Do you see the original screen prints that must come off the wall? *sniff*sigh*smile*)

More help from Ms. Ann in making this transformation happen!

Channeling her Martha Stewart!

Watch out for a woman with power tools!

Can I get a "Woot Woot!"?
(Francois will be so proud of us!)

Shelves and desk spaces re-assigned. Printer to shelf, changing table to desk top.
Does it work? We shall see!

Part of the Baby K Libary: Books representing many cultures and traditions. It's never too early to start considering our child's literacy!

Precious toys!

Entering the multi-faceted space...

Office, Changing table, Baby Monitor...

There's that sweet crib again!

Can you see him or her resting their beautiful head?

Little details...

Mint chocolate bunny -- to represent the sweet and gentle spirit of this new life...

From the crib to Gabby's bed, over the desk, and just beyond those windows:
The Missisippi River.
Blessings!

Claiming Connection: Finding Family, Hope and Faith with a Man who Committed Murder

The following was originally written as a blog for the Visitation Monastery of North Minneapolis. I post it here to share with friends, family, outside the Visitation Community and network. I welcome your thoughts or responses.

On Saturday, April 17, I sat in the living room of St. Jane House in North Minneapolis and listened to Oshea Israel tell his story of what shaped him as a young man who committed murder at the age of 17. Seated next to him were his brother and mother, and present across the room was a grandmother. None of these people were biologically, blood-related, but all claimed him in the fullest sense of familial relationship. Included in this configuration of chosen kinfolk was Oshea's dearest male alliance -- someone who shared the experiences of incarceration and an aligned sort of upbringing; a Visitation Sister on the day before her 82 birthday - who had only recently adopted Oshea as grandson; and then the most-staggering of all maternal figures: the mother of the son whose life Oshea took 17 years prior. In the wake of Mary Johnson losing her own male child, she found the space and grace and God-given ability - during the time after his murder - to genuinely forgive this boy who killed her son, and then claim the murderer as her own heir.

It was an experience nothing short of mind-blowing.

What makes us family?

What calls us to radical spaces of love and forgiveness?

How many of us find ourselves in close proximity to murderers and former felons and forgivers?

How do we locate ourselves inside such circles?

Who among us claims such alliances? And why?

By the end of the afternoon, I found myself kissing Oshea's cheeks, squeezing him in solidarity and support, and marveling about what, if anything - save experience - separates us? He could be my brother. He could be my cousin. He could be me. Yes. Or rather, I can fathom being him.

I don't write such things lightly. But listening to Oshea's narrative, honoring intensely an interrogated past, I find myself completely humbled by his courageous examination of what has shaped him. In this space, on this particular Saturday in April, I have the privilege to hear him disclose such a tale as he pours out details about what gave way to birthing this murderous mentality. And I get him. I can hear him. I can fathom all that he reports about his loving biological mom; a nurturing, present step-father, and a desired alliance with his often absent, distant dad. I quake with compassion as he confesses the tiny but gigantic detail that gives rise, in his recollection, to a desire to kill when he was only five. Oshea shares the significant moment when he overheard his mom state that she was raped by her own father. He identifies that at that point in time he knew he wanted to kill, and would kill. He reflects on the choices he started to make from that tender age onward, giving rise and shape to an identity as "fighter" as "boy capable of murder." He is conscious and takes responsibility for this journey that lead to another young man's death. He also recognizes and knows that this is not his true identity. He has the wisdom and faith and courage and humility to claim that he has a soul larger than this horrible crime, but knows he is loved and has love, is love, and has a Divine purpose transcending this experience.

I marvel listening to Oshea. I am in this privileged space where I find an alliance and deep resonance with this man's tale. I have deep regard for him, am humbled by his tale, am proud of his capacity to receive forgiveness and to reject this label that reduces him to one of his darkest moments. Oshea Israel inspires me.

I think that if Oshea Israel can transcend label as "murderer," then what can I overcome? What are my darkest moments in this life to date? What do I shake from my skin and bones and refuse to let define me as a 41 year old woman? I return to Oshea and see his beaming smile, feel his large spirit and seemingly boundless hope for the future, and I claim a similar kind of faith. He is loved. I am loved. We are love. We are one in God's creation.

I don't think these experiences or opportunities to sit in the presence of "the other" - a former felon or convicted killer or simply someone seemingly so different - come often for many of us. I imagine or speculate that what I'm sharing might seem beyond the comfort zone of many. But I can't be sure. I just know for me, the opportunity to be invited to such a space with the Visitation Sisters, at St. Jane House, to convene with compassionate inquiry and active listening guiding the day, is a privilege -- as it takes me to these further spaces of reflection and awareness of God's grace, love, mercy. I begin to see more distinctly our inherently inter-connected natures. I find myself alive in love and wonder. I want to support Oshea in his journey beyond jail, in his walk as a man of integrity, examined life, of forgiveness, of incredible wisdom and witness to Love. I want to be similar in my own trek on this planet: also inspiring and living a radical kind of loving existence.

If I shirk my darkest moments of reductive identity markers, and claim the beloved nature of my soul, then what might I be capable of as a member of this human race?

Who might I be as a woman? As a wife? As a mother? As a teacher? What might I inspire or have the courage to do?

I extend these questions to each of you prayerfully on this day. I invite you to reflect on your darkest moments, to see your most beautiful selves, as the Divine sees us all. I urge you to open any closed spaces where you might reject or fear an invitation to experience life beyond your comfort zone. I encourage you to come and hear Oshea and Mary speak, and listen deeply to the way their story shapes or inspires your own.

In prayer, contemplation, love,

Melissa Borgmann-Kiemde

Visitation Companion

"Treating Cancer in the Catholic Church" - Fr. Pat Malone, S.J.

The following is a journal entry from Jesuit priest, Fr. Pat Malone, posted on his CaringBridge website. Fr. Pat offers us all very life-giving words as he applies lessons from his personal battle with cancer - to the deep unwellness manifesting in the Catholic Church. I took the liberty to give his entry a title; I offer it here on Passion Sunday as part of my own attempt at prayer, contemplation, compassion, and love during this entrance into Holy Week.

Peace,
Melissa Borgmann-Kiemde

Mistreated

In a 2007 article, Fr. Andrew Greeley wrote, “The Catholic Church is in deep crisis (always has been, always will be) and desperately needs reform (when has it not?)” ‘Crisis’ is too mild of a term for the current situation. Here are lessons from this health adventure that apply to the Church’s problem, and anyone else confronting deep disaster.

Recognize what is killing you.
It could seem rather routine to recognize cancer, but, as those involved with this health journey know too well, it can disguise itself, continuing to reek harm. (When medical people were not sure of the source of the problem, some suspected it was a painful, incurable nerve disorder. When the results returned with the correct diagnosis, a doctor beamed, “Good news. It’s leukemia.”) It is more difficult to recognize that which destroys our sense of decency, especially when such action requires we give up long-standing practices. One self-exam may this: what’s our reply when the innocent suffer because of us?

Something fundamental has died, or is on life-support, when the immediate response is anything but utter shame, remorse, and outrage that this occurs at all, in an organization that has as its creed to love God and neighbor. When our instinct is anything else, we need a very long retreat. There is a critical need to remember that this problem is universal. It may be right to question the motives of those who constantly probe. It is certainly true that these problems are not exclusive to a church, nor do they represent anything but a small percentage of priests and others who work with children.

But the soul of the church suffers fatally when the instant response is anything but rushing to the wounded (in this case, to the parents). Then we see the appropriate response is not to explain but to ask: how can we be forgiven? What must be done to move forward with hope? Such a first move would reveal the absurdity—and the deepening of the pain—of speaking how this problem occurs everywhere, and this overload of attention is unfair. Both may be true, though both point to how people hold a faith to a higher standard, and both may be needed for any formidable structure to see what is destroying it from within.

When our proclamations focus on the evils in the world while ignoring our own at home, part of our reason to be gets buried. We lose more than integrity; we risk forgetting why we have religion: to re-unite, to transcend the natural drives to satisfy ourselves first, to be on fire with a closeness that created it all, to find redemption is the worst of situations. In most religions there is an additional fundamental: that we must make this world more sane for the most vulnerable. When we put anything above the need to protect them, respect them, build them up, we may have a formidable structure, but it is not holy, nor life-giving. Good news: it can always return to this central belief.

Secrets keep us ill.
All patients have unique reasons to rejoice when they arrive at the day of discharge, though most would see the end of wearing flimsy gowns to be as liberating as able to breath again. Even Gitmo prisoners get pants. Those wicked gowns are thin and flimsy for a reason: no space for cover-up. They expose the signs of disease, danger, or distress. Without them (so patients are told) healing cannot occur.

What has most rattled the world, believers and non-believers, is not that an organization has criminals and disturbed individuals within its ranks, but that those who could put the individuals out of harm’s way did not always do so, sometimes until a public outcry demanded it. The way forward was to conceal. There is a place for discretion, especially when it helps the wounded find a new normal, but secrecy too often feeds on itself: it makes it easier to stay clandestine the next time, and the next time. When we do not speak of the corruption, we do not stop it.

Secrets keep us ill. They perpetuate shame; simmer our grudges, lock us into bleakness. Keeping things secret helps us to rationalize the worst of our behaviors. They make it possible to deny that any of us can do horrific things, especially to the weak. They block us from accepting that we can act contrary to the most cherished ideals of our better selves, or that we will sometimes do the expedient rather than the right thing. Worst of all, secrets convince us that we either do not need redemption, or its beyond our reach.

Ask a nurse how to heal from the hidden decay and dangers in our lives: Take responsibility for self-care. Let others see it, name it, help evaluate its problem. Stop making it worse by pretending there’s no need for a painstaking cleansing. Don’t let your disease make more people ill. Use what is good in your body to help fight it. In this case, use the church’s under-rated tool (handed down from the Jewish faith) of reconciliation. Use it to see hear how others have paid a price for one’s lack of self-care. Use it because it gets easier to openly speak the truth the next time, and the next time.

Welcome visitors.

Listen to those who know you are not well. Welcome their questions, even if you have no answers, even if you don’t know why they ask it. Let yourself be available, candid, trusting. Do this not because it is comfortable, but because it keeps us from getting unaccountable, gruff, and removed from the day to day realities of the people around us. Welcome and listen to them, knowing we learn most about ourselves when we have interruptions.

Our hope for healing may be in how much we allow others to show where we are weak. We do not always see what is obvious to others. We may know we obsess over some small points; they may see the big points we are blocking. We may have grown accustomed to our manageable mess. They may see the mounds of chaos that surround us. We may be convinced we have the answers to this terrible tragedy. They may show us we are avoiding the tough questions.

Receive the full strength of women.
It’s a scary thought to imagine a hospital without the dedication, leadership, and joy of women. Now we know this absence is a frightening scenario for any institution. Its hard to imagine that the skewed priorities of preserving an institution’s reputation over the well-being of a damaged child could occur had there been at least one grandmother in the conversations. Men are certainly able to avoid the trappings that come with holding moral authority. They can be kind care-givers. It is just that the current betrayal of trust requires us to no longer impede anyone who can restore guidance, credibility, and confidence to a hurting institution. Golda Meir wrote, “Whether women are better (leaders) than men I cannot say - but I can say they are certainly no worse.”

We need the wisdom from those who have moved civilization forward when others have gone to war. We need the perseverance from those who have stayed with the sick, the uneducated, the hungry. We need the passion from those who know the sting of being ignored. We need the love of those who stay focused an organization’s core mission. Dorothy Day wrote in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness: “I loved the church for Christ made visible. Not for itself, because it was so often a scandal for me."

This week, followers of this Christ enter into their High Holy days, and hear again—to confirm Andrew Greeley’s point—stories of betrayal, angst, and innocent suffering. May this eternal love become more visible, trustworthy, and humble in this vessel that desperately needs reform. May our own encounters with life’s fragility help us to make the church ever closer to what its founder intended; a place where the mistreated, the ill, the sinner all find healing.

Week's End Assignment: Passion Reading!

If you are anything like me, you are tense navigating this past week's news. You might be celebrating the passage of Health Care Reform, while holding the conflicting responses emerging in a polarized nation's warring verbiage. You recognize the complexity of financial costs associated with such Health Care legislation, and hold these dollar amounts alongside images of uninsured friends and family members, (maybe former students and their relatives) with whom you are in direct relationship. You work diligently to defer judgment about enraged people's responses bombarding your email inbox, Facebook page and television screen, and try to navigate calmly the barrage of words, posing your own critical questions:

(What does health care cost? What does it mean to lead as a democratic nation? How do we model liberty and opportunity for all? How does a government's allocation of tax dollars reflect the priorities of a nation? Where is creation and wellness in this financial picture? Where is education? What is life-giving? What results in death or further destruction? What research and experience do we all need to read, reflect on, or engage in?" )

Perhaps your heart aches with anger and outrage over the headlines announcing the current pope's connection with the sex scandals in the Catholic church. Perhaps you align yourself compassionately with a stance of forgiveness and mercy for all perpetrators, while seeing the past sins in not recognizing the need to acknowledge the many victims. Maybe you struggle as a catholic or religious person who wants to celebrate the tenants of his or her faith in a life-giving, liberating fashion. You want freedom and joy and radical love to be known -- and justice for all people, regardless of their beliefs or skin color or economic standing. You wonder about how you move forward in faith, in hope, in love for all that is at hand in these messy human circumstances. You try to trust that something powerful is at work in the collective conscious of a church -- or in a politicized nation and impassioned people.

You pray.

If you are anything like me, you want to not be so tense. You long to release anger, frustration, and see each headline, email, television broadcast with Love's eyes.

Here's an assignment that I gave my praying, searching, spiritual self this morning, given all at hand. Perhaps you will find this helpful?

Read Passion Sunday's scriptures: Luke 22: 14- 23:56.

If you can make space in your brain, meditate on the story of betrayal. Move closer to the suffering of Christ. Hold fast to the tensions present in the innocent being tortured. Marvel at all the human dimensions that this enfolding drama extends -- while recognizing the radically transformative outcomes - of Divine proportion -- that are possible in this Passion tale.

Then find yourself in this story. Locate your current leaders. Consider present lawmakers alive and in this narrative. See the uninsured and abused. See how you are all connected, all one. And let your heart, mind, and spirit be softened, as you let go of your need to know everything, be in control, or be right.

Let Love lead you.

The Conversion and Calling of Oscar Romero – Alive and Inviting us to North Minneapolis?

The following was originally posted at the Visitation Sisters of North Minneapolis blog site.

"I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people."
-Archbishop Oscar Romero

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the martyrdom of Salvadorian Archbishop Oscar Romero. As I hold this man's legacy and witness to the gospel in my prayers, I think about Romero's story. I meditate on his conversion experience. I think about how he went from being a bookish sort of fellow, intentionally removed from any sort of gospel activism, to one who became immersed in prayerful action for an oppressed and impoverished people, unpacking and applying the tenets of liberation theology. I am moved as I contemplate what transformed his heart, his spirit, his presence in the warring nation of El Salvador. I imagine the night, just three weeks into his appointment as archbishop, that he traveled from the capitol to a country side church in Paisnal, where one of his priests had been murdered - along with two other parishioners - for standing with the peasant farmers in their desire to create farming cooperatives. I see the people gathered around Romero, quietly beseeching his support, and I ache fathoming what anger mixed with compassion must have started a fire in his own heart.

As I contemplate Romero's presence among the terrorized people in this rural community, I wonder how any of his experience inspires or relates to my own - so far removed from Central America? How does his life and witness to Love inform my own call to live as a catholic in this global community? Where am I being invited to stand in solidarity? What spaces of poverty or injustice am I called to witness first hand? How am I being invited to recognize the struggle that calls for the immediacy of Christ's presence?

"God needs the people themselves to save the world . . . The world of the poor teaches us that liberation will arrive only when the poor are not simply on the receiving end of hand-outs from governments or from the churches, but when they themselves are the masters and protagonists of their own struggle for liberation." - Archbishop Oscar Romero

Romero's conversion hinges upon his knowledge and first hand experience with the poor. It's his relationship with the victims of violence, his proximity to the peasants and priestly people struggling to live in peace, that informs his transformed ministry and leadership in El Salvador.

Today in North Minneapolis, the Visitation sisters are going about their daily lives of active prayer and communal ministry. They rise for early morning prayer at 7am, attend mass at 8am with neighbors and friends; go about their days with a commitment to open the door to whoever rings the bell, inviting them to be their vocational calling and "Live Jesus!" They pray again at noon, 4:45pm and 8:15pm. In each internal experience of prayer, the sisters will tune into how they are experiencing Christ alive and calling to them through their neighborhood. They, not unlike Romero, are witnessing to the transformational power of relationship, of proximity to the poor and those living on the margins. They are following in the footsteps of their founders, Francis and Jane, and finding alignment in the gospel narrative of Mary and Elizabeth: visiting and tending to the love wanting to get born in each of us.

In our urban ministry, the Visitation Sisters of North Minneapolis choose to reach out in a special way:

1. to companion and affirm those who are impoverished and lonely — those living on the fringes of society.
2. to support those committed to a ministry of peace and justice by sharing our Salesian spirituality with them.
3. to educate and network with those who, in being materially secure, seek ways of growing in faith, hope and love by bridging with people in our multi-cultural community.
4. to provide spiritual formation for those affiliated with us in a variety of ways.
   - From "Ministry of Prayer and Presence"

Tonight, a group of people ranging in age from 20-45 will convene under the auspices of the Visitation sisters in a space devoted to discernment. These young men and women will be dwelling inside the questions of calling, of vocation; they'll be prayerfully focusing themselves, at least for two hours, on the invitation to live their gifts and honor their divine purposes. They will, not unlike Romero, be invited to "come and see" the love on fire within their own hearts for a ministry, career, calling -- in possible proximity to the poor.

I hold all this information as I pray through my writing this day, marveling at the juxtaposition of the beloved Romero, the presence of the Visitation sisters in North Minneapolis and the way a whole host of men and women are entering into this space of intentional reflection.

Please join me in prayer for all that is at work on this day, and in the many to come, as the spirit of Romero is felt alive and resurrected in the people of Salavador, as well as those many miles beyond: in the hearts and minds and actions of the spiritual beings in North Minneapolis.

Peace and gratitude,
Melissa Borgmann Kiemde
Visitation Companion

Desmond Tutu on Human Rights

I came across the following writing by Desmond Tutu this week when a friend in Cape Town, South Africa, posted a link to this Washington Post article on her Facebook page. For the past couple of days, I've returned to Archbishop Tutu's words, and been inspired by the simplicity of his message; the largeness of love conveyed in his writing.

I've boldfaced passages that struck me in particular. Let me know what strikes a chord in you.

In love, peace, solidarity,

Melissa Borgmann-Kiemde

In Africa, a step backward on human rights

By Desmond Tutu

Friday, March 12, 2010

Hate has no place in the house of God. No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity -- or because of their sexual orientation. Nor should anyone be excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong. Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity.

It is time to stand up against another wrong.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God's family. And of course they are part of the African family. But a wave of hate is spreading across my beloved continent. People are again being denied their fundamental rights and freedoms. Men have been falsely charged and imprisoned in Senegal, and health services for these men and their community have suffered. In Malawi, men have been jailed and humiliated for expressing their partnerships with other men. Just this month, mobs in Mtwapa Township, Kenya, attacked men they suspected of being gay. Kenyan religious leaders, I am ashamed to say, threatened an HIV clinic there for providing counseling services to all members of that community, because the clerics wanted gay men excluded.

Uganda's parliament is debating legislation that would make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment, and more discriminatory legislation has been debated in Rwanda and Burundi.

These are terrible backward steps for human rights in Africa.

Our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters across Africa are living in fear.

And they are living in hiding -- away from care, away from the protection the state should offer to every citizen and away from health care in the AIDS era, when all of us, especially Africans, need access to essential HIV services. That this pandering to intolerance is being done by politicians looking for scapegoats for their failures is not surprising. But it is a great wrong. An even larger offense is that it is being done in the name of God. Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God.

"But they are sinners," I can hear the preachers and politicians say. "They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished." My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin color, is another feature of our diversity as a human family. Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people? Does God love his dark- or his light-skinned children less? The brave more than the timid? And does any of us know the mind of God so well that we can decide for him who is included, and who is excluded, from the circle of his love?

The wave of hate must stop. Politicians who profit from exploiting this hate, from fanning it, must not be tempted by this easy way to profit from fear and misunderstanding. And my fellow clerics, of all faiths, must stand up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

The writer is archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.