General, not Specific OFAC Licenses

Written by John Walter Thursday, 28 July 2011 15:07

In January President Obama resended the onerous OFAC application process. It is now possible for a church to travel to visit a church partner in Cuba in the following way: 1. The pastor writes a letter stating the dates of the trip, its objectives, and participants names. 2. Said letter should be on the church letterhead and signed by the pastor. This constitutes a "general license" and will be sufficient to enable the church to use the charter flights from Marazul Charters or other providers. As of July 2011, Marazul is still considering charter flight originating in Baltimore. The church should maintain records and a report of the trip(s) for five years.

Reflection: The 2011 Inter-Presbytery Conference in Cardenas, Cuba

Written by John Walter Wednesday, 20 April 2011 18:21

Eighteen delegates from Baltimore Presbytery, and World Mission Division’s Regional
Liaison to the Caribbean, Jo Ella Holman, attended the January 2011 Inter-Presbytery
Conference held in Cárdenas, Cuba. From the Cuban side, pretty much all the pastors
and leaders of El Centro Presbytery attended, as they had in 2009. This was the second
such conference we have convened to present new faces, better know each other, and
engage in the business of creating a mutual vision by means of intense, week long
relationship building.

 

Sometimes the hard work of coming to understand and appreciate another culture’s
habits and history through the filter of two distinct languages seems like the single
most daunting challenge we face, one that because of its sheer size and complexity,
ultimately helps to keep humans separated despite our essential commonalities.
The amount of time required to assimilate and understand another culture is measured
in decades when one takes into account the few times per year we are in physical
contact with each other as mission partners. Nevertheless, what was particularly
inspiring (to me personally) about this last conference was a sense of preparedness
on behalf of both country’s delegates, to be ready to see and hear new ways to life
in faith and then to begin to use that input as a springboard to delve further into
the often pithy questions surrounding beginning and maintaining worthwhile
congregational partnerships. 

 

As a result, two Baltimore Presbytery churches are now looking at creating congregational
partnerships with El Centro’s churches. They are: Faith Presbyterian Church in Baltimore City
 – Meneses, Iguara; and First Presbyterian Church of Howard County – (to be decided) 
A more distant possibility is Bethel Presbyterian Church in Harford County choosing to
become congregationally engaged with a church in El Centro sometime in the future.
All three of these relationships will begin with much more circumspection and oversight
than did Ashland and Cabaiguan, who together agreed to work out the details of their
partnership verbally while in the process of creating it.


Being the convener of this growing set of partnerships has led me to carefully access my
own reactions to time and change, additions and subtractions. At the offset of Ashland
Presbyterian’s relationship with the IPRC Church in Cabaiguán over a decade ago, the
conversations were assessed in terms of “I and my”, a few people sitting here on the US
side discussing what was important to us using the first person singular in most of our
 observations, declarations, and suggestions. One imagines that the Cuban community
was experiencing something similar.

 

 Over time as visits and familiarity accumulated, the verb tense swung from the first person
singular to the first person plural; “we” are now in a position to act in concert, using “our”
accumulated mutual experiences and trust to assist in extending the small inter-congregational
family to a larger extra- congregational group.


This change presupposes an intense foundation laying period with lots of questions and
doubts, none of which will be resolved without having found en route, or for having
discovered at the very beginning, a mutually acknowledged interest (dare I say passion?)
between two key leaders whose self imposed - and one supposes rewarding - task is to
instruct each other while disseminating all of what’s learned to the broader congregation
on each side.

 

 Over the past decade I have studied how presbytery to presbytery partnerships begin, how
they develop or wither, and what mission models determine those outcomes. While this isn’t
the place to delve into such a discussion, one thing is abundantly clear: If the presbytery
partnership was founded on the mutual interests of two people, and one of those people
leaves or dies, the entire program may fall like a house of cards if personal has outweighed
broader collective interests.


Such was the case when Mairolet Vega defected from Cuba in 2009. She had been the
principal actor in the development of Ashland and Light Street’s as well as Baltimore
Presbytery’s partnership; and when she left, a huge vacuum shook the Cabaiguan church
as well as El Centro’s leadership. Gladly, Miriam Naranjo stepped into the void Mairolet
created; she has showed tireless leadership skills, imagination, and the vision to think of
partnership as a valueless asset.


In The Four Loves, C S Lewis defines friendship as the highest form of love, one that is based
on mutual interests and ideas; not like-love, admiration, or Eros, all of which contain traps
 and pit falls. Frienship celebrates individuality without jealousy, and would not betray for
emotional gain since friendship profits from diversity within the scope of its stated interests.

 Intimate and cohesive friendship is what we’re attempting to create in all stages and levels
of our mission model structure: Friends finding commonality through their faith lives, inviting
others as the spirit moves, and moving always outwards, rather than trying to preserve
through isolation.

“Extra-congregational group” means moving into an even broader definition of inclusivity
beyond the borders of both congregational and presbytery partnerships - but also inclusive
of the two; one that in the most immediate sense brings us into a new potentially global
ecumenical order.  


The World Alliance of Reformed Churches puts it this way:  

Church renewal, justice and partnership are supported by the following commitments:
1. Deepening the church’s understanding of partnership and addressing gender injustices
     in church and society.
2. Empowering women and young people to take their rightful place in church and society.
3. Supporting member churches in promoting human rights, emerging democracies and civil society.
4. Building education/awareness to ensure that the impact of the economy on women and young
     persons is considered in covenanting for justice.
5. Facilitating holistic theological reflections regarding justice in the economy and the earth.
6. Working with churches in worship renewal that values the Reformation ethos in today’s world.
7. Seeking to deepen spiritual renewal by including the experiences and gifts of young people and women.   

(from http://warc.jalb.de/warcajsp/side.jsp?news_id=790&part_id=0&navi=33)

 

To our credit, I believe Baltimore and El Centro Presbyteries have already laid the foundation for
such conversations, though admittedly they are adjusted for local circumstances. I invite you to
join us in this work; there’s much to do.
 

 

 

 

Omar Maren: The Intensity of a Life

Written by Carlos Molina Rodgriguez Friday, 01 April 2011 15:46

 

Omar Maren Turcaz: the Intensity of a Life
Carlos Molina Rodriguez
Matanzas, Cuba
March 25, 2011
Translation by John Walter

                                                        To Omar Maren, in memory of his life.
                                                               Death opened its wings too early.
                                                                                     Miguel Hernandez



Ultimately, the month of March has been a painful date for Cuban Presbyterians,
and by extension, for the entire church on the island. A year ago on Thursday,
March 11, 2010, Isaac Jorge Oropesa, the illustrious and famous teacher died.
This year March has carried away one of his dearest disciples, Omar Marén, a
natural leader and renowned pastor. His life, consecrated to active leadership in
 his church in recent years, was inexplicably cut short when it had scarcely borne
its first fruits. His sudden death has filled many with dismay both inside and outside
Cuba. For years - perhaps decades - the affairs of a young  leader didn’t stir the
Cuban Church a great deal. Chance has willed that his death take place with circumstances
similar to those of Jacobo Reyes, also a young leader and President of the National Union
of Christian, who passed away as a result of a tragic accident on the 28th of July, 1935
in the densely populated area of Matanzas called Coliseo.

 

Born in Guantanamo on the 30th of October 1976, [Omar] moved at an early age with
his family to Havana, where he grew up and studied telecommunications engineering
at Jose Antonio Echeverria University Center  – but he didn’t graduate. Then still in his
youth, he came into contact with Presbyterianism; and in the year 2000, as the Presbyterian
Youth of Cuba (JUPRECU) was reviving, he was nominated for the presidency of the
National Executive Committee. The following year he entered the Evangelical Seminary
in Matanzas (SET), where in 2004 he was awarded a degree in theology. On June 25, 2005,
he was ordained as Presbyter, and on that same date was installed as pastor in the Presbyterian
Church in Santa Clara.


During his brief and concentrated ministry he discharged, among other responsibilities,
President of the Commission on Ecumenical Policy of the Presbyterian Reformed Church
of Cuba (IPRC); member of the General Council; President of the Directing Committee for
the National Presbyterian Camp (CANIP); and Executive Secretary of El Centro Presbytery.
Therefore, It’s clear that both his denominational leadership and contributions in the
ecumenical sphere are irrefutable.


At heart, the success of his prolific ministry consisted in knowing how to combine the best
of the reformed tradition with the noble lineage of his church, anchored by such exemplary
igures as: Evaristo Collazo, Ezequiel Torres, Ferrerol J. Gomez, Edelmira Cuesta, Francisco Garcia,
Alfonzo Rodriguez Hidalgo, Carlos Camps Sierra, Elsa Hernandez as well as others. All of them,
through their enduring efforts and constancy, dreamed of and succeeded building a better church.

I met Omar in mid 1998 on the campus of the First Presbyterian Church of Havana. Since then,
and up to the time of his death, we maintained an affectionate but not intimate relationship
characterized by hopes and dreams, doubts and uncertainties, silences and marked distance.
As I appeal to memory, an image of that young man whose intense gaze and unfounded haste -
someone who was always disposed to blurt out a guffaw - pops up.  I seem to see him arriving
at Master Isaac’s office all sweaty, or talking with Hector Mendez, his pastor, or gently placing
in my hands the most recent issue of Palabra Nueva (New Word, Roman Catholic magazine).
Years later we were classmates in the halls of the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Matanzas.
There, sharing our books, we grew closer in our passion for historical subjects and were united
by our devotion to Rafael Cepeda. As a prerequisite for graduation, Omar later wrote an
investigative essay about this great man of the church.


Omar impressed me because of his perspicacity and maturity. He was notably more ambitious
and resolved than some of the contemporary pastors; and with his determination and creative 
mentality, he achieved much of what he proposed; however, he was never the archetype of
ambition in the church today. I was impressed by his critical thinking, his nonconformity with
Cuba’s present state, and the force of his most intimate convictions. For such reasons I alerted him
to the ever present danger that hangs over our generation: To repeat the errors of those who
preceded us, making concessions in exchange for privileges, and to be accommodating of civil and
ecclesiastic power for a handful of promises.


Since the beginning of our relationship I continued both directly and indirectly following the
evolution of his ministry. I found him doing about as I had expected: In our own way each of us
was suffering the stings of criticisms and reproaches. Through that we became conscious that
that is the price paid when one is not indifferent, when one does not live in perennial self-censorship.
I was also impressed that , together with the immediacy of his exertion, hat at times his thirst
for knowledge, his eagerness to stay informed, and his unlimited capacity to struggle impeded him
rom reviewing his pastorate (obra). For such reasons, if it was within my power, I would always
delightedly share books and ideas with him.

On occasion I remember expressing to him that it made me uncomfortable that some of our
colleagues told lies to obtain truths.  We also spoke with bewilderment about Cuba and the church:
that they shared aspects of the Yoruba fable in the film Guantanamera “No one dies, the old don’t
yield control and the young are being asphyxiated.”  He always laughed loudly, spitting
out a harangue that I should not and care not to repeat here.

On the other hand I have a grateful memory of him which I will carry as long as I’m  alive:
In these last years Omar knew how to be my family’s selfless and conscientious pastor, whose love
and understanding was always evident during the best and worst of times.  With his pastorate
the church In Santa Clara experienced a renaissance, beginning a new epoch with its spirits renewed.
It will be difficult [for the church] to accept his absence; far easier [for us] to remember him.


In these bitter days, those who knew him will remember him as an intimate and courageous
friend. Surely we will hold him in our hearts for both his wise deeds as well as for his errors;
for his childish capacity for astonishment; for his passing bouts of arrogance; for his sense of ease
and contagious laugh, and also for his occasional inappropriate manners.

A long time will go by before any of us should be able to discern his last play of  hand. We
will insist that this is just another joke he's playing on us, and we will almost console ourselves.
Above all, because we all, him and us, have so much left to do, and because in spite of death
and absence, life goes on, even for him.
 



Carlos R. Molina Rodríguez:   (Santa Clara, Cuba, 1976)  is a professor of Church History at the
Evangelical Theological Seminary in Matanzas. His investigatory and editorial activities have
centered in historical themes of Cuban Protestantism, especially in missionary work, ecumenical t
heological education, and Protestant thought of the Twentieth Century.
 

Remembering the Rev. Omar Maren Turcaz

Written by Roger Powers, Miriam Naranjo, John Walter Friday, 25 March 2011 13:54

REMEMBERING THE REV. OMAR MAREN TURCAZ

On Monday, we received the tragic news that the Rev. Omar Maren Turcaz
was killed in a car accident on Sunday afternoon.  He was 34 years old.

Omar was the general secretary of El Centro Presbytery and served as pastor
of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Santa Clara.  He was also a member
of the coordinating body responsible for nurturing the partnership between
El Centro and Baltimore Presbyteries.  He was one of the principal organizers
of the Inter-Presbytery Encounter held this past January  in which eighteen of
us from Baltimore participated.  And in recent weeks we had been making
arrangements for him to visit Baltimore Presbytery in September.

Omar was born in Guantanamo, Cuba, in 1976, and later moved with his
family to Havana.  He became a member of First Havana Reformed Presbyterian
Church and studied at the Evangelical Seminary in Matanzas.  He became
the pastor of the Santa Clara church in 2004.

An elder from his church, Miguel de Armas, said that “[Omar] was a tireless
and unselfish worker, attending to all the spiritual and material needs of others. . . .
His great love was to work with young people, [and] as a result, the church
took on a whole new appearance as many youth flocked to the church.”


The Moderator of El Centro Presbytery, the Rev. Miriam Naranjo, who attended our
Presbytery meeting last September, sent this note to us:

Dear brothers and sisters,

We give thanks to God to be able to rely on friends who are so far away, yet so close
at hand. Omar's sudden departure has no comparison in my life; I can only say to
you that I give thanks to God for having been able to know him fondly. Omar was
my friend, one of those friends that we have that are completely unlike any other;
but we complemented each other and shared burdens in this road which we call life.

At the funeral service held in Santa Clara, the Biblical text that came to mind was
Ecclesiastes 3. "For everything there is a season." Omar lived as though time were
about to run out. He always walked in a hurry or with a gang of people, and he
never stopped working. It was like packing so much into such a short time, and
accomplishing a great deal.

I don't believe we will be able to explain; I don't believe there is consolation.
If it exists, it lives in remembering him with his hurricane pace, his bright eyes
and smile, his capacity for tireless work, his commitment to the Cuban Church,
and to dream without limits. This is the way I hold him; this is the way I conceive
of his resurrection, here and right now.

I want to thank each and every one of you for your messages, for your solidarity and
accompaniment in this time.”


John Walter, chair of the Cuba Partnership Task Force, echoes Miriam’s words:
“We will miss [Omar’s] hurricane pace of walking from one place to the other.
We will miss his carrying voice, so easy to distinguish from afar. We will miss
his comical way of hurrying on the business at hand by drawing circles with
his hand, making everyone laugh…and hurry up. Most of all we will miss the
promise of his vision for the church and our partnership. We can rest assured
that Omar helped to plant strong ties between us, and those ties will live on and
thrive as we carry his memory forward.”


Please join me in a word of prayer:
Compassionate God, we come before you with heavy hearts weighed down by our
grief and sorrow at the news of Omar Maren’s untimely death.  We mourn the loss
of this dear friend and colleague, and we pray for his family, for his colleagues, for
the members of his congregation, and for El Centro Presbytery.  Comfort us all, O God,
with the great power of your love.  In our grief and confusion, help us to find peace
in the knowledge of your loving mercy to all your children, and give us light to guide
us into the assurance of your love, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.