As the CEO of IPM, University Lecturer, & UCC Pastor, The Rev. Dr. Joseph Francis Cistone works for & writes about nurturing justice, peace, & hope around the world.
While working from the #Cleveland Office today this photograph caught my attention and brought a lump to my throat. Sometimes it is hard to believe how quickly my three decades as part of the IPM Family have gone—let alone that we #IPM will celebrate 50 years in 2024!
This photo was captured approximately seventeen months into my tenure as IPM’s Chief Executive. Many of those in the photo have since passed and those of us “still around” have aged in our own ways. I miss each of these folks daily—especially Paul Strege, Sammy Mayer, David Westcott, and Jan Bullard—as they were all crucial to IPM’s founding and/or our headquarters relocation to my hometown in 2001.
IPM’s founding commitment to socio-economic #justice is literally lived out photographically with representation from across class, faith, gender, ethnicity, and race. Our founding dedication to a culture of belonging may be less obvious, but imagine that the folks in this photo ranged from in their 30’s to their 70’s and that they had lived &/or worked in (at least): Bosnia i Herzegovina, Chile, #ElSalvador, #India, #Italy, Lebanon, Japan, #Kenya, #Nicaragua, Russia, and across the USA. Collectively we spoke some twenty languages.
We gathered for this meeting at David’s home Congregation on the southwest side of Cleveland as we transitioned from one African American Board Chair, who had served as a longstanding Project Coordinator in Saint Louis, to another who was the first #Black Woman to be the Vice President of a major bank in Ohio. Increasingly (even in 2002) the Board was composed of current or former Project Coordinators and, in this photo alone, IPM Project Partners from every continent but Antarctica were represented.
I write all this not to gloat but to remind us of not only how far we have come but of how IPM has always flourished at the forefront of change. We were “international” before almost any entity other than the United Nations truly was. We were “multi-faith” when most folks had barely heard of the term ecumenical. We were led by a Black woman of working-class roots when wealthy white women had barely gained a footing in non-profit #leadership. We were, and are in fact, living out “#diversity, #equity, and #inclusion” three decades before most folks had even heard the phrase!
The past few pandemic-years have been life-altering for so many, not the least of which IPM and our Project Partners. 2023 saw IPM rebound significantly with the increasing return of our in-person #Immersion Experience Program and the expansion of IPM’s #International #Fellows. We are thrilled to be celebrating our 50th Anniversary and look forward to the promise of the next 50 years. But most especially, as I reflect on another New Year with IPM, I am humbled to carry on this work with all of you in the memory of the many giants who have gone before us. Their example continues to inspire, and their spirit lives on in all we do.
How amazing it is to write you as the entire IPM Family looks forward to our upcoming 50th Anniversary on May 10, 2024. How hard it is, at times, to express what an amazing difference IPM continues to make in the world and, especially, the communities we call home.
This season of spring in North America has seen our IPM travel schedule return to almost pre-pandemic norms with recent visits across the USA by Adela Hernandez Zayas, IPM’s El Salvador-based international Director of Programs & Partnerships, and #Brazilian #Franciscan Rodrigo de Castro Amede Peret—a long-time IPM Project Partner & our International Executive Board Vice Chair for Latin America & the Caribbean. My time with Adela, Rodrigo, Ilze Fender, and so many of you reminded me daily of the deep personal connections that drive all IPM relationships and just how much we’ve all missed being together in person. Upcoming June-July #Immersion Experiences in the #DominicanRepublic & #ElSalvador bode well for the steady return of IPM’s signature transformational learning program.
Our time together was also a poignant reminder of what an incredible journey the IPM Family has been on these five decades, and particularly since I was called as IPM’s fourth executive on June 1, 2001. Together we have witnessed the continued deepening of our Project Partnerships in more than twenty countries around the globe; the creation & evolution of our Regional Offices in El Salvador, #India, and #Kenya; the envisioning & delivery of now more than 255 Immersion Experience Programs with more than 2,300 participants; the founding commitment to #diversity, #equity, #inclusion, and #justice which is lived out daily & represented by a majority of our International Executive Board & Staff hailing from the countries & communities where we work; and, the creation of a the IPM Fellows Program which is already providing funding, training, and vocational support to young & emerging leaders working alongside our Project Partners on four continents.
With the incredible challenges of the past few years & the ongoing impact of the global pandemic on our Partners & Programs, it has sometimes been difficult to imagine IPM making it to our 50th Anniversary. Finances have been extraordinarily tight as folks have recalibrated their giving and we have worried about the next variant or travel warning shutting down our signature Immersion Experience Program. Through careful stewardship and your extraordinary generosity, we are looking forward to an extraordinary anniversary year and related activities & programs throughout 2024.
We are especially grateful to the Estate of our dear friend Grace Weber whose generosity helped us work through the unimaginable challenges of the pandemic and the donors & friends who are helping us push forward with our 50thAnniversary Campaign as we affirm IPM’s historic commitments to diversity, inclusion, and justice for all. Throughout this mailing, you will learn more about how you can join us as we celebrate IPM’s 50 years over the next two years.
Honoring our commitment to Partners that THEY tell us when it is safe for us to travel among them, we have taken the appropriate time and measures to ensure that our in-person Immersion Experience Program returns to its appropriate place at the core of our mission. With new Immersions scheduled for the coming year in Brasil, #Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, India, #Italy, Kenya, #Nepal and among the #Wabanaki People we are excited for what’s ahead. When folks ask me what’s the best way to become involved with IPM, I almost always suggest joining us on an Immersion. Now is the perfect time for you to consider participating. You will read more throughout this mailing and can reach out to my colleague Vicky Jimenez at vjiminez@ipmconnect.org directly to book your participation.
Friends of IPM like you also always ask about our longstanding Project Partners. With this mailing we are pleased to formally announce the expansion of our pilot IPM Fellows Program—centered among our existing, community-based Partners. The goal of the Fellows Program is to nurture & support young & emerging leaders working within in local, community-based organizations to advocate & work for justice & peace. Bindiya and Sajit are just two examples from our existing pilot program in India and Nepal. Over the next few years we hope to add 50 new Fellows from El Salvador to Kenya, India and beyond, as we expand this remarkable model to continue identifying & supporting the next generation of IPM leaders that will ensure another fifty+ years.
As we continue to reflect on the significance of 50 years we continue to stand on the proverbial shoulders of Jim & Sammy Mayer, Paul & Vercile Strege, Bernie Marquardt, Carol & Martin Findling, George Hrbek, and the countless others who envisioned IPM more than five decades ago. We are confident that we continue to live up to their high standards and lean into their vision for a world where love, peace, and belonging hold sway.
With this mailing we are announcing a special 49th Anniversary Appeal—each gift you make up to $50,000 before the end of June, will be matched by a small group of dear friends. Please be assured that at a special time like this, each-and-every gift you make is invaluable and no donation too small to make a life-changing impact alongside the women and girls at the heart of the IPM Family. Please also feel free to reach out to me directly if you would like to speak more about how you can join with so many others in ensuring IPM next 50 years. Thank you!
May the peace that passes all understanding be with you and all those whom you hold dear.
Today, November 23, many of us across the USA will celebrate the Thanksgiving Holiday. As I have written often, as part an organization with deep roots among the Indigenous Nations of North America and with countless friends with Native American backgrounds, this day is always one of mixed emotions. This year, especially so.
In mid-October, I had the great privilege of accompanying my son & a delegation from my Alma Mater, Gilmour Academy, on an Immersion Experience among the Wabanaki in Maine. Our time with long-time colleagues, friends, youthful activists, and sage elders had a life-changing impact upon the student participants. Throughout our Immersion, I was reminded just how powerful such shared experiences can be. With humility and gratitude, the students gained a new perspective on the historic oppression & continued suffering of Native communities, gleaned new perspective into the indigenous traditions that provide renewed hope for our Mother Earth, and were challenged to examine their own role in combatting climate change & ensuring environmental justice alongside new-found friends.
Just a few weeks later, I travelled to Kenya with a dear friend—the founder of Inspiring Minds—who is planning a student scholarship delegation for July 2024. Just as during my sojourn among the Wabanaki, we were struck by the legacies of white-settler colonialism, the healing potential of often dismissed African teachings, and by the transformative role young people connecting across borders of culture, faith, and economic circumstance can play in effecting change. Throughout both journeys, I had the keen sense of being home in two distinct, yet similar, places that have helped form my tenure with IPM.
I, like you, will sit down at table with my extended family this Thursday grateful for many things. This year I’ll be heartened by the possibility of an extended peace for the peoples of Israel & Palestine; the joy I feel each time the IPM WhatsApp South Asia Group celebrates Diwali as we did on November 12; the endless laughter that permeated the recent visit of two remarkable Project Partners from Nicaragua & a colleague from El Salvador visiting Northeast Ohio once again; the promise of yet another Student Fellow finding their calling; and, the extraordinary generosity of a number of IPM donors who have stepped up for our 50th Anniversary Year in 2024, just as IPM is leaning into the promise of a renewed, in-person Immersion Experience Program.
Most of all, I’m grateful to continually find my home as part of this extraordinary IPM Family when so many of our brothers, sisters, & others around the world can’t seem to move beyond division & hatefulness. Whether immersed among the Wabanaki & Kenyans, virtually connected with Indians & Nepalis, or here in Cleveland with Nicaraguans & Salvadorans, those of us in the IPM Family share a love for one another that is counter-cultural & life-giving. The relationships we share are unique—they heal us in times of shared sacrifice and embody hope for our world.
I pray that you will find such joy this extended holiday weekend and may the love we share continue to lighten your way.
On May 10th IPM celebrated our 49th Anniversary! A remarkable achievement for an organization such as this—founded as a radical response to the predominate mission model of the time. IPM literally inverted centuries of colonialism & neo-colonialism with an inclusive model of partnership rooted in accompaniment, solidarity, and trust that was as groundbreaking then as it is today.
As we look forward to our 50th Anniversary on May 10, 2024, and related activities throughout the year and around the world, we can confidently proclaim that IPM remainsthe premier, intersectional & multi-faith organization for international transformational learning experiences & direct person-to-person, community-based partnerships, exchanges, and programs that nurture & affirm justice, solidarity, and peace.
Please take a moment to watch the attached virtual program highlighting IPM’s 49th Anniversary with participation from donors, friends, partners, staff, and volunteers across the globe! I trust that you will be as moved as I was to witness these personal & professional testimonies of the impact IPM continues to have on the lives of the people & communities where IPM’s presence continues to change lives. You can click the link here to watch: https://fb.watch/kDs2CdLVTR/
If you would like to join me in supporting IPM’s vision for our 50th Anniversary & beyond you can do so by clicking here: Make A Donation – IPM Connect. Please also feel free to reach out to me directly at jfcistone@ipmconnect.org to learn more.
Thank you for all you do to make IPM’s mission possible!
I write to you today as we join together across the boundaries of faith & nation in celebration of Christmas, Hanukkah, & Kwanza with the promise of a New Year to come. I do so from IPM’s headquarters in Cleveland, where we are gradually moving beyond the global pandemic of the past three years toward the promise of renewed partnerships & in-person Immersion Experience Programs. Millions of families around the globe will gather-together around the table, often for the first time in three years, to celebrate this season of hope & joy, light & love.
As I wrote last year, in my tradition the season known as Advent is a month-long reminder of the core values of our faith. A time to reaffirm our shared commitment to embody hope, peace, joy, and love in our own lives while offering those same gifts to our neighbors near & far. For our Jewish brothers & sisters commemorating Hanukkah, for our many friends around the world who marked the Winter Solstice earlier this week, and for those working to ensure the well-being of the world this Kwanzaa, the call is similar: to bring light to times of darkness and love to a world that is broken & hurting.
For almost five decades, IPM has been doing just that! Your partnership with us—whether as a Project Partner, colleague, donor, virtual program participant, student, &/or volunteer—makes everything we do possible. You are the light required during the darkest days, the hope that sees us through despair, the joy we see on the faces of each & every woman, child, and community where the IPM Family continues to nurture and transform.
We live in tumultuous times. No matter our respective faith tradition &/or spiritual practice our response as dedicated members of the IPM Family must be just extraordinary. It is not enough tim simply write, as our recent 48th Anniversary International General assembly reaffirmed, that: the promotion of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice through accompaniment, solidarity, and love, has been at the very heart of IPM as we were created to bridge the borders, identities, and realities that so oven divide our global community & natural world. We must be be willing to accompany those others would cast aside as “strangers,” live in solidarity with those on the margins of our respective societies, and reaffirm daily that love is the hope for our world.
Each of you “set the table” for the rest of us. You open your homes to others in the service of “love and connection”. Your humanity and sacrificial giving makes our mission possible. This Holiday Season once again, through the generosity of three committed IPM families, each gift post-marked on or before January 15, will be matched up to $50,000 as a prelude to our upcoming 50th Anniversary in 2024. I trust that you will thoughtfully consider your response . All of us at IPM remain profoundly grateful for your continued generosity.
Never doubt that your consistent presence is the greatest gift you can offer the IPM Family. What you make possible is the greatest gift we can offer the world in the coming New Year.
May the light and love of this Season be with you and all those whom you hold dear.
Transformational Learning. Ever since IPM coined the term Immersion Experience Programs, twenty years ago, a commitment to personal transformation through Immersion has been at the center of IPM’s signature program.
I first recall hearing the term “Immersion” in the context of international, short-term travel—what others had long-called “mission trips”—from my dear friend and mentor, the late Kim McElaney, then serving as the first woman Chaplain at a Jesuit institution of higher learning, my alma mater Holy Cross (MA). It was 2002, and I was on my way back to Cleveland from two weeks in Rwanda & Kenya, when I stopped for dinner at Kim’s home outside of Boston. Kim, and her spouse Tim, were fascinated by my relatively new role with IPM (I had begun my service as Executive Director on June 1, 2001) and Kim asked if I might be open to creating an Immersion Experience for Holy Cross students in Kenya.
By this point, I had already been in discussion with an old friend and colleague, Mark Falbo, who was then serving as the Director of the Center for Community Service Learning at John Carroll University (OH), and with whom I had travelled earlier that year to El Salvador & Nicaragua to meet with IPM’s Project Partners and friends. Mark and I had also envisioned a student trip to El Salvador but hadn’t yet used the term Immersion, but rather another “service learning” opportunity. In our planning, this travel experience was to be similar to others Mark had offered in his tenure at JCU but with IPM facilitating a deeper experience of solidarity and accompaniment among our Project Partners. In my mind, such short-term travel would be more like the Travel Seminars my Yale Divinity advisor and professor, the late Letty Russell, had been facilitating for years in conjunction with area studies in Liberation Theology. Letty was the first to allow me the opportunity to travel to Korea and Mexico while I struggled making ends meet as graduate student.
What Kim, Mark, and I may not have known, was that we were on the cutting-edge of a new approach to short-term international travel opportunities for students that were not about “mission” or “service,” let alone prostelization or work. Yes, we would travel short-term, but not “to help,” rather to be present. We would immerse ourselves in the history, culture, and day-to-day reality of IPM’s Project Partners and humbly learn that the hopes & dreams, aspiration & struggles, of IPM’s Partners were not too dissimilar from our own. We would not travel to “fix” anything, to “convert” those we visited, or to reinforce our own sense of cultural superiority—what has become known, in the years since, as “white saviorism” regardless of the actual skin tone of the participants. Rather, we would see ourselves as pilgrims, seeking to atone for the injustice our nation & others had perpetuated upon the peoples of El Salvador, Kenya, Nicaragua, and Rwanda, while nurturing bonds of friendship rooted in trust.
In the two decades since, IPM has facilitated at least 254 in-person Immersions, in more than twelve countries, with more than 2,300 participants. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, we have also facilitated 7 Virtual Immersions with 66 participants to date. As we enter the 2022-2023 school year—and with assurances from our Partners that we will not possibly jeopardize their health by sojourning among them—we look forward to the return of in-person Immersion Experiences, with twelve already in development. In our continuing efforts to be as inclusive as possible, IPM will continue to offer Virtual Immersions for those unable to travel internationally with a focus on thematic experiences like our popular Caste, Environmental Justice, and Gender Equity programs. Personally, I look forward to also offering long-time friends of IPM the opportunity to join me once again on what we traditionally refer to as “Tag-Along” Immersions. These occasional programs allow a handful of people to travel with my colleagues & I as we work internationally among our Regional Partners & Staff, experiencing our mission & programs side-by-side.
IPM’s creation of and unique approach to Immersion has been copied by many others since those first in-person Immersion Experiences in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Kenya in 2002-2003. I can attest from my Doctoral work at Eden Theological Seminary (completed in 2011), and personal experience, that no one does it quite as well in a multi-faith & multi-national context. IPM Immersion Experiences may not work for everyone, and that is OK. They aren’t conceived to meet service “requirements” though many academic institutions do incorporate IPM Immersion Experiences as part of a for-credit class, campus ministry program, and/or service offering. They aren’t mission trips to proselytize or experience something solely among people of the same religious faith but are always an appropriate avenue to live out one’s personal sense of vocation in a deeply spiritual way.
Perhaps most uniquely still, IPM’s Immersion Experiences are coordinated and led by local Staff & Partners on their terms, their schedule, and to their benefit. There is nothing “to do.” IPM’s focus is on “being”… being present, being attentive, being willing to look deeply inside ourselves, being open to owning up to our complicity in the injustice that stalks our world, being ready to become the change we seek. That, if you will, is the service—a service that comes from being willing to journey not solely to another place but into our deepest selves.
Immersion Experiences are, first & foremost, about personal transformation. Transformational learning that can only come from stepping outside ourselves & moving beyond our presuppositions of how we might “help.” Ultimately, Immersions Experiences are about looking as deeply as we can within ourselves to reimagine and reshape our role in the world.
I would be thrilled to talk with you more about how you and/or your academic institution (corporation, faith community, nonprofit, and alike) might plan and participate in an IPM Immersion Experience. I hope you will reach out and look forward to being immersed with you for the first time or once again. If IPM & I can guarantee you anything, you will be transformed!
I write to you today as many of us continue our celebrations of this #HolidaySeason and the promises of a New Year. I do so from IPM’s headquarters in Cleveland, where the pandemic’s renewed spread is wreaking havoc on so many families who had hoped to gather-together around the table (often, for the first time in two years) to celebrate this season of #light and #renewal.
In my tradition, the season known as #Advent is a month-long reminder of the core values of our faith. A time to reaffirm our shared commitment to embody #hope, #peace, #joy, and #love in our own lives while offering those same gifts to the world. For our Jewish brothers & sisters who just commemorated #Hanukkah, for our many friends around the world who marked the #WinterSolstice earlier this week, and for those working to ensure the well-being of the world this #Kwanzaa, the call is similar: to bring light to times of darkness and love to a world that is broken & hurting.
For almost 48 years, #IPM has been doing just that! Your partnership with us—whether as a colleague, donor, Project Partner, student, &/or volunteer—makes everything we do possible. You are the light we need during the darkest days, the hope that sees us through, the joy we see on the faces of each & every woman, child, and community where the IPM Family continues to nurture and transform.
We live in extraordinary times. No matter our respective faith tradition &/or spiritual practice our response must be just extraordinary. A dear friend recently reminded me that: COVID, like so many other tragedies, draws us all towards the cliffs of angst and despair. Many cannot endure looking directly into the face of the fear, and harden themselves by turning away, denying, rejecting, and grasping at their ropes of nationalism and isolationism, not seeing that the rope is rotting and frayed and ever-so-loosely tethered. Even more of us live between the fear and the will to connect–paralyzed by the size and magnitude of the tragedy, not sure what to do to respond to the needs of the world and to our own internal duplicity. And then there are a few who walk into the fear, seeing it for the phantasm that it is, and call to the rest of us to join them in slaying the monster though love and connection, through having our hearts be open houses for each other, for the world – the few who set the place at the table for the rest of us, calling us home to our humanity.
Each of you “set the table” for the rest of us. You open your homes to others in the service of “love and connection”. Your humanity and sacrificial giving makes our mission possible. This Holiday Season, through the generosity of the Sheffler and Weber families, your gifts to IPM post-marked on or before December 31 will be matched up to $50,000. I trust that you will thoughtfully consider your response and remain profoundly grateful for your generosity.
But most importantly, I hope you will wake up this Christmas morning knowing that your consistent presence is the greatest gift of hope you can offer the IPM Family and that the Peace and Joy you bring to each day we have together is one of the greatest gifts you can offer the world in the coming New Year!
May the #light and #love of this Season be with you and all those whom you hold dear.
The headline in a recent post from one of my favorite periodicals asked: “What happens when COVID ends?” I was struck by the hopeful naivete of the question? Clearly the author doesn’t sit where I do!
This week, IPM lost yet another dear friend to the still-raging pandemic, the horror of which remains far from most of our “northern” eyes. We may debate when to have our children under 11 vaccinated… We remain frustrated by new variants and so-called breakthrough cases that keep popping-up as vaccination is questioned and masking deemed optional—giving COVID a new lifeline literally every second of every day… We are saddened that, after all this time, we still need to keep our distance from the most vulnerable of those we love… but most of us have truly no idea how bad this pandemic still is.
As of today, more than 5MILLION PEOPLE HAVE DIED! There have been over 251MILLION CASES. In the USA alone almost 757,000 people have died. In EL SALVDOR, a country that claims “success” in fighting COVID, the vastly underreported number of deaths is 3,704 with a huge nation-wide spike in marginalized communities right now. In COLOMBIA, where IPM’s Partners are suffering in a particularly harsh way, over 127,000 people have died. In INDIA, a microscopic representation of reality the number of deaths is 461,849. In ITALY, where I first partnered with IPM, 132,491 people have died. In KENYA, where only a small percentage of the population has been vaccinated and national accounting for health care is abhorrent, the death toll is at 5,314 and rising.
These aren’t just numbers, they are lives. Lives taken all too soon from loved ones. Deaths that could have been avoided if our actions matched our rhetoric. The “numbers” are so large that we have become almost dismissive of daily caseloads and death tolls that rightfully condemn the vast disparities in our health care systems worldwide.
The IPM core value of Accompaniment calls us to move beyond disbelief and frustration to action. It’s not enough to simply say we wish we could do more, or we’ll keep you in our prayers. Not enough when our Project Partners and their families remain gravely ill and are unable to be present for the burials of their loved ones. Dear members of the IPM Family are still on oxygen, confined to their beds, unable to get even the first dose of a vaccine.
Don Rafael Carranza (pictured above in his Zaragoza home) is one such person. The father, grandfather, and great grandfather of a former IPM colleague, dear friends, and Project Partner participants, he was incredibly dear to me as well. As I told my faith community this Sunday, every time I hugged Papito he reminded me of my own maternal grandfather—same smell, same firm grip, same kind eyes. He was buried overnight and largely alone. His daughter Maria Julia, an IPM Project Foundress and student of the murdered Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, has COVID and is on oxygen herself as she comes to terms with her beloved father’s sudden death. The unspeakable human tragedy of this pandemic has not ended for her family nor for virtually all of IPM’s Project Partners and friends worldwide.
More than two decades ago on my first IPM journey to El Salvador and Nicaragua I finally, fully, understood the meaning of Casa Abierta by the il Duo Guardabaranco in Don Rafael’s home. In the subsequent years, over thousands of days with IPM’s Partners, I’ve felt what it means to be welcomed into such an Open House:
I want things to be good between me and my brothers and sisters.
From North to South, to the end of the world.
I know how to listen and lend a hand…
Everyone here is human.
What else can color my world, my race?
Inside we have feelings that need sustenance.
If there are good feelings inside they can’t stay inside.
Here’s my open house.
There’s a plate for you on our table.
The tree’s shadow for your head.
You’re life’s an open book at my door…
Open house.
An unconditional friendship, that’s your motto.
Earth likes it that we love each other.
Regardless of cultures or flags
Open house.
I’d like to give you some good luck and be your friend until death and distance, won’t stop me…
Despite too many differences to list, there was never a moment when I felt unwelcome in the Carranza home. There was always a shared plate at the table for me and all those who have come to know the family over the many years since we first met. Many of you have joined me in feeling just as at home within the IPM Family, especially including the family of my longtime Indian colleague Mahesh who is still struggling—along with his spouse and mother—with the latent impacts of COVID-19. My fondest hope is that each of them have somehow felt just as welcome in my own home.
For almost 50 years, IPM has insisted that color, culture, race, and flags don’t divide. We are brothers and sisters that share the same hopes and dreams. This pandemic tragically reminds us that no matter how hard we work, vast difference still exists—in class, income, food security, and access to healthcare. There is much to do, much of which lays beyond the impact of a relatively small organization such as this.
My years in El Salvador, Kenya, and India have taught me that we can all do something. And, if COVID and Don Rafael taught me one thing it is that everyone is welcome in the Open House that is the IPM Family. Each Partner endowed with a justified claim for a place at our table—where health & wellness is the most fundamental right of all!
I hope each of you will do what you can to step up at this time as we continue to listen, love, and lend a hand.
Faithfully yours,
Joseph F. Cistone
Chief Executive Officer
*****
Here are some concrete suggestions from my colleague Adela Zayas Hernandez, IPM’s Director of International Partnerships & Programs, who you can reach directly at: ahernandez@ipmconnect.org), on how you can join IPM in offering a place at our table right now!
The World has always been in constant change, but since COVID-19 the transformation we see in social relationships, economy, health, safety, and food security is radical. These changes have brought many needs.
COLOMBIA: There is a great need for job sustainability, for just salaries and income, as well as the re-integration in education, after virtual classes, for many children in different parts of the country, especially in rural areas has become a great need.
Support IPM’s local Partners, The Center for the Formation of Peace and Ser Mujer
EL SALVADOR: The need for oxygen tanks, hospitalization access for all and education around biosecurity measures has become more important than ever, since COVID-19 cases are significantly growing each day.
Designate your gift for IPM’s Emergency Response to the Pandemic—#IPMResponds
INDIA: The need for proper health care and access to medicines for all communities—across Caste and religious expression—is not covered in India and is something our local Staff is working to change.
Support the remarkable work of IPM’s South Asia Regional Office
KENYA: The need for food security, access to potable water and adequate sanitary resources like
masks, alcohol, and disinfectants, is immense throughout East Africa.
Designate your gift for IPM’s new Regional Coordinator in Kenya
NICARAGUA: Need for free expression, security for social leaders and government stability. The need for democracy is growing every day.
Support local Project Partners CEPROSI and Mujer y Communidad.
As Adela prophetically proclaims: “As humans committed to peace, justice, and hope we must be aware of the needs around the world, to support the vulnerable, to share their story and to accompany their struggles. This is how we face the constant transformation we are all living during this pandemic, united in solidarity.”
Consider participating in an upcoming IPM Virtual Immersion Experience Program with IPM’s Director of Education & Immersion Experience Programs, Vicky Jimenez. You can meet Vicky in person when she is in the USA later this year or contact her via email: vjimenez@ipmconnect.org
One year ago, I wrote to you just as the potential impacts of the Novel Coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic was becoming clear. After a traumatic year of physical distancing, social isolation, economic dislocation, racial reckoning, and heightened climate change, it’s hard to believe Passover, Holi, Lailat Ul Bara’h, and Easter are here. While different in history & purpose: they each provide an important opportunity for reflection & renewal—especially after a year like this!
While I have been blessed by the ability to work from home, extended time with my spouse and younger children, and a National Park next door, I miss being in the presence of each of you. Facebook, Zoom, WhatsApp, and the rest can be wonderful vehicles for staying socially connected & getting work done, but nothing can replace the transformative nature of physical presence.
Physical proximity is at the heart of accompaniment. Accompaniment, perhaps the preeminent posture of IPM, encourages solidarity & nurtures trust. One can claim they are working to decolonize & end structural racism, but before COVID it seemed almost impossible to do so from a distance. Actual physical presence was how, for almost five decades, IPM built connections & worked across borders of culture, faith, and economic circumstance.
In re-reading Isabel Wilkerson’s latest book Caste, in preparation for an upcoming Virtual Immersion Experience with John Carroll University, I’ve been struck by how person-to-person connection allows us to traverse caste and the related “discontents” Wilkerson brilliantly identifies. My personal & professional life may encourage cross-caste relationships, but I’m painfully aware how divided & distant so many of us remain from one another. Enforced physical distancing may not have made that any easier but it has forced us to imagine & create new ways of being & working together.
IPM was founded to transcend difference no matter the distance between us. We preface our partnerships as a two-way-street. We pride ourselves on our hard-fought indigenization & inclusivity as “proof” that we are on the right path. A Zoom screen or WhatsApp group with folks from five continents reminds us that, yes, we may walk the same path together in ways hitherto unimagined.
This week’s holy days remind us as well that accompaniment is at the heart of our respective spiritual traditions. From Holi’s celebration of diversity to Lailat Ul Barah’s search for reconciliation. From Passover’s commemoration of a peoples’ liberation to a protest march into Jerusalem that ultimately led to the promise of Easter… these last holy days highlight the universal importance of being present, in-person & in-memory, with one another.
This past year, IPM has had to reinvent what it means to be present in almost too many ways to imagine. Virtual forums, virtual immersions, virtual meetings, virtual Partnerships, virtual programs… Virtual or not, we have found that presence can happen no matter the time and distance between us. Accompaniment might not be as “easy” virtually, but we can be present for one another no matter the distance if we can trust that we’re all working together from our own spaces for equity, justice, and peace.
Virtual will still have to suffice for a while. Many more will suffer as the gross disparities in our global health system are laid bare. Partnership without physical presence will continue to try our patience. The coming months won’t bring us back to pre-pandemic realities, but they will provide the chance to collectively reflect on what we’ve been through and where we’d like to head.
As we gradually begin to gather together again in person and anticipate the celebration of IPM’s 47th year on May 10th, I hope that this week’s Holy Days gift you with the renewal & revitalization accompaniment requires.
#PastorsCorner for Sunday, February 21, the First Sunday in Lent ~ Liturgical Year B
This past Wednesday more than forty of us from across MDI gathered together for a virtual Ash Wednesday Service coordinated by my colleague, the Rev. Dr. Janet Adair Hansen, Interim Pastor of the Somesville Union Meeting House UCC. Janet has been a wonderful addition to the local UCC Pastorate and this Lent it will be a joy to work alongside her and my dear friend, the Rev. Rob Benson of the Bar Harbor Congregational Church UCC once again. While we don’t always agree—no three adults do—and our ministries have taken various paths, it is a remarkable blessing to be able pastor alongside each other with a healthy respect for one another. As with any profession, but perhaps especially ministry (like teaching and medicine which can also place similar 24-hour stress on the practitioner), having colleagues of integrity, honesty, and reliability is vital for both personal and professional health. We do well when we seek out mentors and friends who round-out our own experience, inspire us by their own commitment, and challenge us to be who we are called to be.
The Rev. Douglas C. Horner has been one such person for me since our days at Yale Divinity School. Doug and I share essential things in common—a solid Northeast Ohio childhood, loving families, devotion to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth & the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, a life-long love of canoeing, and the willingness to speak truth to power—but we also complement each other: he’s a gifted mechanic, I’d rather plant a tree; Doug’s a former Marine with a passion for veterans, while I spent my time after our years in New Haven volunteering among immigrants & refugees in Rome; he works selflessly amidst the materially poor & socially marginalized in this country while my life has been largely dedicated to ensuring human flourishing in the international sphere. One thing is for sure. I would have never considered ordained ministry in the UCC if it weren’t for Doug example as my longtime Pastor at Saint Paul’s Community Church in Cleveland and someone who consistently reminds me of what it means to live out one’s calling in the day-to-day.
The past year has been difficult for all of us. Many of us have mourned the enforced distance from loved ones and mourned, as well, the loss of like. Doug’s dear mom, Betty, passed away this past year. She was an inspiration to Doug, his family, me, and literally thousands of others across the country for her lifelong commitment and how she challenged the UCC to be the Open & Affirming Denomination we have come to be. Today, we have the gift of Doug’s presence and wisdom with us in Worship. When he learned about Alyne’s recent, major surgery, he asked how he could help, and I told him preparing a Sermon for a Sunday morning would be a great relief! I’m thrilled he is able to be with us this morning as he reflects upon our scripture from Genesis & Mark in a Sermon entitled “Life Moving Forward”.
Throughout his preaching we will be posting this poem, entitled Outwitted by Edwin Markham, that Doug asked us to share: He drew a circle that shut me out –heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win. We drew a circle and took him in. This Lenten Season, I pray that you will also find the comfort of shared commitment of dear friends. For each of us is called to love and to have circles wide enough to let others in!
Joe Cistone 