"Tear Down Walls" Says Friday Bible Study Leader
by ERIK ALSGAARD
For immediate release
Anaheim, CA, May 7, 2006 - "We are living in difficult times," Silvia Regina Lima de Silva said to nearly 7,000 United Methodist Women Friday morning during the first Bible study session of Assembly.
"We live in times of war and fabricating war; we live in times where walls are becoming visible between the rich in the North in and the poor in the South."
Using text from Isaiah 58:6-12, Ms. Lima de Silva led the call for Assembly goers to live a life of solidarity, full of compassion and caring. Her teaching was interrupted several times by applause.
Coining a new word -- femicide -- Ms. Lima de Silva decried the violence faced by women around the world.
"This term must be introduced to the vocabulary of people and brought to the attention of media," she said.
"In Isaiah's time, women and children were subject to unjust systems," Ms. Lima de Silva said, speaking through translator Lourdes Belen Garcia. "Isaiah was calling for shelter, food, clothing."
Ms. Lima de Silva described two walls being built in the world to illustrate the distance that people put between themselves and true caring and compassion.
The first wall is the one being built between the United States and Mexico.
"This wall speaks out, shouts out, that it is here to protect the rich North and continue the exploitation of the poor South," she said.
The second wall -- between Palestine and Israel -- speaks of intolerance at a cost of $1 million per kilometer.
"The challenge of the Isaiah text is the call to eliminate the barriers; to tear down the walls," she said.
One way for United Methodists to begin to tear down the walls is to remove the insensitivity that calls them to be indifferent to the suffering of other people. "In the culture of indifference, we must create a culture of solidarity -- caring and compassion for others, " she said.
Ms. Lima de Silva said, in many places, the powerful forces and people of the world are building walls, while women stubbornly poke holes in the walls.
"Let us dare to rise and create a culture of compassion," she said. "Sisters, are you ready to do this?"
Assembly participants in one voice, responded, "yes!"
"The blessing of creating this culture is participating with the divine energy," said Ms. Lima de Silva. "Sisters, when we participate in this way, our life shines. When we live compassion, caring, we live in the company of God because God is compassionate and caring."
Asking Assembly goers to stand and hold hands, Ms. Lima de Silva urged her audience to build homes without walls, sexism, racism and violence.
"Come, let us rise," she said. She then urged participants to push away indifference, to push away the walls that separate, to open a new path.
"See the face of the other, because it is there that we will see the face of God," she said.
Ms. Lima de Silva is a Brazilian living in Costa Rica. She is a professor at the Universidad Biblical Latino Americana, and she works ecumenically through the Caribbean and Latin America with Afro-descendants. She has developed biblical readings from an Afro-descendant perspective.
The Women's Division (www.umwmission.org) represents United Methodist Women, an organization of nearly one-million members, whose purpose is to foster spiritual growth, develop leaders and advocate for justice. Members raise close to $25 million a year for programs and projects related to women, children and youth in the United States and in more than 100 countries around the world.
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Erik Alsgaard is the communication director for Baltimore-Washington Conference.
Contact: Kelly C. Martini
Communications Director/Information Officer
Women's Division, GBGM
United Methodist Church
(212) 870-3729 FAX (212) 870-3736
www.umwmission.org
kmartini@gbgm-umc.org
