Peace Center of North Iowa

Peace Center of North Iowa Nurturing grassroots efforts for a more just, equitable, diverse and inclusive North Iowa community.

Friends, here's one simple way to help the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio RIGHT NOW:
09/16/2024

Friends, here's one simple way to help the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio RIGHT NOW:

09/16/2024

The 15th anniversary of my ordination was actually one month ago today--life was just too 'rich and full' at that moment to pause and reflect upon the occasion. (The occasion itself was a hot, muggy day and I was midway through pregnancy with my eldest and trying to navigate how to wear a robe that didn't 'breathe' particularly well for the length of the service. I have a much more summer-friendly robe these days).

Most of my ministry vocation has been on a non-traditional path, for which I am profoundly grateful. I was technically a second-career minister, after four years overseas as an international human rights worker and interfaith peacemaker. It was a rough landing of sorts into a Chicago seminary community after the expat life and especially after evacuating Baghdad after a year of investigating what the world would later come to know as the Abu Ghraib scandal (hence the need to evacuate once everything really started to come to light and peoples' very understandable resulting anger in response). However, Chicago was a good place for me to continue to be involved in ecumenical and interfaith work, as well as to make friends from around the world.

In fifteen years, unfortunately, some things are still not as changed as I'd hoped they'd be by now-- for example, the closer a pastor is to the 'straight, cisgender, White, male, non-disabled, neurotypical ideal' that many congregations seek, even in the moderate-to-progressive mainline denominations, the more quickly and easily they tend to be ordained, find calls, stay in those calls, and move into positions of leadership or better-paying roles with greater levels of stability. By each degree removed from that ideal, my colleagues tend to struggle. Some are only just now recently finding jobs that are considered 'ordainable calls.' Others have given up entirely, even though they were incredibly gifted and skilled, because of the way they were treated and rejected. I'm still hanging in there, and I am grateful for the congregation I serve part-time, who love me, and love my family, even though they are a tiny rural parish and know their days are limited. I have really found their honesty about who they are and making their time count in the world while they can through acts of service to be refreshing, and it is the happiest I have been in parish ministry so far. I thought they would need to cut back from 1/2 time to 1/4 time for next year but they are going to try to hang in there for the time being. I cannot begin to tell you what enormous faith and courage this takes, and how unusual this is to find in congregations these days.

I also continue to serve as a part time (PRN, or 'per need') chaplain for both our local hospital and Hospice program, and am on-call 4-5 nights per week, often with the pager overnight. I've recently cut back from 1-2 evenings in-house, which is helpful now that the kids are in more activities. I'm looking forward to developing a Hospice community engagement program this fall. I'm also looking forward to spending a bit of time subbing again, most likely out at Pinecrest where I worked when I first came back to Mason City eight years ago. (Pinecrest is our area school for students who have behavioral health concerns that cannot be fully accommodated in a less restrictive/ general education environment, and includes students who are in care at Four Oaks, our area PMIC (psychiatric medical institute for children).

Last week, I submitted a chapter telling the story of the Neurodiversity-Affirming Congregations project and finding our own way as a Neurodivergent family, to the Autism Society of Iowa; and I was delighted to receive word that our group, North Iowa Welcome Wagon, received our grant to help welcome refugees, a project many years in the making and finally nearing fruition.

Locally, I am co-chairing the North Iowa Diversity Appreciation Team, and we are getting ready for our annual Ethnic Luncheon this Friday. We're also getting ready for our annual Diversity Art and Writing Contest, and an All-City Reading project. Later this week we also kick off the year for the Mason City Ministerial Association and welcome our new clergy to the area. Meanwhile, the amazing Meg Markos has now fully taken on the Festival planning aspects of Mason City, IA LGBTQ Pride, and I am now able to focus on my preferred role of Community Care/ Chaplain.

Meanwhile, I am learning the Leadership Team role for the Advocacy Committee on Women and Gender Justice for the PC(USA). I have learned so much since joining in 2023, especially in preparing for this past summer's General Assembly, and participating in the consultation on the Ordination Exams a year ago. We've accomplished a lot, and we also have a long ways to go... but it gives me a great deal of hope in the future of the PC(USA), and for a future for mainline/ progressive Christians ecumenically...

I take baby steps forward on writing, composing, publishing when I can. I have the really lovely gift of some office space waiting for me this fall, for which I am profoundly grateful. I am also looking forward to continuing to grow the Iowa Faith Leadership Network, the Center for Faith and Peacemaking, and the Peace Center of North Iowa. I hope that part of that journey will include some form of an ecumenical/ interfaith friendly, nonviolent peacemaking/ worship community in North Iowa that is fully LGBTQIA+ inclusive, perhaps in due time.

Many thanks to you all who have been companions along this journey, and may we continue to sojourn together for many years more!

09/14/2024

Love Thy Immigrant Neighbor.

09/14/2024

I'd rather have Haitian neighbors
than live in a country
ruled by Hate.

08/10/2024

These days society tells us that we do not need higher education to get a good job in manufacturing or industry; and that might carry us down the road for ten or fifteen years until manufacturing collapses again (or real estate, or construction, or any other industry).

I grew up in the 80s, in the midst of the Farm Crisis; on the heels of the Manufacturing Crisis; both of which led to the emptying of Midwest smaller towns and the closings of oh so many school districts and churches and businesses as children moved hours away in search of work, because there were so few decent-paying jobs to be found without a college degree; the resulting despair is a primary reason we went through the M**h Crisis and the Opioid Crisis (let alone the less famous but always there Alcohol Crisis and Mental Health Crisis) only a few years later. The bulk of my pastoral care in the communities I have served over the course of my vocation has been attending to the long-term fallout of these economic realities.

There really are very few, if any, vocational fields, higher education or not, that are truly recession-proof for a foreseeable 40-50 year working life. And of those that are, all 8 billion of us on the planet can't just be that one job, because we need all types of jobs in order to make society work.

The folks best able to survive times when their vocational field collapses for months or years at a time are those who are able to adapt their skills to a new field. Often, that is where any level of higher education will come in handy--from community college up through a bachelors' or masters,' with appropriate career counseling. Education is also often a lot easier to finish when you don't have to juggle parenting and household chores or other midlife adult responsibilities and bills as well.

One of the more painful things I see is families who get jobs that 'didn't need college,' whether or not they really wanted to pursue higher education; and the job does perhaps provide a materially manageable enough life, just up to the point where their children don't quite qualify for enough need-based financial aid...but also the job doesn't pay enough to have ever saved up for higher education or to pay the bills otherwise--so the children must choose their vocational gamble between loans and a job that 'doesn't need college,' knowing that neither one really guarantees a path to economic security over the course of a lifetime.

This fall, my oldest starts high school and I find myself reflecting heavily on this point in history in our state and our world, as well as where I've been in my life since school. if I want anything for my kids, it's the things I learned and experienced when I was at Wartburg College (which if you are not from North Iowa, is a smaller Midwestern liberal arts college in the ELCA Lutheran tradition, focused on developing students for lives of leadership and service). Right now, our state's politicians are so focused on limiting what our K-12 public school teachers can teach and what students can read (even classic works of literature) because they might mention that human sexuality or diversity exists-- and I know I alone as a parent and pastor have limited time and money and resources to show my children the world that others don't want them to see or know about. (And I know they are tweens and teens who maybe don't want to have to learn everything from...Mom...)

I know that for my children to have the opportunities that I have had in my life, they need higher education. Even though our U.S. system of funding higher education is wildly imperfect, education itself still has great value and is worth trying to pursue, if it is of great value to you and your family, and if there is any way possible to make it work. (I still maintain that it's not worth it if your kid hates doing schoolwork apart from any disability support or social stigma issues they may have and are really only going to party until they flunk out. Better then to save the money and help them buy a house. However, I found both disability support and that my social stigma struggles improved when I graduated from public school and went to college and got to discover other people in the world).

I think it's fine to tell young people, "if you don't *want* to go to college, there are other ways to make a living and succeed in life, and we will help you find them." However, the constant messaging towards young people that they 'don't need college to get a good job,' which appears to be primarily driven by the worker shortage in manufacturing and industry as well as by the same politicians banning books and DEI programs, concerns me deeply and I will continue to fight against that tide. It also leaves out entire categories of vocations that often do, over time, offer greater opportunities for advancement and income, if someone does have the education. If a young person wants to find a way to pursue higher education, even if they face obstacles to getting there, I will do everything in my power to help them find a way.

2024, Rev. Le Anne Clausen de Montes is a pastor, chaplain, community organizer, author, and composer living in North Iowa. Prior to seminary and ministry, she was an international human rights worker and interfaith peacemaker in the Middle East and on the U.S./ Mexico border. She helped train hundreds of international volunteers in human rights documentation and reporting during the Second Intifada era and worked alongside Israeli and Palestinian human rights and peacemaking organizations for three years. She then spent a year in Iraq helping to document the Abu Ghraib scandal before it became a household term; and in 2008, she became a Prisoner of Conscience in a federal facility for participating in a nonviolent protest against the use of torture at the U.S. Army School of the Americas. She is currently involved in multiple community-building projects in North Iowa, and working to develop the Peace Center of North Iowa, which will include the Iowa Faith Leadership Center and the Center for Faith and Peacemaking; and is preparing to welcome the first refugee family to North Iowa through the Welcome Corps program.

08/08/2024

We are only within one human lifetime of Western Europe lying in post-war tattered ruins.

We are within half a human lifetime of most Middle Eastern and Central Asian (Iran, Afghanistan) women living, working, studying in universities, driving, and wearing clothes just like U.S. women did at the time.

The day before the invasion of Ukraine, its citizens sipped coffee in street cafes.

The world changes so quickly. Never take what you have for granted, or believe that nothing 'like that' could happen 'here.'

Treasure the people around you, share with those who have less than you, and vote and act for a better world for everyone.

-Rev. Le Anne Clausen de Montes, 2024

Address

Mason City, IA
50401

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Peace Center of North Iowa posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organization

Send a message to Peace Center of North Iowa:

Shortcuts

Share

Category