May 2004

Greetings from Yucatan!

These first few months of the year have been very fruitful. Valerie writes that she is ready to come home after her first year at Austin College in Texas. She has done very well, getting an A in creative writing even though English is her second language. She tested out of French (she wants to spend her junior year abroad in France) and finished her first year of Greek. David and Kristen continue in their schoolwork. Kristen has surprised us recently by going on a reading binge. She has not been an avid reader in the past but in the past few weeks she has read several classics by Charles Dickens and Jules Verne. I am convinced that good literature and the skills one develops to interpret it are of immense help in all areas of life. If you're into reading, try an interesting book by Umberto Eco, About Literature. Another good author is Paulo Coelho. His book, The Alchemist, can be read in a couple of hours and you will reminded how wonderful are stories that both entertain and expand your horizons at the same time.

In my ministry, I continue to plug away at a favorite theme: liturgy is the heart of Christian life. I try to work this into as many different conferences as possible. It does not matter what the subject is, because no one should expect Christian maturity in any form of ministry from those who do not know how to benefit from the means of grace offered by the Holy Church, principally in the divine liturgy. I know for most Presbyterians today this sounds a bit exaggerated, but this is just proof of how far we have drifted from the original Reformers such as Luther and Calvin.

At the end of the two days together I asked the participants to speak directly: Had I gone too far in suggesting we should begin to gently change the minimalist approach to liturgy that has been taken for granted so long? Not at all, they said. Where could they get more information? Did I have patterns to sew an alb? This was a gratifying moment for me because as a spiritual director I experience liturgics as a whole lot more than a question of taste or style. Unless the believers learn how to pass through a symbol into the affective experience the symbol is meant to share (we can call this the gift of the Spirit) worshipers are stuck with merely cognitive knowledge of the faith and this, typically, is not enough to truly transform their existence from creatures of mud into creatures of Divine Love!

My page is about to run out and I would like to share about a somewhat different endeavor, almost as complex as liturgical reform, which is, how to restore the three clerical orders in the Reformed Church, but for this you will have to wait for the next exciting edition of “Greetings from Yucatan!”

To close, let me say that Mexico in general continues only to just stumble along politically. Since the defeat of the PRI party in the presidential election of 1994, the legislature has been fairly evenly divided by three parties. However, since for over 60 years prior to this Mexico was a one-party state, there is no experience in reaching compromise agreements. The result is that the actual president, after nearly four years, has been unable to make the structural changes desperately needed in the country. Pray that Mexican politicians learn how to compromise on tough social-economic issues.

Keep the Holy Church in Mexico in your prayers and surrender your life to Him each day.

Don and Martha Wehmeyer
Valerie, Kristen and David

The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 138