Liberate Yourself. Find a Christian Base Community.

So this last weekend we all spilt up and headed out for our Church Accompaniment project.
We split into groups of 2, 3 or 4 and headed to all different departments of El Salvador to stay in Christian Base Communities.
The goal or idea of the project was to see first the formation of a Christian Base Community and also to see how they percieve and practice Liberation Theology (cuz that happens to be what were studying right now)
Also christian base communites are Communities of people who have left the strains of the church to practice more freely Liberation theology...which if you dont know much about i would STRONGLY suggest you look into it... like read some Oscar Romero or Jon Sobrino or Gustavo Gutierrez.

So my friend Arpita and I headed out to a Urban community about 15 minutes away from our Guest house to accompony Sister Anita and 'leader' (really loosely using the term leader) of this CBC

Our CBC worked on a few main ideas:
1. equality between every of its members
2. no need for one main priest or pastor or one main leader in general
3. They use a rotating list of people who prepare the service each week
4. Never forget... they really work at never letting go of the members of families and the community and of the movement who died in the Confict and struggle

So for example there is a group of about 15 students who are and youth group of the community and they are given just as much respect and open space in the community, they are also expected and allowed to lead and prepare for the services when they are in the rotation

Also they call their service, "the Celebration of the Word", they also call is mass, because this comunity comes out of a catholic backgrond, but they consider their service to be a celebration.... that is pretty beautiful to me.

On sunday at the celebration there were about 45-50 people present and mroe then the majority of the community Spoke at some point or another as part of the planned or unplanned celebration. Children, Women and Men alike, everyone spoke with equal respect and equal authority - seriously even like the 6 and 7 year old kids.

It was pretty beautiful to see a community create for themselves a way of remembering and celebrating the things which liberate them. They hold on to their faith in a way that I have yet to experience in the states.... partically because when an ENTIRE community experiences the same trauma and grief like all of El Salvador has here, the Entire community stands of and calls for change... we haven't experienced anything like that in the states.

seriously read up on Oscar Romero, the massacures of the Jesuits, the Conflict in El Salvador in the 80s and Liberation Theology.