I write this on a flight home from the Philippines, where I spent the last two weeks working on several articles for United Methodist publications.

During the trip, I spent four days in a remote section of Mindanao, the island where ethnic and political conflicts have generated decades of war. I was there to do an article for Response magazine about a feisty Methodist woman who works in an isolated stretch of mountains promoting community-based health programs and basic literacy. It was a fascinating place, in part because she operates both in communities that support the government as well as in others that support the New People's Army, an insurgent group with roots dating back to the 1970s. As a faithful servant of Jesus Christ, she crosses back and forth, nurturing community ministries dedicated to helping people experience the abundance of life that's promised to them in the Gospels, regardless of the political tone of their communities.

My interviews in Mindanao included one with an NPA commander–a 28-year old woman with a marked California accent.

I've been impressed in many places by the ability of the church, when it is truly incarnated among the poor, to refuse to accept the arbitrary ideological boundaries that others seek to impose on it. Two years ago I wrote at length about the work of the church in another part of Mindanao to create zones of peace where Muslims, Christians, and indigenous peoples could resist all the historical pressures to fight each other and work together for a better life. In Sri Lanka after the tsunami, I found the church to be one of the few groups that could work both sides of the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict, despite pressures from many sources (including the U.S. government) that it limit itself to one side. When I covered Haiti last year after the coup, the church was working in both areas controlled by the government as well as those under control of the so-called rebels. During the years I lived in Nicaragua, some of the most courageous people I met were church leaders in war zones who confronted both government soldiers and brutal contra chieftains with demands to minimize the conflict's impact on poor communities. And so on. In lands as dissimilar as Angola and Palestine and Colombia, I've had the privilege of writing about church ministries that refuse to stay within the bounds set by the powerful.

As I reflect on these experiences here in this comfortable but oxygen-deprived environment at 38,000 feet, I recall Barbara Kingsolver's suggestion–in her book Small Wonder–that a "new time has come to us in which we are called out to find another way to divide the world. Good and evil cannot be all there is."

In April I had the privilege of being in El Salvador for the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Oscar Romero, the Catholic archbishop who was assassinated precisely because he stepped past the arbitrary lines of class and politics to embrace the poor and their cause of building God's reign amidst repression and exclusion. Romero was a staunch conservative, both politically and in terms of church doctrine and style, but over time was converted by his contact with the poor and his friendship with priests and other church workers being tortured and killed by the U.S.-basked military. He refused to accept language or faith that maintained the rigid class lines of feudal Salvadoran society, that proclaimed one side as good and the other as evil. Given the inexorable logic of neocolonialism, however, Romero's wonderfully fresh thinking brought him death at the hands of an official assassin. Yet he remains a powerful example of how the Holy Spirit can work with the most stubborn of us to do God's will.

What's fascinating to observe today is how Romero's legacy steadily grows. More people celebrated the anniversary this year than ever before. And thousands of people came from abroad to join in the fiesta, finding in Romero a refreshing source of clear thinking that inspires them to return home to live out the Gospel amidst the challenges of a globalization that seeks to deepen the divisions among us while at the same time providing new tools for communication and dialogue.

Reacquainting myself with life in the U.S. this past year has often left me rather depressed about a church which many days seems more enthralled about its access to power in the nation's capital than its presence among the poor. Yet I'm also repeatedly surprised by the faithful witness of so many of you who reject the arbitrary battles of the culture wars and seek to embrace the poor and marginalized among us not as objects of mission but rather as children of God who come to evangelize us.

Along with people in Mindanao and Haiti and Nicaragua who reject the political divisions of empire in favor of embracing the poor and the dangers that those at the margins face every day, your ministries of inclusion and reconciliation also give me hope. Thanks for your faithfulness.

In the next few days I'm on my way to the Darfur region of the Sudan in order to cover the activities there of Action by Churches Together and UMCOR. But it's been difficult, at times impossible, for journalists to get access there in recent months, so I'll begin the journey by traveling to London on Sunday to see if I can acquire the necessary visa there.

I recently updated the email addresses for my supporting churches, and so some of you may be receiving this who haven't found earlier missives in your inbox. If you're interested, you can find my other letters–and an assortment of articles and photos from various places–on my website at:

www.kairosphotos.com/pauljeffrey

As always, thanks for your encouragement and support. And thanks for your work of mission within your own community, and throughout this fascinating world.

Paul