Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Talking Racial Reconciliation in the Episcopal Church



A CONVERSATION WITH SHANEEQUA BROKENLEG: TALKING RACIAL RECONCILIATION AND THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH

Jul 29 - Written By Chris Corbin

Editor’s Note: This interview was edited slightly for clarity and style. 

Chris Corbin: Is there anything about your background that brought you to racial reconciliation work?

Shaneequa Brokenleg: As a person of Color, it's always been something that we do from a very young age. I think you learn about race and hear it talked about early on. Also, in the church context, I didn't realize that The Episcopal Church had white people in it until I went to a convention with my grandpa either in Pierre or Sioux Falls. I actually thought, in my infinite wisdom, that The Episcopal Church was run by the Indian Health Service because everything in the church said IHS—I didn't realize until later that “IHS” was the monogram for Christ. I used to think, “Oh, they care about our physical health, but they also care about our spiritual health.”

C: You talk about not realizing there were white people in The Episcopal Church and being a person of color. What is your background?

S: I'm American Indian, specifically I'm Sicangu Lakota from the Rosebud Reservation. Most of my understanding of The Episcopal Church came from my grandpa who was an Episcopal priest and my uncle who was an Episcopal (and then Orthodox) priest. It was later when I actually lived with my grandparents that I saw, and they talked to me about, racism in the Church. There would be things that would come up, or something would happen, and my grandpa would be angry and my grandma would be angry or hurt. I think as a child I saw disparities around me in my community and then as an adult, in my work as an epidemiologist, I saw systemic health disparities. Research that I did was treated differently than data that came from the state. For example, people might not believe my data even though you know, my data had a sample size of 350 and theirs had a sample size of 15. There was the sense that they just don't think you know what you're doing.

C: Would you say public health work impacted your approach to doing racial reconciliation work in the church?

S: Yeah, I think if you come from a Western culture you think things can fit into neat little boxes, but from a Lakota perspective it's really hard to do that. Everything to me is like one gigantic Venn diagram with circles everywhere and they’re all overlapping and they all connect with each other. So, you can't look at physical health without understanding spiritual health or you can't understand the health disparities without looking at the past and the historical trauma that helped create them. In public health one of the things that’s really depressing is that if you know someone’s zip code, you know their life expectancy. COVID is harming people of color disproportionately; that's a symptom of the structural violence and structural racism that exists in our society.

C: What are some of the struggles, as well as gifts, for the work you do of being Native and thus not fitting into the standard white/Black dichotomy for race in this country?

S: That's a good question. I think Native people often look for something different in the conversation about race and reconciliation. I think a lot of people of color want equal rights or to be treated equally, but I think because of our specific histories and the fact that we are the first peoples of this land, we often want the rights that we were guaranteed in the treaties, and these are often separate and different from other people’s rights. A lot of that comes into play when you think about land use issues like resource extraction and hunting and fishing rights. In terms of race, some people have the ability to pass or have what we would call “skin privilege.” Then there is the history of some American Indians in the South historically being treated more like white people, creating this conflict between Black and Native folks in that area. It’s played out differently where Natives weren’t treated as white people. Getting back to what gift being Native has brought to this work, I often think about it in terms of Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ, “we are all related.” Everyone is my relative and not just people but also all of creation, so we have a responsibility to be a good relative, which I think is the overarching message of the Gospel. I also think about racial reconciliation with the idea or concept of wólakȟota, or “being in right relationship with everything”: right relationship with the Creator, right relationship with ourselves, right relationship with creation, and right relationship with each other. And so, if you're not treating each other as a relative or as a good relative then then you're not in right relationship and not working toward reconciliation.

As an aside, I should explain the difference between equality and equity because we often talk about desiring equality when we really should be talking about equitable treatment. Equality is when everybody is the same, like if we said we're going to buy everybody a pair of shoes and they're all going to get Nikes® with no regard for size. Equity is when you get a pair of shoes that fit and meet the needs that you have. It’s not just giving out steel-toed Timberland®’s if people need work shoes. Not everybody's a construction worker. That's not going to work for everybody. If you're a nurse you're going to need those fancy big soled nurse’s shoes. If you work in an office, you’ll probably need dress shoes.

C: Have you found that being Native, and being specifically Lakota, has certain challenges in entering into discourse about racial reconciliation in The Episcopal Church?

S: Yeah—I think our Church has too often thought of race as basically a Black and white thing. I think the other thing is American Indians make up such a small portion of the entire population as a whole that often our voice gets silenced. Here’s a concrete example: the police officer who murdered George Floyd also murdered an Indigenous person years before and it didn't get the same hearing I think that George Floyd is getting. It’s obviously not a competition of who's oppressed more or anything, but had they taken that death seriously at the time and had then-Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar actually prosecuted the officer, George Floyd might not have ever been killed in the first place. I also think sometimes the rural nature of Indian Country can also silence the voices a little bit more. There's this whole wealth of information and knowledge and learning and theology from a Native perspective, rooted in our way of life that The Episcopal Church hasn't really tapped into but could really learn and benefit from.

C: What led you from the public health world into ordained ministry, and do you see some path from public health to racial reconciliation?

S: I actually started the discernment process in Minnesota, but I just wasn't done by the time I finished college, so the bishop said I could go to seminary, but if I didn’t get through discernment, I would have just wasted my time. And so, I was like “Okay, well, I'll do something else.” I actually missed the deadline to apply for the social work program and that's how I ended up in public health. Then when I was in Wisconsin doing public health and being an epidemiologist, that call started to come back up again. And then I recognized the disparity all around me and saw that there were almost no clergy of color. How was it that our churches don’t reflect the communities they're in? I was at a church right next to a reservation and I was the only person of color in that congregation. It's not that they don't want to do it, it’s more that these communities are like, “We really would love to work with the Indigenous people, but we just don't know how to do that and we don't know what to do.” They need somebody to shepherd that process. Part of where I see my connection to a lot of ministry and work is my role as a wíŋtke, which is a third gender in Lakota culture. Traditionally we walked between the masculine and feminine and the natural and supernatural and were kind of healers. I see public health being like physical healing while my role as a priest in the Church as the spiritual healing. I think you need to heal the person as a whole in both those areas if you actually want to create change. My Lakota name is the same as my grandfather: Tȟokȟála Eháke—Last Warrior, or, more accurately, last member of the kitfox warrior society. This is the person in battle who stays behind so that others can get away. I think of who’s being left behind and how I can inspire and empower them, and ultimately how we can transform things so that no one’s left behind.

C: I want to own that in this piece a white person is interviewing a person of color about educating me and other white people on these issues, and I know that this can easily become an unhelpful and damaging dynamic. How can white people enter fruitfully into these kinds of dialogues in a way that is respectful and non-exploitative?

S: That's a really good question. I think in any culture in any community, there are people that will act as liaisons. Look in different communities to find those folks first because they're the ones who will be able to usher you through. It’s similar to how if you wanted to become a Christian there will be catechists who would help you rather than just finding any generic person in church who may feel like they barely know how to be a Christian themself. But I think in terms of communities of color there's going to be folks who sort of act as go-betweens for the communities and other cultures. As you're building relationships with people of other ethnicities and cultures, figure out what it is that you have in common and what are things that you can do together. Do you see someone who’s different from you going fishing every time you’re fishing? Maybe you ask them about how they cook their fish, if they like to cook or even invite them over for a fish fry. Then it’s not putting the onus in the relationship on race, which will still probably come up naturally. Also, I think as you’re building relationships don't expect them to fit into what your mold for a relationship looks like, because that's often a mistake that we make

Again, think about where your goal is for building a relationship. If your goal for building a relationship is that you’re white and they’re a person of color, that's probably not going to work the best. But if your goal is they’re in your neighborhood and you both care about your neighborhood, or, maybe, you both like gardening, or you want to invite them to something that you’re doing, that's going to provide a much better foundation. These two points, building authentic relationships, and not having preconceived expectations about that relationship, came together for me in Watertown (SD). They asked me to work with the drug court, and I went there expecting something like, “Now, I'm going to be doing a 12-step Eucharist, and I'm going to be doing spiritual direction,” but when I shared my ideas with them, they didn't like any of the ones that I had expected. Instead, they needed what was at the very bottom of my list: help with financial literacy and help with healthy relationships.

C: When we’re dealing with racial reconciliation in The Episcopal Church, which is about 90% white, we’re often talking about reconciling with people who are not part of the body or have been marginalized in our communities. Do you have any suggestions for well-meaning white people who are just not accustomed to thinking about race or primarily want to think about racial reconciliation as being “color blind?”

S: Let me first mention something for racial reconciliation that The Episcopal Church does have, namely Building Beloved Community. In it there are four steps: Proclaiming the Dream, Telling the Truth, Repairing the Breach, and Practicing the Way of Love. I think all of those things again come down to relationships. Let me tell you some stories. As a wíŋkte I have this walking between the worlds thing, but that also comes from being half white and half Native. I remember with my white Grandma one of her favorite things was to say, “I just don't see color; I don't even know that my Black friend, Janice, is Black.” To this I was always like “Well, Grandma, she wouldn't be your Black friend Janice if you didn't know she was Black.” I think many well-meaning folks are aware that racism exists and they think the solution is to pretend there's no such thing as race or to ignore it, but that fails to see one’s full humanity or fails to see the person as a whole. So, it’s not that we don't want to see colors—it’s that we need to see all colors and we need to see them all as beautiful. I sometimes talk about people as flowers and each petal of their flower is like a part of their identity. And so, one of the petals might be race, another one might be ethnicity. Another one might be socioeconomic status or gender or class, and I think we need to see people as a whole flower and not just as one of their petals. Similarly, what we've done as a church and as a society is said that some flowers are more beautiful than others and we're only going to care about those flowers and those pedals, which is also profoundly unhelpful.

C: It sounds like in part what you're saying is that to talk about and recognize race is not to make someone just their race.

S: Right, and that we can't pretend that it's not there because it is, and we have to talk about it. If you think about things like domestic violence or sexual abuse or addiction, the reason why they can fester is because there’s this unwritten rule that we don't talk about it. We need to bring it out in the open and talk about racism. One of the things I wish we did better as a society, but especially as a church, is really work on how to talk to people who think differently from us—where else could you possibly talk about something controversial or difficult if not in the church? Church should be the place where you could talk about whatever and be able to be heard and listened to while also hearing and listening to others. That dialogue helps you build relationships and transformation take place because you stop seeing somebody as an object, as a Black man, and begin to see them as George Floyd, a father, somebody who was active in their church: You can change that through that dialogue, through that engaging with each other.

C: As we’re talking about the often-unacknowledged reality of race and ethnicity, this may be a place to speak a little more about the concepts of race and ethnicity. I’ve been told, and have seen, that Lakota culture tends to see what we may call race and ethnicity much more fluidly than Western cultures do, and I wonder if that could be a helpful place to jump into the conversation?

S: I think in terms of how we culturally think about who is and who is not Lakota, that's very true. It's much more fluid. It's not based on skin tone or biology (if there even is such a thing as biological race, which I don't think there is). In our culture, you are Lakota if you live your life as a Lakota person and are a member of the community. Do you exemplify the values of the community? Are you engaging in community life as a member? This is especially exemplified with the huŋká relative where we adopt certain people to become relatives. You may even think of formation as a Lakota person as similar to how you were formed as a Christian. That is how we tend to think of it. Blood-quantum was an imposition by outsiders as a way actually of trying to make Native Americans cease to exist.

C: What is Blood Quantum?

S: It's a very unfortunate thing. It’s basically the idea that in order to be considered Native you had to have a certain amount of “Native blood” or ancestry. In order to be enrolled in the tribe, they usually think you have to be “so much” Indian. The law says that you can only be enrolled in one tribe so here would be an example. My grandma is Dakota. My grandpa is Lakota. So technically I'm 25% Dakota 25% Lakota, but I'm enrolled as half because the two tribes are similar so they accept each other's blood Quantum. But, for example, if I was half Navajo and half Lakota, we can only be enrolled in one tribe. So, in that instance, I'd be listed as part Native even though technically I'm a hundred percent American Indian. And for American Indians there’s a fear sometimes of not being Indian enough. This can create this tension where we sort of pick at each other. This is what we might call lateral violence or lateral oppression, and it only serves to help the oppressor. Some of it has to do with how we internalize who we are while some has to do with how we then externalize that onto others. One example of this lateral violence would be when people claim that someone’s not Black enough or they're not Indian enough. The whole idea of crabs in the bucket pulling each other down is lateral violence. It's unfortunate and it's not helpful. Relatedly, there’s this idea of whose oppression is worse or more which is also unhelpful.

Getting back to the question about race or race and ethnicity, these are socially constructed things. We may think of them as fixed, especially race, but if we look at history, Greeks and Italians were put in the nonwhite category and the people of color category and somewhere along the line they got moved into the white category. As an aside, it may be worth asking how quickly did that transform how they interacted with other communities of color when this happened. Ethnicity I would think of as the cultural piece of who one is so, in my case, Lakota that would be an ethnicity versus Native American, Indian, or Indigenous, which would be the race. You can also think about Afro-Caribbean versus African American versus African as three different ethnic groups with unique cultural identities (and even within Africa, of course, there's like you got a host of different ethnic groups), but Black would be the racial identity.

C: You talk about race as a social construct, which is what a lot of critical race theory would put forward, but my sense is most people “on the ground” think of race as something essential or biological. Can you talk a little bit about how those two concepts relate to each other? Also, does saying something is a social construct make it less real?

S: Well, first of all politics are a social construct and they're very much real. I can't test somebody's blood and say, “Oh, you're a Republican or a Democrat.” At the same time, you can see how faulty biological assertions about race are. There's more variance within any one racial group than there is between the groups. And I think the things that people like to think about biologically are almost always proven to be untrue or there's something else interacting with it. For instance, some people talk about Black women having shorter gestational time for pregnancy or more stillbirths, that has much more to do with the stress that they're under. You can look to the rates of cortisol in their blood and compare that to nonblack women under similar stress and the differences disappear. What we might think of as a biological trait is actually a result of how they’re treated and so a lot more about the racism that they’re facing than anything else.

C: Getting to how our churches can concretely enter into this work, are there things that a predominantly white church that wants to enter into work for racial reconciliation within the church can do, including communities that feel afraid of doing inappropriate or culturally appropriative things?

S: I've heard a lot of my white friends on Facebook posting about that issue. One of them said something along the lines of, “I'm really confused. This is my neighborhood. There’s all this stuff going on and I want my children to do the right thing. I don’t know what to do. I want people to be able to voice their anger and concern about what happened with George Floyd and I'm angry about it too, but also want to protect my family and I just want to be a good human. I don’t know how to be a good human right now.” And I think that anxiety is really real for people so I just want to acknowledge that. It may not always be so present as it was for her, but I think it’s present for everyone, and again I think that's why sometimes it's easier for people to ignore it because they don't have to deal with that cognitive dissonance that they feel. But the reality is as white people in society you have privileges that you receive that are unearned and I think you have to think about what your responsibility with that privilege is as a Christian and as a human being. Concretely it doesn't help anyone to be silent—silence only ever hurts the people who are oppressed. It doesn't hurt the oppressor. As a church, you can do a curriculum called “Sacred Ground,” which is a free resource, it consists of a series of 10 meetings. There’s usually some sort of learning piece like a video you watch or an article to read and then you talk about it as a group. It’s a free curriculum for Episcopal congregations. While it was designed originally for white folks to talk about race in the church, anyone is welcome to participate. Katrina Browne and other folks are working on a revamped version more for multicultural or people of color to enter the conversation. Another thing is for clergy to preach and talk about race in church. We sometimes just wring our hands like “I don't know what to do,” but don't do nothing—preach about it. We’ve also developed some resources around Learn, Pray, Act. We're trying to keep it really short—like five or six things in each category. A really simple but overlooked thing is to ask how you are interacting with your neighborhood. Do they know who you are? Do you know the other agencies and businesses and people in your neighborhood? Another thing you could do is invite different people to come together and just have a dialogue and ask them a question like “What pressures are on your family right now?” If you have little groups of six or eight you’ll start to hear stuff come out and it's often through those gatherings that churches can find things to focus on to help transform their community. A good example of that would be some of the stuff that happened in South Dakota around predatory lending. They listened to people and heard them say, “I don't know how to make ends meet and I do these loans and then I end up losing my car.” These conversations helped them put energy into working against predatory lending practices and helped to get legislation passed that pushed these businesses out of the state.

C: It's wild how difficult we try to seem to make this when, at the end of the day, it sounds like one of the most helpful things is to go and build relationships with people who are in your community who are different from you.

S: Yes, it's wild that that's got to be something we have to talk about and remind people to do.

C: Is it right that some of that fear about saying or doing the wrong thing is mitigated by the relationships because once you actually have a relationship, there’s more grace?

S: Yes, absolutely, and part of growing and learning is making mistakes. I mean, ideally, they are mistakes that don’t permanently hurt someone, but through building those relationships, you’ll make small mistakes at the beginning, learn from them, and then you won’t ever make a mistake in a big way. It’s akin to learning to dance: You're going to step on people’s feet every once in a while. But then when you're really good at dancing, they'll be no more feet stepping. It’s the same thing when it comes to learning how to be in relationship with others. One of the things that I think is helpful is talking to the organizations and businesses in your community. Do the elementary schools know that you're there? We have a lot of elders in our churches who feel like this relationship building is not possible because of age or mobility. But offer to go read to folks. When you get to know people around you and build relationships it's a lot harder to hold on to fear of them as the other. When I lived in Seattle, I worked with homeless and at-risk kids. We did outreach on the streets of Seattle in the red-light district. People would ask, “Aren’t you afraid they're gonna hurt you?” But no—you're building relationships. You're just engaging in conversation. We always have stuff to give them like condoms or bleach kits or socks, too, but what was interesting was the longer I lived there the more I saw those kids grow up and intersect in other parts of my life. Some ended up as bouncers at the clubs I would go to or would be working at the grocery store.

C: There was an interesting tweet I saw earlier basically saying basically if you look around at the conditions for people of color in America, you’re left with either thinking there is something wrong with people of color, which is the racist option, or there is something wrong with America. It seems that in building these relationships it becomes a lot harder to go with the racist option.

S: Right and I think part of that is what’s called in the social sciences the Just World Phenomenon. We think that the world is just so if something bad happens to someone, it must be because they did something to cause it. We see that even all the way back in the Bible. We know the story where people ask, “Why is this person blind?” and it’s just assumed that it's because of something the person or their parents did. But Jesus corrects this saying that everything is not about what the individual or their family did.

C: Speaking from the reality of responses I’ve seen from white folks before, especially around claims to white privilege or feelings of undue responsibility for engaging in dismantling systemic racism, are there any ways that we can enter into this conversation in a way that can disarm some of those challenges or questions?

S: To begin with, it probably helps to frame the conversation around how much of the burden of the results of racism is already being borne by people of color. It’s not just emotional or mental discomfort—it's often life or death, real constant suffering and trauma. That said though, if someone challenges the idea of white privilege or the idea of their personal responsibility for dismantling these systems, I always try and seek first to understand, to see where they’re coming from. Are they truly feeling overburdened in their own life or are they just coming to church to be comfortable? If you're just coming to church to be comfortable, don't go to church, go to a country club. As the church, we’re called to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world and that means working and sometimes that even means, you know, sacrificing your life. Think of cases like Bonhoeffer’s. And today, the work that we need to do as Christians has a lot more to do with how we're really showing love to others, which means stepping out of your comfort zone and means doing things that might be simple but not easy and it means checking your privilege. I think one of the benefits of white privilege is you can avoid even talking about it or knowing about it if you want, but that also means you can’t expect people to completely change immediately and suddenly. It’s not dissimilar to how you expect people to become practicing Christians. You're not going to expect somebody whose brand new to Christianity to understand the Daily Office. You have to start really basic: Here's the story of Jesus. I think the same is true when we’re talking about race. We can't just go and expect somebody to be “woke.” You should try to learn and when you make a mistake (and you will) apologize and move on. I think again people know if you're trying to be in relationship with them and that is key. When you're trying to learn a language, you're going to make so many mistakes speaking the language but people usually, in my experience at least, are so happy that you’re even trying to learn the language they’ll help you through that.

One of the difficult things about race and racism that people think is that it’s a binary: If you’re a racist you're bad and if you're not racist you’re good. But it exists on a spectrum that's part of a larger social structure. So, if you're a part of that structure, you are racist in the fact that you're part of that structure and that you have privilege from it. We have to stop thinking of it as someone is a racist or is not a racist and instead think about whether we’re able to move on the spectrum toward being less racist and helping to dismantle racist structures. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we think of it primarily as a question of morality, of being personally good or bad. I would think of it more as like are you moving in the right direction? I don't care if you're crawling and stumbling in that direction or if you're running. I just think everybody should be moving in that direction. And I think we as people have different things in our life. And so, it's up to us to figure out what that looks like for ourselves rather than judging others for not doing enough. At the same time, I think we can help by educating and by holding up a mirror to folks and saying, “Hey, this is what I'm seeing. What do you see?”

C: Well thank you so much for sitting down to do this interview with me.

S: It’s my pleasure.

from an article originally in Earth & Altar

Gun Violence in America


FROM: BISHOPS UNITED AGAINST GUN VIOLENCE

Dear People of God in the Episcopal Church,

In Revelation 21:4, we learn that in the new heaven, God will wipe every tear from our eyes. In her novel “Gilead,” Marilynne Robinson tells us that “it takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.” Today God’s people are weeping over the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and gun violence, and we are called once again to respond.

The spiraling rate at which Americans are buying firearms during the pandemic is driving a deadly spike in gun violence. According to researchers from the University of California, Davis and the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center, Americans bought 2.1 million more firearms in March through May 2020 than over the same period in previous years. That was just a prelude to June, when Americans bought 2.4 million firearms, a 145 percent increase from June 2019.
This gun buying surge has, not surprisingly, begat a surge in gun violence. Authors of the University of California paper estimated that 776 additional injuries or deaths occurred across the nation between March and May. And according to Everytown for Gun Safety, the Gun Violence Archive’s records indicate that 345 more people died of gun shots between March and May than during the same period in previous years.

Like so much else about the COVID-19 crisis, the surge in gun violence has hit communities of color hardest.

In New York City, twice as many people were shot this June than last June, and police say 97 percent of those victims were people of color. In Chicago, shootings this June were 76 percent higher than last, and concentrated heavily in communities of color. In Louisville, where protests have proliferated after Breonna Taylor was shot in her own home by the police in March, non-fatal shootings have doubled over the same period last year, gun deaths have risen by 40 percent, and between January and May, almost 75 percent of homicide victims were Black. And in June, as people took to the streets across the country in peaceful protests against racism, gun buying surged highest in states with the highest levels of overt racism.

Too many people, researchers tell us, are motivated to buy guns by anxiety and fear.

As Christians, we know that Jesus tells us not to be afraid. And as advocates, we know that having a gun in the home in the midst of a pandemic does little to guarantee safety. Abused women are five times more likely to be killed if their abuser has a firearm. Children are at significantly greater risk playing in a home with an unsecured gun. The guns Americans are buying today will be wreaking havoc on our streets and in our homes long after the pandemic has passed.

The kind of sensible gun reforms that Bishops United Against Gun Violence supports could help change this situation, but they have been thwarted by politicians of both parties who offer only thoughts and prayers in the wake of mass shootings rather than meaningful reforms.

We urge you to change this situation by voting for candidates who support sensible gun reforms and ensuring that all citizens have the opportunity to vote. Our partners at Brady: United to Prevent Gun Violence and March for Our Lives have put together an excellent toolkit highlighting the essential link between voting rights and our country’s ability to enact popular and sensible gun safety legislation. Racist and discriminatory voter suppression is rampant in our country, and the communities most affected by gun violence — namely Black and Latinx communities — face the greatest barriers.
The campaign seeks to mobilize gun violence prevention activists to lobby for expanding voting access across four broad categories:

1. Vote by mail and absentee voting
2. Online and same -- day voter registration
3. Early voting
4. Restoring voting rights

We urge you to become active in this campaign in the coming months, to make sure that you, your family and friends are registered to vote, and to have a back-up voting plan should the pandemic make voting in person risky. We also ask that you contact your U. S. Senators if they are not up for reelection this year and let them know you would like them to pass the sensible gun reform bills currently stalled in that chamber.

To ensure that Episcopalians are informed voters on gun violence issues, soon after Labor Day, we plan to gather partners from gun violence prevention organizations to help us learn more about how we can continue working and voting against the pandemic gun buying surge and its deadly aftermath. We invite you to follow the Episcopalians Against Gun Violence Facebook page for details and registration coming soon.

Since our inception, the advocacy of Bishops United Against Gun Violence has been rooted in gospel values and sustained by communal prayer. While we cannot gather in person, we know that many of you have become accustomed to worshiping online. Therefore, in September, we are planning to host on our Facebook page a churchwide Service of Lamentation for all those whose lives have been touched by gun violence. Please follow the page for details coming soon. Together we will weep for those we have lost, grieve the fear that leads us astray, and prepare to witness at the ballot box and in the halls of Congress to the God of life who overcomes death, now and forevermore.

Faithfully,

Bishops United Against Gun Violence

Wednesday Meditation: Habit of Grace


Habits of Grace - July 27 - Habits of Grace: An invitation for you, from Presiding Bishop Curry

July 27, 2020: Prayer into action

Earlier this week, I was preparing a very brief meditation for a kind of public service announcement on prayer in the time of pandemic. And as I was preparing, something dawned on me that I wanted to share with you. There are two instances and there may be others to be sure, in both the Hebrew scriptures and in the New Testament where you see prayer linked directly with action.

One example is found in First Kings where the prophet Elijah is fleeing for his life. He, in Chapter 19, says he ends up at a cave near Mount Horeb, which is Mount Sinai in other places. And there for 40 days, he's in prayer, fasting and struggling. And after that time of prayer, when he kind of senses what God wants him to do, he then goes out and leads a reformation in Israel that was really significant.

His prayer led him to action. You see the same kind of pattern in Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, he's praying about what he should do. And that leads him to make the decision to give his life, to show what love looks like for the cause and way of love. But it's that prayer that leads to action. It occurred to me that in this time of pandemic, it may be helpful to remember that our prayer can lead to actions. We can't do all the things that we used to do, but we can do some things. We can pray, pray for all of the conditions and all of the situations that we are aware of in our world, and that we are aware of because of this pandemic, but also take some action. There are ways we can support causes that help people in this time.

There are ways that we can support ministries that are helpful, but there's some simple ways. We can keep social distance. That's a way of action. It's an act of prayer. We can pay attention to public health officials and their guidance, that's an action. And we can wear, of course, these. We can wear these face masks. And so I was trying to think of what is a prayer that combines prayer and action in the Book of Common Prayer? And I found it, there are many, but this one stands out.

It's the prayer of St. Francis:
 
Lord make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is discord, union. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
 
Pray and do what you can.
 
God love you. God bless you and keep the faith.

Thoughts on Welcoming and the Episcopal Church Today


Three short articles for you to read if interested, small excerpts from the articles follow each...

Forward Movement: News & Inspiration

In the last few days, I celebrated my ninth anniversary of serving at Forward Movement. These occasions are natural times to reflect on time that has passed. I'm proud of what Forward Movement has done, and I'm grateful for all the leaders who served before me to lay a solid foundation. Everything we do though is only possible because of the remarkable staff. I am profoundly grateful for gifted and passionate colleagues in ministry.

Lately I've been thinking about our beloved Episcopal Church. In the last nine years, I've spent much of my time traveling across the church visiting congregations, dioceses, and various gatherings. I thought on this occasion I might share some thoughts based on what I've seen and heard.
Renewal Works: Monday Matters

Back in the day, I did a fair amount of traveling for RenewalWorks, often meeting in churches in towns I’d never visited before. I loved the adventure, the exploration, the learning. With the help of Google, I’d find my way, but I was always glad to see signs that confirmed I was on the right track. The signs read: The Episcopal Church welcomes you. I could spot them a mile away. I’m grateful for them. Good branding. As far as it goes.

In recent days, I’ve had occasion to think about what it means to be welcoming. Our church is putting together a parish profile. I’m reminded that every profile I ever read describes the church as welcoming. My experience of church visits can suggest otherwise. The folks who craft those profiles are usually folks at the core of those communities, folks who feel the welcome, which is wonderful. I contrast that with the young woman I met on the steps of a church in a big city. She looked up at the imposing façade and asked: Am I allowed to go in there?

Episcopal Church Executive Council: opening remarks from the Presiding Bishop
As you well know, the entire world in varying degrees is faced with a global pandemic of the COVID-19 virus. And in each country, there may be sections that are more affected at one time, others less so. That's certainly true for those of us in the United States. And it's true, I know from listening to Bishop Allen from Honduras, and in other countries as well. And I would just remind you to keep the world in prayer and our medical caregivers and our researchers and our leaders that they will be wise and just and loving in their leadership. And to pray for each other.

These are tough times psychologically; I'm not a psychologist, but we're all a little frazzled and probably a little bit claustrophobic at this point. We've been restricted from the normal human interaction that we would have, which feeds us in a lot of ways that you don't think about until you don't have it. The truth is we are each other's biggest headaches and the truth is we need each other. And being separated like this is just tough on all of us.

And so just remember to encourage everybody to be gentle with each other, to be kind and maybe a little extra kind even. Because everybody's a little bit on edge and everybody's tired and everybody's weary and for good or ill, we've only just begun. This is not even, to borrow from Churchill, this isn't even the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. We're in this for a while.

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Proper 12 Sermon


God of love and grace.
It would be so much easier to be a disciple

If I could just keep the rules;
If I didn't have to navigate 
The dangerous territories of compassion.
But you seek disciples
With hearts of flesh
And not of stone.
You seek disciples
Who are always willing
To lay aside the law
To bind up the wounds
Make me one of those kind. Amen. (Glen Jordan)

As my time with you draws to a close, I keep thinking about our call as disciples of Jesus, that we are called through our baptism to live out of those dangerous territories of compassion and love.

"You are rewarded not according to your work or your time, but according to the measure of your love." – St. Catherine of Siena

It is the measure of our love and what we do with that, from our hearts of flesh that speaks to our faith. In the Gospel for today, Jesus again puts parables before the crowds.

"The kingdom of heaven is like…
·         a mustard seed - sowed in a field; the smallest of all the seeds, the greatest of shrubs
·         yeast used in flour
·         a treasure hidden in a field
·         a pearl of great value
·         a net thrown into the sea to gather fish of all kinds

It is as if to answer the question, What is the Kingdom of heaven like? Jesus didn’t want to settle for one story, so he gave us a few little parables, each giving us a glimpse into what the kingdom of heaven is like. Each is a very faithful message drawn from the daily life of people that Jesus encountered.

It seems that Jesus did not want to just give us one image, but like holding a prism up to the light, he helped us catch different glimpses of what the kingdom is like. A diversity of images to help us all catch and delight in what the kingdom of God is like.

As Lane Denson III, put it, “Parables are not to be explained, they are to be understood, and like most of the important things in life, they are understood only by our opening ourselves to them and listening with wonder and imagination, participating in them in a way.” 

And when we do open ourselves to the parables that Jesus gives us, they we can be open to discover the Kingdom of Heaven that is in our very midst.
Many years ago, a young Maori girl in New Zealand was captivated by the teaching and good works of missionaries who came to her village. She became a fixture at prayer with the fledgling community. One Sunday, as she was leaving the small church, the girl was struck by a potato thrown by a man who resented the presence of the missionaries in his village and those who embraced this strange new religion.

The girl retrieved the potato and brought it home, She cut up the potato, planted it and harvested it. She then sought out the man who had thrown the potato at her and presented him with the bushel basket of new potatoes she had harvested. [from Connections, July 2005]

That young girl understood the parables that Jesus has given us, she found that pearl of great price in a potato thrown, and she made sure to share the abundance with him after the harvest as she had experienced with God’s love.

The kingdom of heaven is like so many things, do we have faith enough to see? To share?

It reminds me of a poem by the welsh priest and poet, R. S. Thomas (The Bright Field):
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it.

Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

May we turn aside in our lives now, in the midst of pandemic and hate, to be those who will bring light, love and compassion into our world. Be it in Monroe or South Dakota… for "love must act as light must shine and fire must burn." – Fr. James Otis Sargent Huntington, OHC

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” – St. Catherine of Siena

May that be so for all of us. Amen.

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Wednesday Noonday Meditation: Mary Magdalene

From a homily on the Gospels by St. Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome (600 CE)

She longed for Christ, though she thought he had been taken away

When Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and did not find the Lord’s body, she thought it had been taken away and so informed the disciples. After they came and saw the tomb, they too believed what Mary had told them. The text then says: "The disciples went back home," and it adds: "but Mary wept and remained standing outside the tomb."

We should reflect on Mary’s attitude and the great love she felt for Christ; for though the disciples had left the tomb, she remained. She was still seeking the one she had not found, and while she sought she wept; burning with the fire of love, she longed for him who she thought had been taken away. And so it happened that the woman who stayed behind to seek Christ was the only one to see him. For perseverance is essential to any good deed, as the voice of truth tells us: "Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved."

At first she sought but did not find, but when she persevered it happened that she found what she was looking for. When our desires are not satisfied, they grow stronger, and becoming stronger they take hold of their object. Holy desires likewise grow with anticipation, and if they do not grow they are not really desires. Anyone who succeeds in attaining the truth has burned with such a great love. As David says: "My soul has thirsted for the living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God?" And so also in the Song of Songs the Church says: "I was wounded by love;" and again: "My soul is melted with love."

"Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?" She is asked why she is sorrowing so that her desire might be strengthened; for when she mentions whom she is seeking, her love is kindled all the more ardently.

"Jesus says to her: Mary." Jesus is not recognized when he calls her “woman”; so he calls her by name, as though he were saying: Recognize me as I recognize you; for I do not know you as I know others; I know you as yourself. And so Mary, once addressed by name, recognizes who is speaking. She immediately calls him "rabboni," that is to say, "teacher," because the one whom she sought outwardly was the one who inwardly taught her to keep on searching.

Nevertheless, she persisted. To the end. And great was her reward. May we all follow Mary Magdalene’s example, find healing in following Jesus and may we persist to the end in love.

Almighty God, whose blessed Son restored Mary Magdalene to health of body and of mind, and called her to be a witness of his resurrection: Mercifully grant that by your grace we may be healed from all our infirmities and know you in the power of his unending life; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.  (BCP)

Sunday, July 19, 2020

John Lewis & The Way of Love #goodtrouble

May John Lewis and C. T. Vivian Rest In God’s Peace and may we, like them, rise up to claim the high call of love, never to cease laboring for a just and humane society and world, always showing compassion, and daily living humbly with God until all God’s children are free.

Link here: