A Word from Laura: A Voice of Wisdom for Today
Western Friends,
My gratitude to all of you who stayed following worship for a time to reflect on the events surrounding the mob insurrection at the Capitol. As we look forward to next week – to remembering Martin Luther King’s birthday, to the transfer of power to a new administration – I remember Susie Farr’s words on Sunday, “I don’t want to forget what happened.”
The white supremacy stirred up by the president and others cannot be ignored. While the violence continues to be disturbing, I’ve also been pleased by the response of corporations, some even going so far as to ask for a “refund” from Josh Hawley in terms of campaign contributions!
We also can’t ignore the voices of those who predicted that President Trump’s dangerous racist rhetoric would manifest itself in further violence. We need to hear from Rev. Canon Kelly Brown Douglas, formerly on staff at the National Cathedral, now Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Seminary in New York, also author of Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. Rev. Douglas’s work connects racism to the myth of Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism in our nation’s history and traces the trend of eruptions in civil violence.
In 2019 Douglas spoke with Don Lemon on CNN to explain the Cathedral’s response to President Trump’s racist remarks about citizens of Baltimore. If you have five minutes, I hope you’ll watch this and note her prophetic words.
If you have longer, I encourage you to watch the Union Seminary webinar Black Theology and White Terror where she and Fred Davie, both on the faculty, consider how Black Liberation Theology speaks to the terrorism of last week and particularly to the complicity of White Christianity.
In response to those who would say “this [racist violence] isn’t America,” Douglas and Davie remind us that this is us, but that we don’t have to stay this way. I look forward to Zoom with you this Sunday – worship and reflection from Cindy Stevens and other Westerners about their pilgrimage to Montgomery.
Western, there’s still work to be done. I give thanks for each of you on this journey, for the Spirit at work in the midst of the chaos right now, and for the spiritual work of justice God has in store,
Laura