Social Justice Saturday --A Season of Prayer: For an Election
We have been talking at St John’s about creating home altars to bring our worship more fully into our homes, at this time of less contact directly with the church sanctuary and space. One way to bring prayer to our altar is to join a 9-day prayer practice for the upcoming election.
Forward Movement and The Episcopal Church Office of Government Relations are calling Episcopalians and all others to join in A Season of Prayer: For an Election.
“We come together, asking God for courage and wisdom, thanking God for love and joy. As we move toward the election of leaders for the United States, may we all join in a season of prayer, committing to offer to God our fears and frustrations, our hopes and dreams.”
Starting October 27 and continuing through the day after the election, A Season of Prayer invites us to pray for the election of leaders in the United States.
Monday Music: Be Grateful My Soul
Social Justice Saturday: Migration, Climate Change, and Art
“Voyagers”, Acrylic and mixed media on canvas.
Artist and parishioner Terry Boutelle has been working on a series of paintings in response to the daily images of migration and the climate crisis. These abstract paintings result from a meditation on migration and the forces that move populations away from their homelands: Escaping war, oppression, poverty, famine and the effects of climate change, seeking peace, security, safety, freedom, and a future.
“Kivalina”, mixed media
“Voyagers”, Acrylic and mixed media on canvas. The year 2015 was the peak of the refugee crisis in Europe, with over a million people migrating to Europe (UNHCR), the majority over the Mediterranean Sea. People have been migrating over the Mediterranean for centuries: To Africa, in the 15th century Jews and Muslims being expelled from Spain, in the 16th through 19th centuries, Europeans moving to colonize African regions and exploit the natural resources there. To Europe, in the 20th century after decolonization, Europeans moving back to Europe, and because of a need for workers, migrants were encouraged to move to Europe in late 20th century. Today refugees from Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East are escaping war, poverty, and the effects of climate change.
“Aralkum”, mixed media on canvas
“Kivalina”, mixed media Among the first villages in the U.S. to be displaced by sea level rise, Kivalina, Alaska sits on an island predicted to be under water by 2025 (Wiki). Others include: Newtok, Shishmaref, Shaktoolik, and Port Heiden.
“Aralkum”, mixed media on canvas The South Aral Sea in Uzbekistan has been diminishing since mid-20th century, resulting in increased child mortality and maternity deaths, and shortened life expectancy. The salination of soils has made them unsustainable for growing food, and the fish population has declined to zero.* *Columbia Univ., The Aral Sea Crisis
“Remnants of War”, acrylic, mixed media on canvas Inspired by the film White Helmets (2016) about the Syrian Civil Defense in Aleppo, Syria, and images of the destroyed city, this painting uses materials such as soil, rebar, cinder blocks, bullets, charred wood, natural material, and acrylic paint. During the Syrian civil war, now in its 10th year, about 5.6 million Syrians have fled to other countries, and another 6.2 million people are displaced within Syria (worldvision.org).
See more at terryboutelle.com
“Remnants of War”, acrylic, mixed media on canvas
Music from Wednesday Evening Prayers - Comfort Me O My Soul
On Wednesday nights at 6:30 PM, members of St. John’s gather on Google Meet to mark the middle of the week with a service of Evening Prayer, helping us move more graciously through the week. For our music, we turn to offerings from Music That Makes Community. This month, we hear and sing along to Comfort Me O My Soul. Enjoy this simple community song below and make it a part of your faith journey through this month. And join Wednesday Evening Prayer any Wednesday at 6:30 PM at this link: Wednesday Evening Prayers.
Social Justice Saturday: Grief and Gratitude
Poem-Prayer: “Grief and Gratitude”
Grief and gratitude
Are the lodestones of our days.
Each pulls relentlessly at the other.
We grieve that we cannot see our loved ones,
With gratitude that they are still alive.
We pour out our laments,
Foreheads to the floor,
All the while grateful that we have a floor beneath us.
We grieve our children’s lost school days
While a dark and bitter gratitude approaches on the horizon:
There will be no school shootings.
We shoulder two stones:
One of grief-stricken gratitude,
The other of grateful grief.
We stagger under the weight of them.
To whom can we offer these muddled, tear-soaked prayers?
To the One who holds both the sorrowful and the joyful mysteries in His hands.
Lord Most Merciful,
Lord, Most Compassionate,
Let us rest, at last, in Your arms.
Amen.
-Cameron Bellm, 2020
Monday Music: Here I Am Lord
Interpersonal Racism and productively intervening in racist behavior
Interpersonal racism is real. It often shows up in subtle and ignorant ways. Everyone, and especially white people, have a role in calling out racism and bigotry, and this can be a hard thing to do in a way that is ultimately productive, inviting someone who has said or done something that perpetuates racism to change or to consider changing.
How do you see your own role and responsibility around “calling in” (as opposed to “calling out” or shaming) others in your family, community, workplace, or school.
Are you comfortable with intervening around racist behavior? If so, what have you found effective? What has not worked?
If you have not been able to intervene productively, why not? What is needed to be able to do this?
A Grocery Store Intervention An example of a productive intervention (4 min.)
Monday Music: God of Justice
Racism Is Not a Historial Footnote
NBA Hall of Fame player Bill Russell writes this thoughtful essay about his experience growing up in Louisiana, as an NBA basketball player, and as a consistent advocate for racial justice and equity, reminding us that racism has not gone away, and our anti-racist actions are as important as ever.
SEP 14 2020
I once interviewed Lester Maddox on my television show. It was 1969 and he was well known at the time as a Southern segregationist and former chicken restaurateur turned politician. Maddox and I had diametrically opposing perspectives. He got out of the restaurant business after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed so that he wouldn’t have to serve Black people, while I once refused to play an exhibition game after a restaurant refused to serve me or my Black teammates.
Maddox made a show out of his refusal to integrate his restaurant. He waved axe handles and guns at peaceful protesters and argued, loudly, that being forced to serve Black people encroached on hisfreedom. He closed his restaurant in Atlanta, ran for governor of Georgia, and won.
So why would I give a platform to an individual who held such racist beliefs? First, part of freedom is allowing everyone — even the most hateful people — to speak. And second, doing so also exposes how a person comes to hold such beliefs. Now, Lester Maddox wasn’t exactly an intellectual giant, so I doubt he would’ve been able to question the culture he had been born into if he tried, but having him on my show exposed him for the fool he was and might have also given other people some things to think about regarding the plausibility of “separate but equal.”
Even though that moment has long since passed, I’m struck by how similar it felt to the moment I’m living through now. In 2020, Black and Brown people are stillfighting for justice, racists still hold the highest offices in the land, and kids today still grow up with cultural norms that aren’t different enough from the ones that Lester Maddox grew up with.
Now, when I say Black and Brown people are still fighting for justice 50 years after I interviewed a prominent segregationist — “an old country boy” who ran for political office on a platform of hate and won[1] — I don’t mean to sound surprised. I’m not. White people are surprised by that. In fact, I find that white people are often surprised that racial injustice still exists outside of a few “bad apples.” This surprise is particularly dangerous because racial injustice is rampant throughout every sector of American society, from education to health care to sports, and the fact that this remains surprising to many reveals exactly how different Black and white people’s experiences of life in America are.
I grew up in Monroe, Louisiana, in the 1930s and early 1940s in a family that managed to laugh despite the racial terror that surrounded us. There was the night the Klan came for my grandpa. He knew they were coming, so he had taken his family someplace safe and then sat at his house waiting for the Klan to arrive. He never said anything about what it felt like to wait, alone in the dark, for men intent on murdering him, but it must’ve been equal parts terrifying and infuriating. When they got there, someone fired a shot, so my grandpa went to get his shotgun so he could shoot back. Grandpa started firing and kept reloading until the Klansmen left. The story was told and retold throughout the community, the rare story of a Black man standing up to injustice without facing brutal repercussions. Everyone would laugh when they reached the point in the story when the KKK left, running. That moment was a moment of sheer relief, even in the telling — but we all knew they could come back the next day.
One time, my dad ran out of gas in his work truck at the end of the day and had to walk home. While he was walking on the road, a couple of white men pulled up next to him in a car and asked, “Boy, can you run?” My father said nothing and kept walking. One of the men waved a gun in the air before repeating the question. My father started running. A bullet whizzed by. My father dove off the road into the ditch to keep from getting killed. When he would tell the story later, he’d say that he yelled at the snakes to move over, which always got a big laugh.
There were some stories no one could laugh about, though — stories about Black men disappearing. That was how lynching happened in those days, quietly, without so much as a line in the newspaper. Black people were too scared to ask publicly what had happened to the men who went missing, although they speculated at home plenty.
All of this might seem like ancient history, with no bearing on today. After all, these are stories from my early childhood, stories that are 80 years old. But in terms of time, 80 years is only a generation or two. Black kids today don’t grow up worried the Klan will kill them in the middle of the night — they worry the police will. The effects of racial terror perpetrated over hundreds of years don’t disappear simply because America wills them to. Yet all is not hopeless. There are ways to make them disappear. They disappear with national reckoning, with an examination of our cultural norms and our power structures, with the dismantling and rebuilding of our institutions, and by ending voter suppression so that everyone can vote for change from the bottom to the top of the ballot. In 1969, Black and Brown folks were fighting against social injustices that are no less pervasive today, the mode of delivery has just changed. They are easy to see if you only look, particularly in politics.
“In 1969, Black and Brown folks were fighting against social injustices that are no less pervasive today, the mode of delivery has just changed. They are easy to see if you only look, particularly in politics.”
When asked about integration for an article published in Esquire in October 1967, Maddox said, with a Southern drawl, “When the government tried to force my customers to sit next to Negroes I got mad. We don’t cotton to that down here. I’m a peaceful man and I always treated my colored help fair with due respect and a decent wage. But I’m not going to live next door, no sir.”[2] In other words, Maddox had nothing against Black people, as long as they were subservient to white people and stayed in their neighborhood. This sentiment is alive and well today. In July 2020, for example, Donald Trump, a New York businessman turned politician tweeted about ending a government program put in place to combat racial segregation in suburban housing: “I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer have to be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood….” Of course, when he said “low income housing” would be built in “your neighborhood” he meant “Black and Brown people” will move to the suburbs, which are still mostly white due to redlining and economic disparities. Despite being separated by 53 years, the only substantial difference between the two men’s statements is their accents.
Real change takes time — lots of it. This is infuriating but not surprising when considered in terms of foundations. America is a country of contradictions because of its foundation. On the one hand, there’s the idea of what America is supposed to be, and on the other, what America really is. America claims to be the land of the free, but it was founded on indigenous genocide and built on slavery. As a result of this discordant origin, America is a country at odds with its past.
As long as large swaths of Americans regard slavery, Jim Crow and racism as historical footnotes — missteps long since corrected — there is no way to move past racism. Fifty-three years won’t do it, and 153 years won’t do it. It’s like apologizing for something without knowing what you’re apologizing for — no real understanding comes of it. If America doesn’t reckon with the past, divisions will only worsen.
The funny thing about the past, though, is that it’s never really gone. In some ways, my entire life was built on the foundation built by my parents. This is not unique to me. For better or worse, your life was also built on its foundations, whatever they were. America is no different. Its foundations are readily apparent, if we only look.
They imbue everything, from who we honor in monuments and statues, to the history we teach in classrooms, to the mascots we choose for our sports teams. Recently, Confederate statues have been toppled, some purposefully, and some by force. I remember when a monument honoring Confederate soldiers was built in 1963 in Boston, even though we weren’t in the South, and even though it honored people who had fought for slavery, and even though it had been 100 years since Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. That monument was built in response to desegregation. It was built by the Daughters of the Confederacy, far from the South, as a reminder of the Grand Old South. It was nostalgic of a time when Black people were enslaved, when there was pride in the fight against freedom, and it remains a clear example of how the heartbeat of the past thumps on into the present.
Nowhere is this more readily seen than in education. Education is one of the most powerful tools we have in the fight against racism because it is foundational in the formation of an entire generation’s beliefs. Kids learn their ABCs, but also about America’s history, and American culture. When I was a kid, I came across a passage in an American history book that still sears my soul. It said that slaves were better off living as slaves than they were living free in Africa. It infuriated me even as a child. Life without freedom is no life at all.
Kids are unlikely to come across a passage so explicitly racist today, but they experience more subtle forms of racism, such as Black History lessons, which are taught as adjacent to American history, rather than an integral part of it. In order to eradicate racism, we must provide our children with an education that includes all American history and that examines how that history continues to shape our institutions, beliefs and culture.
“In order to eradicate racism, we must provide our children with an education that includes all American history and that examines how that history continues to shape our institutions, beliefs and culture.”
The icons we choose for sports mascots also say a lot about American culture. One of the most ubiquitous mascots is the American Indian, typically pictured as a racist caricature and sometimes completed with a racial slur. This year the Washington Redskins finally decided to change their name after years of refusing to, despite the repeated requests of indigenous peoples and social justice advocacy groups. It shouldn’t require advocacy or social pressure to recognize that a racial slur is not an acceptable team name. We teach our children that name calling is not O.K. because it is disrespectful and hurtful. Team names and mascots are no exception, and the fact that so many racist names and mascots still exist is indicative of how deeply embedded racism is in American culture.
Racism in America doesn’t simply affect Black and Brown people. It seeps into American institutions, shows, music, news, sports and minds. We can’t change America’s foundation, but we can reckon with it. Or, we can continue (as we have for hundreds of years) claiming to be the land of the free, when it’s clear that the sentiment only applies to white people.
America is not the land of the free when Black people have to worry that they will be murdered in their sleep like Breonna Taylor. America is not the land of the free when Black people have to worry that a police officer will kneel on their necks for eight minutes and 46 seconds like they did to George Floyd, until the life was choked out of him. America is not the land of the free when Black children can’t play with a toy gun without fear of being murdered like Tamir Rice. America is not the land of the free when Black people have to worry about being hunted down and murdered while out on a jog like Ahmaud Arbery. America is not the land of the free when Black people have to worry about being shot in the back in front of their children like Jacob Blake. America is not the land of the free when Black people’s murderers always go free.
Without justice for all, none of us are free.
Bill Russell
Bill Russell accepting his Presidential Medal of Freedom
Monday Music: Not Here For High And Holy Things
Reflecting on "The Knapsack of White Privilege"
Peggy McIntosh, in the late 1980’s, wrote a piece that has become a basic exploration for white people who want to learn more about the concept and realities of White Privilege. Her language of “unearned privilege” and the many examples she gives of her own privilege as a white woman serve as a deep reminder of the many ways privilege appears.
Read this article or answer this questionnaire and consider the following questions:
What of these privileges stand out for me, or raise questions for me?
What would I add to this list?
Join the Fall Book Discussion: How to Become an Anti-Racist
The Social Justice Working Group met Sunday, and made several exciting decisions for beginning our fall initiatives to help us understand and rectify the historic participation of the church and ourselves in systemic racism.
We invite all parishioners, including new people, to participate in a Fall book group, where we will read and discuss Ibram X. Kendi’s recent book, How to be an Anti-Racist. More information about how to access the book, and the later date for the book discussion, will follow.
While we are learning through the book, we are also committed to taking anti-racist actions, especially locally. To that end, as a first step, we encourage all of us to support Black-owned businesses in the Boston area. Two links follow, first specific to restaurants, the second more general recommendations.
https://bostonblackrestaurants.com
https://www.thrillist.com/lifestyle/boston/how-to-support-the-black-community-in-boston
Monday Music: Joyful Joyful
An acapella remix of yesterday’s hymn Joyful Joyful.
Social Justice Saturday: Unmasking Racism
Falmouth clergy have a different take on maskwearing and racism in
this four minute video
Monday Music: Singing for Our Lives
Social Justice Saturday: Who Me? Biased?
What does peanut butter and jelly have to do with our brains and bias?
Who Me? Biased? is a selection of short films (2-4 minutes) about how our brain works and how that impacts us in ways that we may not realize. We recommend that you watch the first two videos in the series--"Peanut Butter, Jelly, and Racism" and "Check Our Bias to Wreck Our Bias."
Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center
Last Sunday we enjoyed a service from the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center. For those who don’t know who they are, here is a bit about them in their words. You can also view the service on our YouTube page.
“The vision for the Barbara C. Harris Camp & Conference Center came out of a broader diocesan vision that was embraced in 1997. That vision focused on helping diocesan parishes to address issues in three key areas: youth ministry, leadership, and urban issues. The Camp & Conference Center was envisioned as a place that would be accessible to all, a place to nurture and form our youth and leaders in their Christian faith, and a place to bring together the diverse peoples and congregations of our diocese. It would also be a place that offers warm hospitality to other non-profit educational and religious institutions.
A Camp & Conference task force was convened in 1997 to explore the potential of this vision, and their recommendation to proceed with the development of the Camp & Conference Center was approved by the Diocesan Council in 1998. From 1999 to 2002, the development of the Camp & Conference Center was under the direction of diocesan staff. In addition, over 200 lay and clergy volunteers lent their time, energy, and expertise to the project, working in a variety of roles. An extensive fundraising Campaign also took place in order to finance the construction and to fund a scholarship endowment and an operating endowment. The Barbara C. Harris Camp & Conference Center welcomed its first summer campers in July 2003.”
Find out more at their website!
Monday Music: I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever
Social Justice Saturday: How I Stopped Worrying and Love Talking About Race
Jay Smooth is a DJ and commentator………
His TedXTalk is a humorous and meaningful exploration of what we need to know as we explore racism.