Click HERE for your June 4, 2020 Thursday Thoughts

Dear Congregation:

We know that we are dealing with two viruses.  COVID 19 and the virus of racism.  We have been living in fear and anxiety with a virus that can lurk inside some of us without symptoms.  A virus that preys upon the most vulnerable.  A virus that keeps manifesting itself in new ways and with new symptoms.

We already knew that black and brown communities are disproportionately  affected by the virus.  We also know that  black and brown communities are disproportionately affected by police brutality.  Those communities are disproportionately represented in the prisons of our country.  We know that black and brown communities face institutional racism in education, government, business, and the faith communities.  Truth is that those communities face racism everywhere.

It has not gone unnoticed that the confluence of COVID 19 and the response to the death of George Floyd has pushed our country to a deeper conversation about racism.  I am grateful for t your willingness to go deeper into that conversation.  The response to the classes Rev. Michelle Beadle led earlier this year demonstrated a willingness to become vulnerable and examine our own prejudices.  That has broadened more in these recent weeks.

Thank you for taking this journey of faith.  We all have prejudices and it is important that we identify them.  It is important for us to examine how our white privilege has socialized us in ways that have given us advantages that our black and brown siblings do not have.  This is our work to do and I am grateful for our friends of color who have been so patient with us.

If we stay on this path of learning and understanding and dismantling what is getting in the way for all people to live in security and peace, we can be the change.  Our friends of color are tired, fed up, and asking us, “How long?”  Do you hear them?  Are we willing to take the difficult, painful journey of examining our own lives and what we may be doing that contributes to racism?  Jesus said to us, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”

Change is challenging.  Change can be painful.  But imagine with me, a country where we really do live up to all that we say that we value.