Notes for the Week Sixth Sunday after Pentecost July 12 2020

Dear friends,

Sometimes you think you’re walking in the right direction and, suddenly, you’re caught up short and feel the need to examine the direction you thought you were following, but in reality, need to adjust.

So it was for me, as I was out on my early morning walk a few days ago.

You probably saw a story in the daily paper about this enormous piece of work, BLACK LIVES MATTER, painted on a road in St. John’s. 

Each letter speaks to a period in time, from the 1800’s to the present.  Within the space of each enormous letter, are written facts about the lives of black people during particular periods of the last two hundred years: less desirable living conditions, less educational opportunities, less bank loan possibilities, less work opportunities that lead to a fulfilling and respectful sense of self, and many more glaring facts reflecting human neglect bereft of caring.

Facts are facts.  Truth is truth.  And here, they are laid out neatly, unemotionally, without bias, blame or shame.  Within each letter, facts serve to educate, inform and attempt to move whomever stops to read them, to make adjustments in one’s thinking, to shift gears, back up a bit and re-think one’s whole perspective on race, which may or may not have been previously in tune with what has been going on for the past few hundred years.  The artwork is made more powerful by its absence of accusation and its stark reality reflected through simple facts.

When we are faced with facts, we can begin to form understanding based on reality.  So why is it that we allow ourselves to be shielded from them?  Is it because we think that, what we choose not to know, must have nothing to do with us?  How easily we are duped.  How easily we close our doors to problems that are so systemically wrong that we must be shocked into facing their existence.

It’s time to change direction on so many fronts. The old directions have led us nowhere fast, and simply subduing the noise by closing the doors of our minds tight and pulling heavy curtains to hide the problem, hasn’t worked for anyone. 

Black lives do matter. The systems that have failed them need to be tossed out to be replaced by systems that lift up rather than tear down, so that people can, at last, simply get along; so that all people may feel safe and secure in knowing that they are beloved, simply because they exist; so that we can finally understand  our common responsibility in building up this thing we call life, rather than allowing ourselves to be swept into warring hatred due to misunderstanding, misinformation or man’s inhumanity to man.

Perhaps we can try out directions for positive change that have been suggested since time began: listening to voices that deserve to be heard, entering one’s own story into the world’s endless roads of stories, and to have the  courage to hear answers to questions that never occurred to one to ask before, may lead us to a destination of mutual love built on recognition of our amazing mutual humanity.

Which brings us back to where humankind began and when the direction was made clear to all God’s people: to love God with all one’s heart, soul and mind, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.  Maybe it’s time to paint this phrase in the middle of a road somewhere.  It points us toward the powerful direction we should have been following long , long before the 1800’s.  

We journey together,

Mother Esme+

Set up road markers for yourself, make yourself guideposts; consider well the highway, the road by which you went.  Return, O Israel, return to these your cities.  —Jeremiah 31:21