Letter from Lindy Jan 17

Beloved Community,

How is your heart this week? This has been the leading question in many of the meetings I have joined in the aftermath of last week’s siege on the Capitol and its continuing unfolding, in DC and across our country. Our troubled times feel so scary, not only with what we have witnessed, but with the precaution of what may follow.

I was grateful to join in a broader UCC conversation with our Associate General Minister, Rev. Traci Blackmon and Ruby Sales (SNCC and Spirit House Project) and Brittany Packnett Cunningham (Ferguson Commissioner and Co-Founder of Campaign Zero) to explore what we shall say to these things. The dialogue’s hope was to begin crafting a Social Gospel for the 21st Century.

As I have been pondering the wise words of these extraordinary women committed to birthing, out of the many reckonings of our times, a way forward, I am mindful of just how challenging is the work before us. As Brittany aptly pointed out, Ruby has been in this work for decades, her entire life dedicated to its cause, and yet, here we are, the global project of white supremacy laid bare for the world to see at our nation’s Capitol, in the year of our Lord, 2021. If one symbol holds the magnitude of this moment, it must be the image of the noose raised on federal grounds, of which no law enforcement officer interceded, to stop its assembly. What shall we say of these things?

In crafting a social gospel that heals, a new theology must undergird its every action that speaks to scripture’s revelation of God through Jesus Christ, which by coincidence, was beautifully articulated by Brian McLaren here in Richard Rohr’s meditation for Wednesday. This theology must cast its gaze upon humanity’s role in ushering in kindom on earth as it is in heaven, for we are chosen as co-creators with the Holy Divine, themselves.

As McLaren concludes, “We are all looking for a larger and more loving story in which to participate. This is what God gives us! Our ordinary lives are given an extraordinary significance when we accept that our lives are about something more meaningful than winning and succeeding inside of a very small plot line.”

With every reckoning, Epiphany’s light reveals an opportunity to lean in to the movement of the Spirit, where “we hope to tell a story of justice and joy, love and peace, for the benefit of future generations who will be born into the story that there is no [us and] them at all. [2] It is a cosmic and all-inclusive story which, if believed and lived out, leads to a very different future, one of healing instead of conflict.” May it be so.

On matters close to home, please mark your calendars for Sunday, January 31, for our biannual congregational meeting in which we will discuss and affirm to adopt Pilgrim’s 2021 budget.

Epiphany Light,