At 9:30 this morning eight of us gathered in a circle in the church foyer and joined hands.  We prayed for a successful morning.  We prayed for strength and courage and peace.  Then seven of us headed out the door and drove to the ICE offices in LeVeque Tower downtown.  Edith stayed behind. There were about 50 of us total on the sidewalk outside the building at Broad and Front, many holding signs.  We were there to support the morning’s mission: to make an official application to ICE for a stay of removal for Edith, giving her a sanctioned reprieve from sanctuary, enabling her to go home to her family’s apartment with the threat of deportation temporarily lifted.  Asking elected officials to file a stay of removal on Edith’s behalf has been the current push that Edith, her attorney, and support team have been working on.  Morgan Harper, running for

This month the New York Times Magazine has been releasing a remarkable set of essays titled The 1619 Project.  August marks 400 years since the first ship bearing enslaved Africans docked in Virginia colony.  This is more than a recounting of history.  The project, in its own words, “aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.” And so the first essay states: “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written.  Black Americans have fought to make them true.” Another essay argues that the cold calculations that define much of American capitalism that place financial profits over human and environmental well-being are a direct descendant of how plantations were managed. Another essay traces the forces that have prevented the

“We commit…”  These two words could be spoken at a child dedication, a baptism, or a wedding.  Each of these occasions honors a particular way of being in relationship.  One in which mutual commitments offer themselves as fertile soil for growth and flourishing. These words also show up in the middle of our new Membership Commitment statement.  Congregational life is, if nothing else, relational.  Our relationship with one another.  Our relationship with creation and the Divine.  “We commit…” is followed by seven different statements that name who we aspire to be together. Those statements will serve as a basis for a seven week worship series beginning this Sunday.  The focus won’t be so much on membership – we’ll save that for the spring – as it will be on taking a deeper dive into these core commitments.  This is fresh language for us, and hopefully offers itself as fertile soil. 

In a recent interview with poet Ross Gay, Krista Tippet suggested that his work could be summarized as seeing “joy as a calling precisely in a moment like this.”  The “moment like this” is our present condition of environmental degradation, blatant white nationalism, and general anxiety about the trajectory of our nation and species.  These are precisely the conditions that can make joy seem irresponsible — the possession of the privileged few, or those oblivious to reality.  Not so, says Ross Gay.  Not so at all. A synonym for joy that Ross Gay uses frequently is delight.  Between his 42nd and 43rd birthday he committed to writing each day, however briefly, about something that brought him delight.  It is published as The Book of Delights: Essays.    He has also written about love and beauty: “I often think the gap in our speaking about and for justice is that we

I arrived back from vacation last Wednesday.  Usually this time of year is slower – a natural time to step away.  But this last week hasn’t been slow – due mainly to our congregation being in the thick of immigrant justice work these days. Last Wednesday we hosted the monthly Interfaith Justice Table breakfast, attended by clergy and non-profit leaders.  Edith had some time to update people on the large fine issued against her from ICE.  Her attorney is looking for ways to issue a legal challenge to the excessive fine, received by about 10 women in sanctuary. On Thursday CMC hosted an event organized by our neighbors North Broadway United Methodist Church.  They brought in Ravi Ragbir of the New York New Sanctuary Coalition.  He led a training on accompanying people to ICE check ins and immigration court.  One of the more memorable things he shared was that the