Dear Doubters of Great Faith,
Welcome to year two of our great romance, this epic novel that you and I, the good people of the Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, all of us Doubters, are forging together. It is hard to imagine that it has been A year, and yet, in COVID time, ONLY a year. 2020 may go down as the year that an instant and an eternity intersected in the most unusual of ways!
Our first year together has been about listening – listening to each other, listening to the community and the world around us, and listening for God’s calling to us and for us. Listening can seem passive, and yet, as we have seen, it is anything but. We have actively, intentionally listened, through worship, and sermons, through book studies, and education, and forums. In all of the many ways we have spent time together, we have been on the “listen” for the common thread of life that is God’s beckon to us into the future.
I have just returned from two weeks of vacation, time of rest and renewal. I chose to devote this time to all of the reading that I’ve wanted to do, but never seem to find the focus to accomplish.
Here’s who I read:
- Emmanuel Acho’s “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man”
- Ibram X. Kendi’s “How To Be An Anti-racist”
- Jon Meacham’s “His Truth is Marching On”
- Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”
- Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys”
Each of these works is powerful, and life-altering, as each author finds unique, distinguishing ways to invite the reader into dialogue around race, injustice, reconciliation, and healing. I would encourage you to any of these works as we enter February, Black History Month. It is the perfect time to consider, and to celebrate the work, and the works of our Black sisters and brothers. With the exception of Jon Meacham, each of these authors is a Person of Color (Meacham’s work is a retelling of the life of civil rights icon John Lewis.)
What made John Lewis so unique and so magnetic was his determined devotion to the ideal that the “Beloved Community,” God’s peaceable kingdom (we might draw the circle even larger by labeling it “kin-dom”), was/is a reality that we are called toward not in some heavenly realm, but in the earthly one we currently occupy. This is not only possible, it is our Christian mandate. It is the call to which we are to be about making “Good Trouble!” Lewis spent his life making “Good Trouble.” It cost him A LOT. And it gained us A LOT. It helped to create more room in the “Beloved Community.”
And so I find myself wondering, this Black History Month, as we look at some of these great works and others, and think about our upcoming year/years together, how are we to make some “Good Trouble” in bringing about the peaceable kin-dom? In “How To Be An Anti-racist,” Ibram X. Kendi posits that there are no neutral positions in the race question. One is either racist or anti-racist. To be anti-racist means that one actively pursues policies that deconstruct systemic, institutional, structural racism. This kind of “Good Trouble” necessarily involves relationship, relationship-building, and a willingness to be vulnerable, generous, and self-sacrificing with our privilege.
That is what I hope we can now begin to do, as we move into our second year together and look to start a little of our own “Good Trouble” here on Inwood and Mockingbird!
Yours in troublemaking,
Fr. Christopher+
