Laura Giffin

August 19, 2021 My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, This has been a week that finds the news wires simply chocked-full of humanitarian crises, with the devastating earthquake in the country of Haiti, and the collapse and fall of the Afghanistan government.  The scenes from both of these unfolding situations have been jolting and heart-wrenching, drawing us back from our own day-to-day life struggles to engage with lives that are lived, even in their normality, so completely differently from the ones we experience in Dallas, Texas. I’m not sure what classifies something to rise to the level of the label “humanitarian crisis” – is it number of lives lost, severity, horror?  I do know that by the very nature of labeling something “humanitarian,” that whatever has happened is being connected to me, to us, in ways that we may not be able to see, to feel, to touch, or to…

August 12, 2021 #BlackLivesMatter My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, As most of you know, your Vestry voted in 2020 to erect a sign along Inwood Road staking a bold claim about the sentiment of this parish, St. Thomas the Apostle, regarding the sanctity of human life represented in Black and Brown bodies.  While some feel this is an inflammatory claim to make, seeing that all life is sacred (a fact which I completely agree), we know that for many, many years people of color have NOT been afforded and accorded the equal benefit of full participation in the rights and respect of humanity.  Black and Brown lives have NOT mattered in the same ways that white lives have. I have just finished reading author Jim Schutze’s “The Accommodation,” written in 1986.  It details the state of race relations in Dallas, Texas, particularly how and why things developed in our…