Yearning To Breathe Free: A Reflection On the Murder of George Floyd

By Pamela A. Lewis

“It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.” — James Baldwin

America has been and is a place of irreconcilables. In contrast to the stalwart Pilgrims and other early settlers who survived perilous journeys to forge new lives are the indigenous peoples whose territories were taken from them and who became displaced persons within their own lands.

There are the soaring words of the Declaration of Independence, which speaks of humanity’s God-endowed freedom and unalienable rights, penned in elegant calligraphy by a man whose slaves were not meant to be included in those words. America is a place where a black man has served two terms as its president, yet one where an unarmed black man can also die from a white police officer’s pressing his knee on his neck.

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Recognizing moments of gratitude during a crisis

By Heather L. Melton

In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

The above quote was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer while imprisoned in Germany near the end of WWII. Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and Lutheran pastor, was being held in prison for treason after participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler, for which Bonhoeffer was ultimately executed. The entire process of writing Letters and Papers from Prison relied upon individuals putting their lives at risk to bring Bonhoeffer writing supplies and to make sure his texts were delivered to those who would preserve them.

In this context, gratitude was likely much clearer, as the costs were especially high for those helping him. The quote makes clear that Bonhoeffer recognized that when everything is going perfectly (or as close to perfectly as we can encounter), it is easy to assume that we have achieved security, happiness or success on our own and overlook those that aided us. It is in moments of struggle that we then realize that our lives and achievements are woven tightly in with the lives of others.

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The following is a statement from Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry:

This evening, the President of the United States stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, lifted up a bible, and had pictures of himself taken. In so doing, he used a church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes. This was done in a time of deep hurt and pain in our country, and his action did nothing to help us or to heal us.

The bible teaches us that “God is love.” Jesus of Nazareth taught, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The prophet Micah taught that the Lord requires us to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.”

The bible the President held up and the church that he stood in front of represent the values of love, of justice, of compassion, and of a way to heal our hurts.

We need our President, and all who hold office, to be moral leaders who help us to be a people and nation living these values. For the sake of George Floyd, for all who have wrongly suffered, and for the sake of us all, we need leaders to help us to be “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”

— Episcopal Church Office of Public Affairs

Presiding Bishop’s Word to the Church: When the Cameras are Gone, We Will Still Be Here

Netflix series about Madam C.J. Walker should have cited her generosity

By Tyrone McKinley Freeman
The Netflix series “Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker” brings to life part of a fascinating rags-to-riches tale I’ve been researching for the past 10 years.
Walker, widely documented to have been America’s first self-made female millionaire, made her fortune building an Indianapolis-based beauty products company that served black women across the U.S. and overseas. Today it offers a product line through Sephora.

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‘Upload’: Life can be messy; so can the afterlife

By Linda Brooks
If you die and buy your way into your own customized heaven, would it be better or worse than living? If you can still contact your real-life friends and family, how will that change you — or them? Does it bring you closer to them or is there resentment that life is somehow on hold?
That is the premise behind “Upload,” a new Amazon Prime series that premiered May 1. Described as a comedy-drama-satire-science fiction, it falls into the latest genre of series giving us different views of what heaven or the afterlife might be like. But unlike the “The Good Place” or “Forever,” this is an artificial afterlife — with a dark side.

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By Pamela A. Lewis
Touch is one of our most powerful senses, connecting us with our environment as well as with other human beings and creatures. Much of the world would be meaningless were it not possible for us to experience it through our sense of touch, and human relationships, partly built and nurtured by touch, would feel incomplete without it. It is not entirely metaphorical when we speak of the “human touch,” suggesting as it does that touch transmits something significant from giver to recipient.

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By Sharon Sheridan
As the COVID-19 pandemic forced people across the world to shelter in place, many turned to the arts for entertainment, solace and inspiration. To help lift readers’ spirits during this continuing global health crisis, Episcopal Journal offers these profiles and pictures from painters, the Rev. C. Melissa Hall, Debra Cook and the Rev. Lynne Bleich Weber, in the Diocese of Newark (N.J.).

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By Robert Gudmestad
Millions of people voted in an online poll in 2015 to have the face of Harriet Tubman on the US$20 bill. But many might not have known the story of her life as chronicled in a recent film, “Harriet.”
Harriet Tubman worked as a slave, spy and eventually as an abolitionist. What I find most fascinating, as a historian of American slavery, is how belief in God helped Tubman remain fearless, even when she came face to face with many challenges. (Read the full article on The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/faith-made-harriet-tubman-fearless-as-she-rescued-slaves-127592)

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By Linda Brooks
In the past, I usually didn’t give up anything for Lent mainly because of what I heard other people giving up — Facebook, favorite TV shows, cigarettes, beer. Somehow giving up what could be considered a “luxury” of our modern life didn’t seem to make much sense in the way of sacrifice and soul-searching.
But last year was different. It seemed like the whole world was on fire and there was nothing I could do as one individual that would make any difference.

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By Bob Libby
It was the last thing that I thought I would ever do. I was on a pre-Lenten retreat at a monastery and although I was an Episcopal priest, it was a Roman Catholic establishment run by the Trappist monks in Conyers, Ga. and a place where you’re not allowed to talk, or so I thought.
I came equipped to do some heavy reading, having packed both Augustine’s “Confessions” and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “The Cost of Discipleship,” along with my Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. I had really set out to impress God, but the Lord had other plans.

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By Tracy Sukraw
Diocese of Massachusetts
For her ordination as a transitional deacon on Nov. 10, the Rev. Gayle Pershouse Vaughan chose for the Gospel reading the passage from John 20 in which Mary encounters the risen Jesus.
“That speaks to me profoundly,” she said during an interview a couple of weeks before the ordination would take place at the Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester, Mass., her home parish for the past 15 years.

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By Alejandra Molina
Religion News Service
Faith congregations across California are responding to the state’s housing crisis by sharing their parking lots with people living in their cars, providing mobile showers for the homeless and joining their neighbors in calling for rent control in their communities.
But another form of housing advocacy has been taking place among spaces of faith.
A number of churches are exploring ways to build affordable housing on their own land. It’s what pastors and other leaders are referring to as YIGBY, or “Yes in God’s Backyard.”
The acronym is a play off of the term NIMBY — short for “Not in My Backyard” — a term often used to describe community pushback against affordable housing or other similar projects.
“Jesus very clearly tells us to keep our eyes open to those who are in need,” said Clairemont Lutheran Church pastor Jonathan Doolittle.

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By Aysha Khan
Religion News Service
Just over a year ago, the day after the deadly mass shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue, more than a thousand locals gathered together on the Boston Common to mourn and pray.
As the Rev. Amy McCreath, dean of the historic St. Paul Cathedral that overlooks America’s oldest park, watched people of various faiths unite once again to mourn another national tragedy, she was hit with an emotional realization.
“I looked out over the crowds of people, and it was so clear that all of them really want a peaceful future,” she remembered. “We want to work together against violence, but we don’t even know each other. Unfortunately, the odds are good that something like that will happen again, and we need to be prepared to support one another and defend one another.”
That’s part of the reason the Episcopal cathedral agreed to host a new interfaith art exhibit that explores the faith and life of Abraham, the shared spiritual forefather of the world’s three largest monotheistic religions — and launched an accompanying interfaith book study to spotlight Abraham’s wives, Sarah and Hagar.

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