Piloting Faith: Are you in this fight?

A Word for the Day...

Yesterday we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. His influence over our nation, fully recognized after his assassination, was so significant that President Regan granted him the only national holiday designated for a non-elected citizen of the United States.

But we forget our history. Today we find ourselves celebrating his memory in a year that is marred by the very discrimination and dehumanization that MLK Jr. stood against. As a white woman, I have to claim some complicity in this reality. It's easy to celebrate MLK Jr. Day because he is no longer a threat to my power and privilege. White culture has remade his memory into something more palatable to our tastes. When he was alive, most white Americans disapproved of his leadership and his movement. He was monitored by the FBI and deemed a national security threat. His assassination gave our dominant culture permission to remake his contribution as one of unified progress rather than the genuine civil rights battle that it remains today.

Would you have supported Martin Luther King Jr. when he was living? If you want to know your most honest answer, you then have to ask: are you supporting the civil rights leaders of today? Are you supporting Black Lives Matter? Are you kneeling with Colin Kaepernick?

It's easy to appreciate the non-threatening memory of an assassinated civil rights leader. It's entirely different to recognize that the fight is not over, and you have a role to play.

- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight

Prayer for the Week

(This past week we lost a Saint, poet Mary Oliver. She put into words some of the most profound human experiences and taught us to see the world around us. In her memory, let's meditate on her words.)

"Wild Geese"
By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.