Black Lives Matter

I am thinking this week of the words of the civil rights activist Ella Baker. Fifty years ago, three Civil Rights workers were killed during the summer Mississippi campaign. A search was mounted after their disappearance that involved dragging the rivers of Mississippi. As they searched the muddy waters, they turned up bodies of black men who had never been looked for because they were Black.  Of this painful reality, Ella Baker said “Until the killing of black men, black mother’s sons, is as important as the killing of white men, white mothers’ sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest…until this happens.”

I first heard those words when they were put to music by Bernice Johnson Reagon. Sadly, they are still all too appropriate today, fifty years later. In Ferguson, Missouri, when a grand jury failed to indict the white police officer who shot black teenager Michael Brown, mothers of black sons all over America shuddered in fear for their children. Because it was never just about this one situation. Professor of Political Science Melissa Harris-Perry has pointed out, "From 2006 to 2012 a white police officer killed a black person at least twice a week in this country."

Black men especially have been demonized by our society. They have been stereotyped as criminals, as thugs, as drug dealers, as dangerous, and then that demonization becomes its own justification for the fear that is used as a reason to kill. I think about the fact that some white men have taken to carrying guns in the city streets claiming their second amendment rights, and I haven't heard about any of them being shot or even detained by police. But a black twelve year old, Tamir Rice, was playing with a toy gun in an Ohio park, and was shot and killed by police this week.

We who believe in freedom like to tell the story that racism is easing, that, yes, we still have work to do, but so much progress has been made in the last fifty years. But each year I learn something new that astounds me concerning the depth and persistence of this plague in the very structures of our society. Schools today in America are more segregated than they were fifty years ago. Voting rights are being diminished each year, with methods that are targeted to people of color. More black men are in prison than ever before--the United States now imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of Apartheid.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. We have to be willing to acknowledge the problem, and not persist in a naïve feeling that all is well. The protectors of the status quo are already trying to put all the focus on rioting and looting. But as Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “I think we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard...” He did not condone violence, but he understood it.

I am encouraged by the thousands of people who participated in hundreds of vigils and protests on Tuesday evening, all across America and beyond. Are we waking up? I leave you with another quote from Ella Baker: “The older I get the better I know that the secret of my going on is when the reins are in the hands of the young who dare to run against the storm.” May we find the courage to stay on course.

With hope, Rev. Myke

Fifty Years!

Fifty years ago, in 1964, Universalists from the First Universalist Church in Portland left behind their big beautiful building at Congress Square to form a new UU community with their colleagues from the Messiah/All Souls Universalist Church on Stevens Avenue. It was a difficult decision, eventually made because the huge old building became unsustainable for a shrinking congregation. Most families had moved away from the downtown area. Attendance was down. Money was hard to come by. The consolidation was not without struggle as two church communities tried to form one new identity. They were re-inventing themselves.  As a part of the agreement, they promised to jointly build a new church building in the North Deering area.

Fifty years offers a lot of perspective. They didn't know 50 years ago what would emerge in the unfolding years. They only knew that what they had wasn't working. The consolidated church, then called the Universalist Society of Portland, built our current A2U2 building, with a smaller, multipurpose room for a sanctuary. I think that has had profound symbolic and practical significance for this community. Unknowingly, our predecessors laid a groundwork that positions us to be more flexible and adaptable, more focused on people than on structures, more focused on the future than on the past.

We are now in another time of change for religious institutions. Church attendance in the United States has been going down across most denominations. More people don't identify with any faith tradition at all. Some experts wonder if there will be any such thing as churches or ministers fifty years into the future. And of course, many of us ponder what changes the world will experience because of global warming and other ecological changes that humans are creating. Many churches are stuck in the model of the big old sanctuary, and the Sunday morning service.

But here we are, with a multipurpose building, beautiful land and a thriving community. And we are asking questions about how we can be sustainable for the next 50 years. We are exploring changes to our building and land that might help us in that dream. It is a challenging process because our visions often outpace what is possible with current technology and current economies. But why not dream and let ourselves experiment with a church that can keep on thriving.

On November 9^th, after each service, I encourage you to participate in an all-congregation feedback session with members of our Environmental Steering Committee. They will be presenting some of the ideas that have emerged, and the research they have done about things like energy efficiency, lowering our carbon footprint, and generating our own solar energy, along with possibilities for improving the parking lot, the bathrooms, and the foyer, and creating more beauty and usability of our land. I am so appreciative of all the work they have done to research the options! It is not so easy as we might think, and they have spent many hours on this. But they really need your feedback now, because nothing will happen without the congregation's financial and logistical and enthusiastic support—and there are decisions to make about how to proceed next.

If you can't come to one of the Sunday sessions, you can also participate in a feedback session during the Program Council meeting on Monday the 10^th at 6:30, or in a meeting on Thursday the 13^th at 7 p.m.

I look forward to seeing you there. May we have insight and wisdom to bring our church into the next 50 years!

Rev. Myke