Election Day, November 4, 2014
(photo by D.Vandiver)
Today is the day, friends. The day to VOTE.
This is the day when we get a chance to be citizens and constituents, rather than just consumers. Today is the day this nation decides party control over the House and Senate, decides who will address the looming issues of raising the minimum wage, immigration reform, equal pay, and – let us not forget – going back to war.
In New Orleans, many judicial races will be decided today – criminal court, domestic court, juvenile court… Today we elect the people who will decide who goes to jail, who gets custody in a domestic violence case, whether or not your child gets a second chance… Beloveds, in a state that incarcerates more people per capita than any other state in the country, this election matters.
Wherever you live, it is the local elections that will most immediately shape your community. What happens in Washington, DC certainly impacts us, but rarely as intimately as local policy and enforcement.
If you are young – please vote! If you are an elder – please vote! If you are in the sandwich generation – please vote!
If you can vote, please vote.
If you voted early, well done!
If you, like me, plan to vote today – don’t forget!
Vote today.
There are 2,867,473 registered voters in the state of Louisiana. Almost 2.9 million possible voters! Let’s see what it looks like when we all show up to choose the people who will make the decisions that shape our schools and our families, our courts and our country.
With gratitude to everyone who can vote today and grief for all of those denied the right to vote through the gutting of the Voters’ Rights Act and other egregious practices, I wish each of you well. May this election day end with leaders elected who care about you, your families, and our planet.
Go forth in peace and vote!
PS: In Orleans Parish, mark your calendar to vote on Dec. 6th, too! The state legislature has tried to do an end run around the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) and give away its money and control to the Recovery School District (RSD) through a millage vote that doesn’t even list the RSD in the summary that will appear on the ballot. It is slick, my friends, and it is as wrong as having to work on Mardi Gras day. Mark your calendars for Dec. 6th and vote NO on the grand theft masquerading as an education millage.
Please
Tonight we stood together around candles that marked the spot where his body was found this morning. Tonight we poured out our stories and our songs, our prayers and our tears. Tonight we reminded each other that we are loved and loving, that our lives have value and are valued by each other. Tonight we said good-bye to a good friend and a committed organizer.
So tomorrow, when you read in the paper or hear in the news that another black teenage boy was found shot to death in the 9th Ward of New Orleans, stop. Please stop and send love to his family, to his friends, to the community that cared for him, cares for him still.
Please stop and let your heart be broken, broken open at least a little bit, with compassion for a child who was loved, will always be loved, and for those who love him. Mark the passing of a dear soul light who shined brightly in this world and made it a better place.
If you pray, pray for us, pray with us.
Grieve with us. Mourn with us.
And then – organize.
Organize with us to heal this world, to change it into a place where 15 year olds are not killed by guns — are not killed at all. Make George proud.
Companions on the journey
“May beauty and passion and compassion be our companions. May we be fully alive. Amen.” ~Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie (Healing Places, 9/14/2014)
Keep the faith, beloveds.
Keep showing up.
Keep paying attention.
Keep speaking your truth.
Because we have changed,
the world is changed.
And you are not alone…
#blacklivesmatter
#FergusonOctober
#MoralMonday
#Not1More
#RaiseTheWage
#ClimateJustice
#bethechange
Moving at the speed of gratitude
This morning
Sitting with the grief of more painful news
I pick up my pen
And begin moving at the speed of gratitude
For a community that holds each other
in sorrow and in rage
For the light that wakes us and nourishes creation
For the dark that heals us and rests the world
Today I commit to moving at the speed of gratitude
And find my heart has grown larger
Love more possible
Grace more abundant
At this speed.
…
Beloveds, may you too find the gift of moving at the speed of gratitude.
Blessings from Heaven
This past weekend I had the chance to do one of my favorite things. Presiding over friends’ weddings is a great perk of the ministry gig. This was a beautiful wedding, joining two families from very different backgrounds. Guests came from Milwaukee and Mumbai, wore brightly colored saris and sundresses, suits and cortas,On the dance floor, Bollywood mingled with Madonna and midwest polkas. And everyone ate and drank and danced as the skies opened and poured blessings on the barn roof.
At one point in the evening, I found myself standing in a doorway overlooking the dance floor. I took it in: the bride and groom surrounded by family and friends from all over the world, everyone moving, arms and legs and bodies, mouths open in delight, music echoing, laughter filling the air.
My daughter was asleep on my chest, wrapped tight against me in her sling. I held her close as I watched the joyous scene before us. I thought of how people have danced at weddings for thousands of years and still do — every day, everywhere, even as bombs fall and disease spreads, even as we mourn devastating losses, cradle our broken hearts and lift our heads high, even as we fear what might be and hold fast to hope for what could be. For all of human history people of every hue, every tongue, every nation have danced at weddings with joy and fear and pain and hope and love.
Love brought us all to the barn on a September evening. A gentle, kind-hearted, soul-rich, giving kind of love that is contagious in the best kind of way.
The bride and groom chose a poem from the 14th century Sufi poet, Hafiz, to preface their vows. I offer it here as a prayer that love might continue to do its work in our broken, hurting world.
Congratulations K&K.
˜
It happens all the time in heaven,
And some day
It will begin to happen
Again on earth –
That men and women who are married,
And men and men who are
Lovers,
And women and women
Who give each other
Light,
Often will get down on their knees
And while so tenderly
Holding their lover’s hand,
With tears in their eyes,
Will sincerely speak, saying,
My dear,
How can I be more loving to you;
How can I be more kind?
Keep the Faith
This morning I tended to my garden and that of an elder neighbor. Walking back into my home for a second cup of coffee, I realized that I felt more like a grounded, alive human being than I have in a while. In the past few weeks, the phone has rung repeatedly, bearing news of grief and sorrow or rage at yet another systemic injustice personally harming a beloved. So many people and so many places suffering all at once… And so I have remembered to return to the garden, to keep faith with the source of life, as I continue to live and minister in this beautiful, wounded world.
I hold this sustaing wisdom from Rebecca Parker (Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now) in my heart and I share it with you today.
To keep faith with the source of life, knowing that we are not our own and that Earth made us; to keep faith with the community of resistance, never forgetting that life can be saved from that which threatens it by even small bands of people choosing to put into practice an alternative way of life; and to seek and even deeper awareness of that which springs up inwardly in us. Even when are our hearts are broken by our own failure or the failure of others, even when we have done all we can and life is still broken, there is a universal love that has never broken faith with us and never will.
You are not alone, beloved. Keep the faith. And keep in touch…
Love is the Boss of Me
Recently an organizer asked for a meeting and I went to pull out my phone to check my calendar. “My calendar is the boss of me,” I joked. She looked at me oddly, but said nothing. And in that nothing I heard the strangeness, the madness of what I had just said.
I am not sure what she was thinking, but here is what I have been thinking since that awkward moment. A calendar serves as the representation of and reminder about the commitments I have made for and with my life energy, with my love. Just as a glance at your checkbook or credit card statement can give you insight into where you commit your financial energy, a calendar can be a window of insight into life values.
What a calendar probably should not be, and should not be thought of as, is the boss. Just as my checkbook and my credit card – while requiring true mindfulness – should not be the boss of me. I do not serve as a minister in the name of a calendar or a bank account. Those are important tools for sustaining my ministry, no doubt. They cannot be the source of my call.
I serve in the name of love. Love for the world that is and the world that can be. Love for the wonder of creation and respect of destruction. Love for a faith community that meets us where we are and doesn’t leave us there. Love for you. Love for me.
It is easy in the days of overloaded calendars and underloaded bank accounts to forget. And it absolutely matters that we remember.
In 1951, Universalist mister Albert Ziegler wrote: “It may be that we have lost sight of our mission. Primarily, the church is not for social or political pronouncements, nor for the fashioning and dissemination of erudite philosophical doctrines. It is for the generation of love. The church is the only institution in society so purposed. We strike at the heart of our very purpose for existence when we neglect that major aim.”
Clearly, it is time for me to remember that love, not a calendar, is the boss of me.
Our Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations will be gathering in Providence, Rhode Island beginning June 25th for General Assembly, the annual meeting of UUs from around the world, with the theme “Love Reaches Out,” inviting congregations to reach out beyond their walls and to engage in new ways of sharing faith.
In the free church tradition of Unitarian Universalism, “we do not just go to church, we are the church.” Beloved, this faith is called to live in the name of love. Let us commit ourselves anew to this call. In the immortal words of poet Maya Angelou, “I know for sure that love saves me and that it is here to save us all.”
Disappear or Die: Southern Black Trans-Experience
Today we bless Tela La’Raine Love as she prepares for her gender reassignment surgery. Every day, Tela blesses this world with her courage, her determination, and her clear vision of a world where transwomen of color live safe, fulfilling, and long lives. Only in her 30’s, Tela serves as an elder, a mother, and a mentor to many young transwomen of color, struggling to survive in a culture that tells them to disappear or die.
Although we hope that “it gets better,” 2012 saw the 4th highest murder rate of LGBTQ and HIV-affected people (LGBTQH) in recorded history, according to the Hate Violence Report released annually by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP-http://www.avp.org/about-avp/coalitions-a-collaborations/82-national-coalition-of-anti-violence-programs ).
People of color, transgender people, and gender non-conforming people continue to experience disproportionately higher rates of homicide. Black and African-American people “were particularly overrepresented in the homicide rates: over half of reported hate murders had Black or African-American victims, even though Black and African American people made up only 15% of total survivors and victims of hate crimes overall.” In 2012, LGBTQH people of color represented 53% of total reported survivors and victims of all hate crimes, but 73.1% of homicide victims. Living at the intersections of racial, gender, economic, and sexual oppression, trans-women of color are told to disappear or die.
In the midst of a dominant cultural narrative of oppression and repression, Tela Love is living into her journey towards wholeness with a spirit fully grounded in her inherent worth and dignity. She is the co-founder of New Legacy Ministries (http://www.newlegacystartstoday.com/), a grassroots organization striving to raise the voices of marginalized communities, especially transgender women of color, and create a spiritually welcoming and sustaining community.
Disappear or Die: A Southern Black Trans-Experience, will be a documentary of her experience as a openly HIV Positive trans-women of color in the south undergoing gender reassignment surgery June 18,2014. In sharing this personal window into her life, she understands that she is taking a risk. Traditionally trans-women have disappeared into the constructs of a patriarchal society after their surgery, rather than remain targets for hate and fear.
Tela realizes that she is allowing herself to be a target for greater judgment and persecution than that of which she already endures. However, inspired by the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail that “silence is betrayal,” she has determined that she can be silent no more. She cannot be silent when waking from her nightmares of another young transgender woman being murdered or dying because she’s too ashamed to follow through with her HIV treatment after being diagnosed out of fear of being further alienated. Tela cannot be silent while there are little or no job opportunities for trans-women, while there are little or no housing opportunities (unless HIV infected), while black trans-women walk the streets in order to survive.
And neither, beloveds, can we. Our silence, too, is betrayal. Let us speak into the space of fear and hatred, ignorance and oppression. Let us bless Tela and every one of her sisters with the welcoming arms of beloved community. (https://www.facebook.com/Blacktranswomenarepowerful)
Please support the creation, production, and distribution of the documentary Disappear or Die: A Southern Black Trans-Experience. Together, let’s re-write the narrative of oppression into thriving, joyful beloved community.
Donations to support the creation of this documentary can be made via PayPal or sent to the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal marked “Designated Donation: New Legacy Ministries” 2903 Jefferson Ave, 2nd FL, New Orleans, LA 70115.)