Hi everyone. This newsletter is for Swedenborgians (and friends) who want to learn how to support anti-racism. But we are not going to pretend that we are experts here; we are learning alongside you. There are lots of activists and educators who have been working in the anti-racism field for a long time. Our plan (in the words of Meera Mohan-Graham) is to Absorb and Amplify those voices, and follow their lead.
As we all strive to learn, change, and act together, we invite you join the Manifold Angels Facebook group for connection throughout the journey. The work is just beginning. If you would like to be added to the email list, please contact revshada@gmail.com
"It is for us to understand that religion is not sentimentality, that God is not a patron. Religion is a demand; God is a challenge, speaking to us in the language of human situations. His voice is in the dimension of history.
The universe is done. The greater masterpiece still undone, still in the process of being created, is history. For accomplishing His grand design, God needs the help of man. Man is and has the instrument of God, which he may or may not use in consonance with the grand design. Life is clay, and righteousness the mold in which God wants history to be shaped. But human beings, instead of fashioning the clay, deform the shape. God needs mercy, righteousness; His needs cannot be satisfied in space, by sitting in pews, by visiting temples, but in history, in time. It is within the realm of history that man is charged with God's mission."
From "Religion and Race, Abraham Joshua Heschel: Essential Writings."
FOR REFLECTION
From: Be Anti-Racist: A Journal for Awareness, Reflection and Action, by Ibram X. Kendi
"The powerless defense does not consider people at all levels of power, from policymakers like politicians and executives who have the power to institute and eliminate racist and antiracist policies, to policy managers like officers and middle managers empowered to execute or withhold racist and antiracist policies. Every single person actually has the power to protest racist and antiracist policies, to advance them, or in some small way, to stall them.
Do you have policymaking power, policy-managing power, and/or the power to resist policy? Consider what kind of power you have.
List three new ways you can begin using your power in the racial struggle.
Name a racist idea you heard this month in your workplace, on the news, or in casual conversation that you wish you had responded to. Reflect on how you could have deployed your power differently in that moment."
"...There is a lot of talk about the symbols of slavery, of colonialism. Statues being taken down, bridges being renamed, buildings being renamed. Does it feel like performance, or do you think that there’s substance to these actions?
I don’t think there’s a simple answer. It is important to point to the material manifestations of the history that we are grappling with now. And those statues are our reminders that the history of the United States of America is a history of racism. So it’s natural that people would try to bring down those symbols.
If it’s true that names are being changed, statues are being removed, it should also be true that the institutions are looking inward and figuring out how to radically transform themselves. That’s the real work. Sometimes we assume the most important work is the dramatic work—the street demonstrations. I like the term that John Berger used: Demonstrations are “rehearsals for revolution.” When we come together with so many people, we become aware of our capacity to bring about change. But it’s rare that the actual demonstration itself brings about the change. We have to work in other ways."
FROM SWEDENBORG
FROM SECRETS OF HEAVEN 2327:2-3
[2] By these actions they represented a state of true humility, which can in no way exist unless people acknowledge that of themselves they are profane and condemned, and so of themselves are incapable of looking towards the Lord where everything is Divine and Holy. To the extent therefore that a person acknowledges their own condition they can possess true humility, and when engaged in worship can have real devotion. For all worship must contain humility, and if separated from it no adoration and so no worship at all is present.
[3] The reason a state of humility is vital to worship itself is that insofar as the heart is humbled self-love and all resulting evil come to an end; and insofar as these come to an end good and truth, that is, charity and faith, flow in from the Lord. For what above all else stands in the way of their being received is self-love. Indeed within self-love there lies contempt for all others in comparison with oneself; there lies hatred and revenge if one is not venerated most highly; and there lies mercilessness and cruelty within it, and thus the worst evils of all into which good and truth cannot possibly be introduced, since they are completely opposite.
A PRAYER OFFERING
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Looking for a centering morning prayer practice to help build stamina for the work of racial justice? Look no further!
Starting this Monday November 2nd, Rev. Sage Cole, pastor at the Swedenborg Chapel in Cambridge MA, and Rev. Shada Sullivan, pastor of the Church of the Holy City in Wilmington, DE, will be offering a Daily Morning Prayer Service M-F at 8:00 am Eastern Time over ZOOM.
From Sage: "As pastors and moms, Shada and I are both heavily squeezed by this pandemic and decided that we needed more prayer and community. More daily reminders that we are not alone, and that love will... it really will.... win the day. And so we stumbled onto what I hope will be a great idea. We won't be preparing long sermons, or likely even getting donned up in our clerics. The prayers we will say will not be our own, but penned by clergy long since gone from this earth whose wisdom we will lean on in our weariness.
Does that sounds like something you could use too?
Because each person that shows up, each other face that is present over that ZOOM screen will bring the experience of prayer more alive for others.
Join us in making Morning Prayer a part of your spiritual walk through what looks to be a long, cold, dark, lonely winter. Let's be a little less alone, together."
