| Dear friends and members of University UMC:
Several youth in our faith community are on a Civil Rights Tour with our youth director and children’s director. I admit to being filled with great nostalgia when I heard they went by Candler School of Theology, where I attended seminary more than 25 years ago! Yesterday they visited The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Reviews have poured in ever since the memorial was opened, describing it as one of the most stunning works of architecture in this century. The memorial, of course, has the power to evoke tremendous grief as we reckon with the history of slavery and lynching in this country. As described on the website, |
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| “On a hilltop overlooking Montgomery is the nation’s first comprehensive memorial dedicated to the legacy of Black Americans who were enslaved, terrorized by lynching, humiliated by racial segregation, and presumed guilty and dangerous.” |
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| I received photos from some on the trip saying, “These are memorials by county for lynchings. Very sobering experience.” |
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| Those of you who have visited know firsthand the power this experience holds. I have not yet visited, but will be there in September for a Commission on the Status and Role of Women board meeting. I anticipate the visit knowing it will bring a mixture of great interest as well as profound pain as the truth of our history is exposed.
As I received texts with updates on the youth mission trip, I held them alongside the news of another murder in Madison, Wisconsin. Corey Ruiz was shot by police earlier this week. The history of violence against brown and black bodies is not over. |
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| I am grateful for the University UMC community and our ongoing anti-racism work. It was on MLK, Jr. Sunday in January 2024 that we voted on the following statement: |
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| University United Methodist Church is an anti-racist church. We are committed to the elimination of systemic racism and reformation of current institutions that adversely affect people of color seeking health care, education, employment, housing, and criminal justice. We resist systemic racism through the promotion of anti-racist education, advocacy for anti-racist reforms in our community, and support for church policies that make us more anti-racist in welcoming, hiring, purchasing, and investing. We invite others to join us as we strive to love all our neighbors as Christ loves us. |
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Earlier that morning in worship, we remembered our baptism and recommitted ourselves to the ongoing work of becoming the people God calls us to be in the world. Like the work of anti-racism itself, the recommitment is also a daily practice. Below is a writing by Rev. Laney of Atlanta lamenting the lives lost at the hands of ICE.
May we not grow weary in the work of justice. And as Rev. Laney says, may love move us to action.
What a joy to be your pastor!
Teresa |
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| Water & Ice
by Rev. Matt Laney
At the dawn of life, there was water: wild and wide, two Hs holding an O, a life-giving dance, the first deep “yes” of all that’s meant to be.
Baptism does not create our worth. It names what’s true from the start of birth. It rinses away all that hides us. It calls us to our rightful place.
But drop the temperature, slow water’s vibration, and the dance of molecules stagnates. Liquid life assumes a rigid shell, a frozen form, hard and cold. When ice takes hold, it is unyielding, unforgiving—a kind of death that keeps on living, slippery and slick, isolating your breath as soon as it escapes.
Today we witness frozen power: fear made into policy, vulnerability named a threat and a crime, mercy mocked as a waste of time. Communities hunted, hearts shut down, compassion throttled.
Our anger rises, skin runs hot, love grows cold, the conscience knots. We want hardness to meet hardness, ice to meet ice. We want to strike back. That is what frozen power wants most: not only to chill one target; not just to tear us friend from friend; but to make everyone as cold as them.
We are people of water who stir, not shake. People who flow and bend, not break. People who refuse to freeze compassion. People who let love move us into action. – Rev. Matt Laney is co-Pastor of Virginia Highland Church UCC in Atlanta, Georgia |
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