I want to begin by saying again how grateful I am for the time of sabbatical that Lyndale granted me. It will take me many more sermons and writing to explore all that I’ve learned this summer, particularly as I’ve worked on the Louisville Institute grant on reparations. But know I return thanks to God for Lyndale and all this community is. Thank you.
 
Besides the grant work, my sabbatical also included a month-long trip in which Maggie and Shannon and I spent time in Ireland and Scotland on our ancestral lands, exploring our histories. As I read about the interaction between Jesus and the ten people with leprosy, I was struck by the importance of truth-telling for the process of healing.
 
Truth-telling for the process of healing. What do I mean by that?
 
Maren Tirabassi recently wrote a reader’s theatre piece about the story of Jesus and the ten people with leprosy in which she explores why the nine people didn’t turn back.[1] In her exegesis, many of those whom Jesus healed don’t turn back and thank Jesus because they wanted to bury the past. They wanted to cover up the memory.  They wanted to forget what happened to them.
 
When we were in Scotland in August, the primary task was to inter the ashes of my grammie’s younger sister, Christina MacKenzie Russell. There is a family plot in the Tomnahurich Cemetery in Inverness where my great grandmother, Jessie Johnstone MacKenzie and some of her children are buried and since my Aunt Chris died in 2006, I’ve been holding her ashes until they could make their way home. We were able to bury her there on August 26th.
 
On the 28th, we took a trip north of Inverness, through what is known as Ross and Cromarty. Now, I’ve never spent time in Ross and Cromarty, but I’ve certainly known about it and I’ve talked about it with my cousin’s wife, whose name is Jan Cromartie-Voelkel. So when we were in Scotland and in Ross and Cromarty, I texted Jan to let her know. Just after I texted her, our tour stopped at Dunrobin Castle, ancestral home of the Earl of Sutherland. As we pulled up, our driver suggested that this was Scotland’s answer to Disney. And he wasn’t kidding. The towers and the estate looked as if they could have been the model for the Disney logo. The wealth and opulence were overwhelming, so much so that all three of us took the short cut to the exit.
 
As the bus pulled away from Dunrobin, our tour guide then shared with us that it was the Earl of Sutherland who, in 1831, had decided that the 1500 families who lived in Ross and Cromarty weren’t making him enough money and that he wanted to have sheep instead. He decided to clear the families off the land. Many of them, he tricked into going to a port near Dunrobin where he had several ships onto which he loaded them and sent them off to North Carolina.
 
Our tour then stopped at the statue whose picture is on the cover of your bulletin which was put up by the Highland Clearances Commission. In it, one of the 1500 families that was cleared off the land is pictured, starving and desperate as they are forced out of their country.
 
Right after I took that picture and got back on the bus, a text came from my cousin, Jan Cromartie-Voelkel. Oh, yes, she said. The white family that owned her ancestors in North Carolina were Cromarties but when she wrote them to ask about her people who they had enslaved, they didn’t write her back.
 
When I read Jan’s text to Maggie and Shannon, we could hardly take it all in. How could people who experienced the brutality of being dehumanized, cleared off their ancestral land in order to be replaced by livestock, starved and lied to, shipped to another country all in the name of greed, turn around and own other human beings?
 
Did the process of burying the past happen right away? Did those families from Ross and Cromarty change the spelling and pronunciation of their name right away? Did they start lying about their past when they got off the boat, or did it take a while?
 
A couple of weeks ago, Lyn Pegg, Nancie Hamlett, Jonathan Stegall, Craig Simenson, Pam Meyerhoff and I attended a book reading at First Nations Kitchen with Elaine Enns and Ched Myers of their book, Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization. It was a powerful evening and there were many things that moved me.
 
In particular, they argue that the Doctrine of Discovery creates and demands of white people a state of agnosia (similar root of the word agnostic… like I don’t know). By agnosia, they mean socialized ignorance, a state of denying and dissociating. In white settler culture, we don't know and we don't want to know. But when we live in a state of buried truth, of socialized ignorance, we are dissociated and haunted by the ghosts of that history....everywhere we walk, there are stories that the land holds...of violence that we can't ignore.
 
When the tenth person who’s been healed of leprosy turns back and thanks Jesus, the act of turning back is rooted in acknowledging his history. He owns the truth about who he is and where he comes from. While all the others are healed in body, he is able to be healed in heart and soul as well as body because he, first, acknowledges the truth of all that’s happened to him. And in owning the truth, he is released into gratitude.
 
One of the people I interviewed over my sabbatical was Macky Alston, a documentary filmmaker who’s just finishing a film on reparations that focuses on his mother’s family who were enslavers in Georgia. I asked him a lot about what drew him into making this film and about working on reparations in general. And one of the first stories he told me was about when he came out to his parents after they had moved from Georgia to New Jersey. Their reaction was a lukewarm, well that’s OK, but you must never tell your grandparents because it will kill them.
 
Macky paused and said, “they literally were saying that the truth would annihilate my grandparents. And I think that’s the fear in all this reparation work, too. That the truth about our pasts will annihilate us.”
 
But, he went on to say. “At some point, I chose to ignore my parents fears and I went to Georgia and came to my mamaw and she was not only unfazed but celebrated me. And I learned that, in fact, the truth could, indeed, set you free.”
 
My friends, we live in a world where buried truths haunt us- individually and collectively. Our pains and traumas fester when they are covered up. And we can lash out and perpetrate the very trauma that was visited on us. As Bishop Yvette Flunder often says, “hurt people hurt people. And healing people help heal people.”
 
When Jesus greets the tenth person who tells the truth about his past and is released to gratitude, he says, go… your faith has healed you. What healings do we need? What truths are we invited to name so that we might be released into gratitude and healing? What faithfulness are we being called to?
 
Today we will partake at the communion table, like we do every month. And each time we consecrate the bread and the cup, we repeat the words from scripture, Do This in Remembrance of Me. Truth-speaking and memory are sacred and holy things. They are the first step toward healing and liberation.
 
Amen.


[1] https://giftsinopenhands.wordpress.com/2022/10/03/where-are-they-readers-theatre-sermon-or-other-occasion-the-ten-lepers-luke-17-11-19/?fbclid=IwAR07WZTlqbihFMm-CLDI9xD4fYOrOuw3gyvCnhFrahJB3l90srCpiRZnl-k

This morning, Governor Tim Walz signed an Executive Order doing all in his power to block the torturous practice of "conversion therapy" in the State of Minnesota. It isn't enough, and we all affirmed that. But it is a step in the right direction. I was one of those on stand-by to speak. I didn't get to speak these words, but here is what I have been praying about in this moment:

Good morning, my name is Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel and I am the justice pastor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Justice at Lyndale United Church of Christ.
 
I stand before you today as a Christian pastor. I have to tell you, being a pastor is one of my greatest joys in life. Because of my role, I have been invited into some of the most sacred spaces: I’ve seen in the delivery room as babies were being born, I’ve been in hospice rooms as folx have taken their last breath and crossed over the River Jordan, I’ve sung and prayed and preached and communed in some of the most powerful worship services, I’ve marched and been arrested witnessing for the gospel of love and justice. Being a pastor is one of the greatest joys of my life.
 
But my identity as a pastor is also a source of deep sorrow, shame and anger when I consider the violence done in the name of Jesus. My identity as a Christian pastor causes me to weep and rage when I consider the ways in which bad theology has been used to abuse. And there are far too many examples of bad Christian theology. In the last two months, we’ve heard of story after story of indigenous children’s bodies being discovered at so-called boarding schools. The latest one just this week on an island in Western Canada run by the Catholic Church. Bad theology distorts a gospel of love and liberation into a tool of violence, torture and death.
 
And when that happens, the only faithful thing any of us can do, but certainly the only faithful thing a Christian pastor can do is confess, repent and work toward reparation.
 
This morning, I am greatly honored to be standing with Gov. Walz and Lt Gov Flanigan as they ban so called reparative therapy. This practice is not any kind of therapy and is, instead, a technique of torture. It is a clear example of twisted, perverted theology. Conversion therapy is a tool for imbuing self-loathing. It creates life-long wounds that far too often lead to suicide.
 
I stand before you as a Christian pastor to confess that far too many Christians have used this torture technique against the LGBTQ community. I stand before you to call all of my Christian kindred to repent of this blasphemous practice. And I stand before you today in deep gratitude for Gov Walz and Lt Gov Flanigan and this Executive Order. May it be one step in the work of healing and repair for all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer beloveds.

This year, the practice of Holy Week amidst the opening arguments and the beginning of witness testimony in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin has been particularly poignant. And Easter morning is, too. Here are some of my reflections on the journey we are on: settler, white and Black, indigenous and people of color...

The trauma had happened quickly. There wasn’t a lot of time between the shock of his arrest, the frantic attempts to get Pilate to release him and the horror of watching him die. And she had been there for all of it. She had borne witness and tried to offer something to him with her presence.
 
She was still in shock and deep in grief on the morning in the garden. She was in so much grief that she mistook him for the gardener. She can be forgiven for her clouded thinking because it had only been three days since his execution at the hands of the Roman Empire.
 
But when he called her name, her attention shifted, she was awakened from her stupor and she recognized her beloved, her teacher… “Mary”…. “Rabbouni.”

​It is one of the most moving passages in scripture, for me. In the shortest of exchanges, the calling of her name immediately gathers her in relationship, in love, in the impossible reality that from such horror and pain and death has sprung new life.
 
…
 
For years, the factory had polluted the soil and the waters of the surrounding community and then it closed. It sat empty for over a decade until it was torn down and the land sat barren. A group of local community activists sitting in the midst of a food desert decided they would try to remediate the soil. It was one of those amazing projects: you had the Black elders, some of whom had worked at the plant, you had the young Black and brown activists, you had the Black, brown and white geeks who studied microorganisms, plants and mushrooms and the white Canadian woman who spent her life’s energy writing about Earth Repair.
 
They first met together in a place that looked deceptively simple: grasses growing but not much else. And then the Canadian began to describe what lay in the soil, the chemicals and toxins that had woven themselves together to poison the earth. But she said, this death is not the final word. We can ally ourselves with the organisms, plants and fungi. For every contaminate, there is a microorganism for which it is food. The contamination took decades and the repair will, too. But we can heal this land if we align ourselves with the creatures who can bring life out of this death.
 
She said, we need to know the truth about which toxins did the contaminating. We need to know so we know exactly the names of which plants and which mushrooms and which bacteria will be our teachers and healers.
 
That was ten years ago and the work is far from done. But the earth is being repaired in that small plot of land and the death of environmental degradation is slowly giving itself over to the life of human and mushroom, plant and microorganism working together.
 
…
 
Almost three years ago I made a trip to the Pacific Northwest, to the far west coast of the Olympic peninsula, a place that resonates in my soul-body the way few things do. It was right after one of my dearest mentors had died. And I was grieving deeply. As I disembarked the plane and got into my car and then drove onto the ferry to cross the Puget Sound… as I drove around the top of the Olympic National Park, the bottom of the Makah reservation and finally approached the coast, I felt my fascia start to loosen and my heart begin to soften. I felt my breathing gradually slowing and my mind begin to settle. And all of it caused the tears of grief and loss to come closer to the surface.
 
Finally, as I got out of my car at the trail head that led through the forest to the beach, I inhaled like I was home and started onto the path. For the first section of the trail, I was looking up at the trees, the ones that always remind me of cathedral pillars standing over a hundred feet tall. I had that same sense of sacredness and worship as I paused and looked through the intricately woven canopy with the sunlight speckling through. And then, for some reason, my eyes were brought to the ground. Just ahead of me and to my left, lying about 75 feet long was the greatly decayed trunk of one of massive trees that had fallen several years earlier… in the span between when it fell and now, millions of insects had feasted, slowly softening its hard wood into sawdust and soil. And there, along its massive span whose outline was less-visible because of its softness, rose dozens and dozens and dozens of saplings. What I was looking, what had brought my attention from the heavens to the earth, what had called my name, was what is known as a nurse log.
 
The tears which had been close to the surface, came spilling out. That one grandmother who had stood for centuries probably had been transformed from death into life for literally thousands of other creatures and close to one hundred other trees. Amidst my grief, she had grabbed my attention and seemed to call out my name, “Rebecca.” And I recognized her as teacher.
 
And she said to me, remember, life springs from death.
 
This Lent we have been journeying together and considering what makes for reparation? What truths do we need to tell about our individual and collective histories? What relationships do we need to form and nurture? What spiritual practices do we need to cultivate and practice? And how do we re-distribute resources so that all may have life and life abundant?
 
And how do we do all of this in deeply embodied ways that help us ground in our created selves (the vertical line, the height and the depth), in community with others and all of creation (the horizontalness, the width), with all who have come before (all that is behind us and literally has our back) and the possibility of what will come (all that lies in front of us)?
 
I have been deeply moved by all we have shared together on this Lenten journey and I am bringing it to this Easter moment: the truth-telling about the Doctrine of Discovery; the relationships with MIRAC and Reclaim the Block and Honor the Earth; the spiritual practices which have been a particular kind of intimacy as we’ve practiced over Zoom; and the dreaming of how we, as individuals and as the Lyndale community might pay reparations: to our indigenous and Black kindred.
 
As I’ve sat with these last few weeks in my heart, there are several things that spring up for me as lessons.
 
The first is that resurrection and reparation are not the same thing, but they are deeply related to each other. Reparation and resurrection are both responses to deep brokenness, and, in particular, brokenness that springs from oppression. Both focus on healing from betrayal and destruction and both are rooted in relationship.
 
Rev. Dr. Serene Jones was my systematic theology professor in seminary and her class was one of my favorites. One of the most important things she taught us came when we got to crucifixion and resurrection. As she lectured, her voice became soft and commanding in a way that told us she was very serious. She said, if you don’t remember anything else from this class, remember this: you must never write or preach about crucifixion without writing and preaching about resurrection. And you must never write or preach about resurrection without writing and preaching about crucifixion.
 
Resurrection is God’s response to the crucifixions in our world. No matter how dead something appears, no matter how powerful the violence and evil that killed it, God is a God who makes a way out of no way. God finds a way to bring life out of the deepest death. Reparation is one concrete way we can participate with God in resurrection. Reparation is one way we can look into relationships, into toxicity, into degradation and ally ourselves with the process of repairing the world. But we can’t participate in resurrection and reparation if we pretend that crucifixion and violence haven’t happened. Resurrection and reparation are rooted in bearing witness to the crucifixions of our world and vowing to resist their power.
 
The second lesson I’ve been sitting with this Holy Week is that, our Biblical story aside, most resurrections and most reparation take a long time. So much so that it might be better to say that we are called to practice resurrection and practice reparation for the long haul… and, even then, resurrection and reparation is, more often than not, generational work. It’s work that is started by grand parents and passed like an heirloom, onto children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
 
Practicing resurrection and reparation is long haul work because the power of crucifixion… of colonization, of white supremacy, of extractive capitalism…. The power of crucifixion is real. Trauma and pain, suffering and sorrow, degradation and toxicity can be pernicious, persistent and long lasting. And they can be handed down from generation to generation like a poisoned inheritance. Serene Jones was right. We must tell the truth about this reality.
 
But the fact that practicing resurrection and reparation is generational work doesn’t make it any less sacred or powerful. Indeed, being part of a long line of healing is a gift unlike any other.
 
…
 
On Monday morning as the sun was rising, several of us from Lyndale joined with about fifty or a hundred other kindred at George Floyd Square to pray before the opening arguments began in the trial of Derek Chauvin. We gathered at the Say Their Names memorial which is an open field filled with white headstones with the names of hundreds who have been killed by police. And we proceeded to walk first to the north gate of George Floyd Square and then to the South Gate, then to the East Gate and the West Gate and finally to the center of the Square, just feet from where George was murdered. The pain is still palpable in the place. The crucifixion that happened there, the modern-day lynching that so many witnessed, still haunts and traumatizes. And as we walked, we renounced the evil that still seeks to kill.
 
But two things resonated in my soul: the first was when we got to the West Gate, the leaders said, “we like to think of the West Gate as the Mutual Aid gate. This is where whoever needs to give can come and give and whoever needs to receive can come and receive. This is where we learn to heal and take care of ourselves with food, water, medical care, a listening ear or a prayer.”
 
The second piece that resonated with my soul was that when we got to the center of the square, where there is a beautiful sculpture of a fist raised high, the leader pointed out that all around the sculpture, they had laid dirt and mulch several inches deep on top of the pavement. She said, we have dirt here because we need to plant and grow, we need the soil to heal us, too.
 
My friends, the crucifixions in our lives are real. There is no doubt. As followers of Jesus, we are called to resist such violence and death whenever we can and to bear witness and act in solidarity, for we are a people who have traveled through Good Friday.
 
But we are not just a Good Friday people. We are an Easter people. We know that God’s deepest desire for us is not death but life.
 
The resurrected one, the teacher, didn’t just call Mary’s name in a garden centuries ago. The resurrected one, the teacher calls to us today.
 
So, let us awaken from our grief and from our despair and be students of the nurse log and the microorganism, let us ally ourselves with the plants and the mushrooms, let us give when we need to and receive when we need to.
 
And may we live so that our grandchildren’s grandchildren will marvel at the heirloom we’ve passed down to them.
 
Amen.

I have been spending a lot of time with kindred trying to examine what kinds of spiritual practices can mitigate​ against hoarding and support us in the work of reparations: particularly reparations work for settler and white folx. This is a sermon I wrote during Lent at Lyndale UCC. I offer it as one small part of our work to repair the world.

Deep peace of the thawing lakes to us, deep peace of the flowing air to us, deep peace of the warming earth to us, deep peace of the shining sun to us, deep peace of the One of Peace to us, whose spirit and guidance we seek- in this moment and always. Amen.
 
Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul.

I was twenty-eight and had recently graduated from seminary. She was in her late eighties. I was working as a chaplain at the VA hospital in Seattle and I was surprised when I saw her on my list of patients to visit that day because the vast majority of folx that I saw were men. I didn’t know anything about her, except that she’d served as a nurse during World War II.  

​Continue reading here.

​Prayer Circle: No to Line 3
December 17, 2020
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
Over five hundred years ago, my European Christian ancestors embarked on a well-thought, well-strategized plan to dominate the world. It started with the invasion and subjugation of African Muslim’s and pagans and became the Atlantic slave trade. And it continued with Columbus’s campaign of terror in the Americas. This well-thought, well-strategized plan to dominate the world was and is known as the Doctrine of Discovery and there is a bold and direct line between the actions of those terrorists and their blasphemous colonizing in that era to pipelines and extractive economies in 2020. The Doctrine of Discovery is rooted in Empire Christianity and it was blasphemous then and it is blasphemous now. It wreaked untold suffering then and it threatens the very existence of our planet in this moment.
 
It is as an act of repentance and reparation that I stand before you and with you as a white Christian pastor today, seeking to stop Line 3, particularly in this season. Dec 17, 2020 stands in between the third and fourth Sundays in the Christian season of Advent which is a time of waiting and preparation for love and justice to be born in our world. It is also a time when we Christians believe we are invited to find ways to embody the same kind of solidarity with love and justice that God demonstrates in the birth of Jesus.
 
And, so, it seems particularly appropriate to be here with you: in repentance and solidarity.
 
But one of the things about repentance and solidarity is that they are not one-time things. We must practice them again and again if we are to experience healing. And that is certainly true about our work around Line 3. The other thing is that in the face of well-thought, well-strategized doctrines of discovery and destruction, we must pray and organize in well-thought and well-strategized ways, too.
 
For the past almost three years, I’ve gathered with many of you in prayer and ceremony to say no to this pipeline. Following the leadership of indigenous kindred, we’ve protested, we’ve attended committee hearings, we’ve participated in comment periods, we’ve sung and meditated and lamented and organized. We’ve taken action through the Poor People’s Campaign and the Water is Life Ceremony in the Governor’s Receiving Room. We’ve participated in coalitions of all kinds.
 
And now we are here because we know the danger, the destruction and the death that this pipeline represents: for our planet, for the waters that support life and for each of us and all of us.
 
But we are also here because our action isn’t just no-saying, it isn’t just protest and strategic resistance. We are here because we know that water is sacred, that all of creation is bound together in a blessing and is kin to one another. And so I stand here in deepest gratitude for being bound to and with you and these waters and these lands and these creatures. And I return thanks to the Sacred whom I call God for all who are saying no to this pipeline and yes to life.
 
 

Reflections for Earth Day 2020
MNIPL, Minnesota Multifaith Network, Kaleo Center
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
One of the traditions that has deeply shaped by heart, mind, body and spirit is that of queer theology. And one of the practices within queer theology is to find ways in which spiritual texts can speak and embody a word for the present moment. And, so, as we grapple with COVID-19 and the paradox of grief, colonization and fear on the one hand and on the other, the extraordinary possibility-for-another-world-beyond-this, I share with you a re-imagining of the prologue to the gospel of John. I offer it as a prayer of blessing. Will you pray with me?
 
In the beginning were Desire and Longing:
   Desire for ecstasy and connection, longing for the deepest of communions.
 
And Desire and Longing were with God.
       And Desire and Longing were God.
           Desire and Longing were with God in the beginning.
 
In fact, they were the animators, the prodders, the relentless whispers
       which propelled the explosion of creativity:
            stars and planets and the whole company of creation. These all came into being out
                 of that Desire and Longing and not one thing would have been without
                      the promise of ecstasy, connection and communion.
 
And then, as now, Desire and Longing were threatening to the forces of destruction,
     dis-connection, dis-memberment
         and death.
 
But then, as now, these did not prevail and what came into being because of and through
       Desire and Longing
           were
               Life, and Life abundant.[1]
 
 
May desire and longing—for life and life abundant, find us, claim us, impassion us and inspire us-- this day and every day. Amen.
 


[1] Rebecca Voelkel, “Promiscuous Incarnation” in Unsettling the Word: Biblical Experiments in Decolonization, ed. Steve Heinrichs (Altona, Manitoba, Canada: Mennonite Church Canada, 2018), 216.

On June 30, 2019, several thousand folx from MIRAc (Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee), CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) and dozens of co-sponsoring organizations marched in protest against the torturous family separations that are happening at our Southern border in the Stop Separating Families March and Protest. Below are the words I spoke at the rally.

I need to start with a shout out: As we marched down Lake Street today, five million people marched down Christopher Street on this 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising against state sanctioned violence. I am only able to be here because they paved the way for me and so many other LGBTQ folx.
 
A little over 500 years ago, several Popes wrote letters to the kings and queens of Portugal, Spain and England urging them to go first to West Africa and then to the Americas. In both locations, these letters, which were really commands, told the white Europeans to try to convert any pagan or Muslim folx they encountered. If they couldn’t convert them to Christianity, they were ordered to kill them and take their possessions and land. These letters are known as the Doctrine of Discovery or the Doctrine of Christian Dominance.
 
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the genocide, brutality and suffering the Doctrine of Christian Dominance has caused. And one of its core practices has been breaking up families and separating children from parents. African American parents were regularly sold away from children during slavery by Bible-carrying, church-attending white Christians. Native children were, for several generations, stolen from families and put into boarding schools run by churches in order to “civilize” them. In both cases, sexual and physical violence were rampant.
 
The painful truth is that what is happening at our southern border has happened before and it’s all been done in the name of God.
 
And so, as a white, Christian pastor, I stand before you today to confess the truth of this violence done in the name of the collar and stole that I wear. The weight of the sin of genocide must be named--over and over again.
 
I also stand before you to turn away from this violent and distorted version of Christianity and toward the gospel of justice and love. We call this turning, repentance.
 
As part of repenting, is also important to name that the kind of Christianity that calls for genocide and dominance is bad Christianity, it is worshiping the false idols of capitalism and war. It is Empire Christianity, not the gospel of Jesus Christ which calls us to justice and love.
 
The true gospel of justice and love also calls us into repair and reparations. And so, as we march and protest and powerfully resist, we must also continue the work of healing and repair and find ways for concrete reparations.
 
I thank God for each of you and all of you. And may God bless us all in this sacred, holy work of resistance and repair. Que Dios nos bendiga en la lucha. Gracias.

Here is video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THFIqDcBfrU&feature=youtu.be

I was born on March 5, 1969, almost four months before the Stonewall Riots. As we gather here tonight, I am profoundly aware of the fact that my life has been  intertwined with and deeply impacted by the life of the modern LGBTQIA+ movement. I’m also profoundly aware that many of those rioters and resisters who rose up at Stonewall, people like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and other trans+ women of color like those in STAR—the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries-- didn’t make it to age 50, nor were they honored in their lifetimes in the way they deserved for all they were and did. So, particularly as I am honored with a Courage Award, I want to name the reality that I stand here because so many have loved and laughed, struggled and died to make the path I’ve trod.
 
So the first image: the path I’ve trod has been made by others, or at least they’ve laid cairns and other markers to guide me on my way.
 
A second image I want to share was referenced this week at National Gathering by Rev. Nekira Evans-Hernandez. The giant redwoods in California—some of the tallest trees in the world-- don’t have very deep roots. Instead, in order to withstand storms and grow to great heights, their roots are connected with all the roots of the other redwoods around them.
 
These two images form the core of what I want to say tonight: while I am deeply honored to receive this Courage Award, nothing I have done is singular. I am because so many others are. And much of who I am, much of any courage I have is because of you and the Open and Affirming movement in the United Church of Christ.
 
In order to illustrate this truth, I want to do two things. I first want to name a few folx whose being and struggle for intersectional, queer liberation within the UCC have been the roots intertwined with mine. Some of them are older than I and some of them are younger.

Bill Johnson, Nancy Krody, Loey Powell, Jan Greisinger, Ann B. Day, Donna Enberg, John Selders, Margarita Suarez, Barbara Satin, Sam Lolliger, Tim Tutt, Bishop Yvette Flunder, Gwen Thomas, Phil Porter, Ruth Garwood, Tim Brown, Ashley Harness, Sonny Graves, Lesley Jones, Mak Kneebone, Kevin Tindell, Peter Barbosa, Roberto Ochoa, Elaine Kirkland, Lisa Lally, Cathy-Ann Beatty, Mitzi Eilts, Janice Steele, Patrisha Gill, Yvonne Delk, Sharon Day, Paul Sherry, John Thomas, Traci Blackmon, John Dorhauer, Kathie Carpenter, Edith Guffey, Malcom Himschoot, Oby Ballinger, Andy Lang, Kimi Floyd Reich, Ann Randall, Lawrence Richardson, Louis Mitchell, Liz Aguilar, Marguerite Unwin Voelkel, Bill Voelkel, Maggie George and Shannon MacKenzie George Voelkel…
 
And, secondly, I want to recognize so many of you in this room whose names I may or may not know but whose lives are woven with mine.
 
If you in the room have ever come out in any church-related space, please raise your hand and keep it raised. If you have ever participated in an ONA process, please raise your hand. If you have ever preached or sung in a worship service celebrating the LGBTQIA, same-gender loving, two-spirit community, raise your hand. If you have ever been to The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries Convocation or National Gathering or an event hosted by El Proyecto, raise your hand. If you have ever marched with your collar on or your church’s banner with Black Lives Matter or Mi Gente or been at Standing Rock in the Two Spirit camp or danced in a Pride parade or shut down Capitol Hill with disability justice activists, raise your hand. If you have ever baked a hotdish or brought pizza for a campaign to repeal anti-trans+ laws or knocked on doors to get people to vote against voter suppression or got arrested with the Poor Peoples Campaign in support of minimum wage laws, please raise your hands and keep them raised. I invite you to look around.
 
You are the root system, the unbreakable connections that allow any of us to have courage to act for justice and liberation and God’s bodacious, sexy, intersectional realm of God which is here and is coming. But we need to keep reaching wider if we are going to truly hearken the realm of God and withstand today. We desperately need our connected, collective courage.
 
Because a storm of Empire Christianity, woven with a virulent white nationalism, deploying the practices of family separation on our Border that devasted indigenous communities through Boarding Schools and African American communities during slavery at auction blocks, this storm is blowing through the trees of our movement and we must withstand and resist.
 
So, hold fast to one another. And know that I am holding fast to you and to the deep roots of the Open and Affirming Movement.
 
I need you, you need me, we’re all a part of God’s Body…. I pray for you, you pray for me, I love you, I need you to survive.
​​

​195 Years of Activism: A Few Reflections on Loving, Fighting and Legacy
May 30, 2019
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
I was born on March 5, 1969, almost four months before the Stonewall Riots. As we gather here tonight, I am profoundly aware of the fact that my life has been  intertwined with and deeply impacted by the life of the modern LGBTQIA+ movement. I’m also profoundly aware that many of those rioters and resisters who rose up at Stonewall, people like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and other trans+ women of color like those in STAR—the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries-- didn’t make it to age 50, let alone 60 or 85. I stand here because so many have loved and laughed, struggled and died to make the path I’ve trod.
 
I’m also thinking of many smaller moments and how they have, collectively, knit together my story.
 
It was 1972 and I was riding the bus with my Grammie. She sat next to me as I stood on the seat and pointed out all the churches along our route into downtown Cleveland because she and my parents had already taken me to so many organizing meetings. It was also 1972 when Bill Johnson, who’d been ordained earlier that year as the first out gay person by the United Church of Christ, was invited by my parents to stay in our home.
 
It was 1977 and the United Church of Christ published its sexuality report that then sat on my dad’s library shelf for several years before I took it and kept it hidden under my mattress so I could consult with it as I talked with my best friend about whether she’d have sex with her boyfriend.
 
It was 1978 when I begged Mrs. Cunningham, my third grade teacher, for one of the flyers about the YMCA summer baseball league she was giving to all the boys. When she relented and gave me one and I signed up and we got the word that I wasn’t eligible because I was a girl, my mom organized a petition that reminded the YMCA that there was this thing called Title IX and that she would sue them if they didn’t let me play. I was one of three girls in the league that year. I played for the Dodgers and we lost our first game 44-11. But it was the beginning of a life-long love of organized sports which has included softball, basketball, volleyball, soccer, biking, running and swimming. And all of it taught me to love and trust my own body and its power and vulnerability.
 
It was 1983 when Melissa Gilbert played Jean Donovan in the made for TV movie about El Salvador’s US-funded death squads and I transferred my crush on Melissa Gilbert as Laura Ingalls Wilder to Melissa Gilbert as Jean Donovan and read everything I could find about her and Archbishop Oscar Romero and Latin American Liberation theology. And then it was 1987 and 1988 and 1989 when that crush led me to participate in the Accompaniment movement and to live and study in Central America.
 
It was 1989 and, because of the courage of the Co-Madre movement in El Salvador and witness of a faith that was necessary for survival, I came home and both broke my silence about being a survivor of sexual violence and came out as a lesbian.
 
It was the 80’s and the 90’s and the 00’s and the 2010’s and there are so many Marches on Washington—against wars, for queer justice, for reproductive justice, for indigenous justice, for racial justice, for all of these together. I particularly remember marching with Queer Nation against the first Iraq War in which we staged die-ins at the height of the AIDS crisis and chanted hilarious, smart, sexually-explicit chants against the war (ask me what they were, I’d love to tell you!)
 
It was 2010 and Maggie, my parents and three year-old Shannon and I were driving in a car in which we’d put Shannon’s carseat in the third row of the rental car, surrounded by luggage. Not five minutes into the drive, Shannon, remembering the protest she’d been to when Prop 8 passed, improvs from the back seat, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, discrimination has got to go, get me out of the trunk!”
 
It was 2013 and I stood with many of you in a packed church across from the Minnesota State Capitol the night before the Minnesota House passed marriage equality and we listened to Rabbi Latz talk about the symbolism of the chuppah and pagan leader Robin cast the circle and David Lohman lead us in singing For Everyone Born. And how, for a brief moment, we touched that elusive space of joy and justice.
 
 
It was 2018 and the temperature with the windchill was close to 30 below zero. Under the guidance and leadership of Kandace Montgomery and other Black Visions Collective folx, several of us who were clergy prayed and supported a dozen folx, including Rabbi Lekach-Rosenberg, who locked themselves to the fences to block the train coming into the SuperBowl to demand an end to business as usual.
 
In every year since March 5, 1969, there have been several through-lines:

• None of what I am or do is simply about me. I am because so many others are. And my liberation is deeply woven with yours.
• It is my duty to pass on to others the legacy that has been passed on to me.
• To be someone who claims to be spiritually and religiously grounded is to be called time and time again to resist Empire, injustice and violence and to help co-create God’s extravagant, bodacious, sexy world. And worship and protest, praying and breaking unjust laws, singing hymns and chanting in resistance are all sacred, spiritual practices.
• Our movements are at their best when they return regularly to healing trauma, celebrating the blessedness of embodiment and focusing on making love and justice in the world in small and big ways.
• Blessing upon blessing has been mine—through my biological family, through my chosen family, through Maggie and Shannon, through my movement families and particularly with so many of you in this room with whom I’ve had the honor and privilege of making sacred trouble. In particular, knowing and working and playing and praying with Beth and Barbara is sheer gift.

 
Thank you to Stacey and Sayre and the Task Force and thank you to each of you and all of you for being here tonight.
 
I’d love to end with some Holly Near. Please join with me. I am open and I am willing, for to be hopeless would seem so strange. It dishonors those who go before us. So lift me up to the light of change.