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In(queering) Spirit: Reflections on love, justice and embodiment

I'm a lesbian, pastor, mom and athlete who believes our bodies have something to teach us about what G-d desires for us.

Resistance Rooted in Love

2/20/2017

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In these times, I find myself grappling with an almost all-consuming anger as I read the news. As one amongst many religiously-rooted folks seeking to live justly, the news of Standing Rock, of the attempted Muslim ban, of avowed white supremacists couseling the president enrages me. Into my anger and rage, this week's Scripture reading came as a balm and a salve. Jesus offers his creative, non-violent direct action rooted in revolutionary love. It was a word I needed to hear and preach.

                               Resistance Rooted in Love
                            Lyndale UCC- February 19, 2017
                                                                                     Matthew 5: 38-48
                                                                               Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
Root us in love, Holy One. Root us in love. Root us in love. Amen.
 
In A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engele’s theological masterpiece masquerading as a children’s book, she writes of a scene in which the protagonist, Meg, has managed to temporarily resist a totalitarian regime of control and evil (called IT and the Black Thing) and escape to a planet of beasts who will help her heal and return to the struggle. She arrives there deeply injured from her resistance, nearly broken.
 
“This little girl needs prompt and special care. The coldness of the—what is it you call it?”
 
“The Black Thing?”
 
“The Black Thing. Yes. The Black Thing burns unless it is counteracted properly.” The three beasts stood around Meg, and it seemed that they were feeling into her with their softly waving tentacles. The movement of the tentacles was as rhythmic and flowing as the dance of an undersea plant, and lying there, cradled in the four strange arms, Meg, despite herself, felt a sense of security that was deeper than anything she had known since the days when she lay in her mother’s arms in the old rocking chair and was sung to sleep. With her father’s help she had been able to resist IT. Now she could hold out no longer. She leaned her head against the beast’s chest, and realized that the gray body was covered with the softest, most delicate fur imaginable, and the fur had the same beautiful odor as the air.
 
… As the tall figure cradled her she could feel the frigid stiffness of her body relaxing against it. The bliss could not come to her from a thing like IT. IT could only give her pain, never relieve it. The beasts must be good. They had to be good. She sighed deeply, like a very small child, and suddenly she was asleep.[1]
 
[pause]
 
This brokenness and injury feels familiar.
 
I had lunch with a clergy colleague this week and we talked about how angry we are. I hear about Scott Pruitt’s confirmation and I’m angry. I hear about president #45 saying he’s the least anti-semitic person you’ll ever meet and I’m angry. I hear about the Dept of Education under DeVos’s tweet that misspelled WEB DuBois’s name and then misspelled the word “apology” in their apology and I’m angry.
 
And when I hear these things while I’m logged onto Facebook, I find myself clicking the red-faced angry emoji on almost every article or post I read. Black history month meeting at the White House—angry emoji. “This isn’t chaos, it’s a fine-tuned machine”—angry emoji. The US Army Corp of Engineers reversing itself on an environmental review and the drilling can begin at Standing Rock—angry emoji.
 
And then I’m in a meeting with other religiously-rooted justice folks—all of whom I honestly love—and we have to pause because we find ourselves going after each other in anger… And after a few deep breaths, we try to re-orient ourselves. And we talk about the fact that this anger we are engulfed in and directing toward so many we encounter—is totally appropriate to feel, given what we’re experiencing. AND it’s part of a strategy being deployed against us. It is both of these at the same time.
 
So you might be surprised to hear that I was absolutely ecstatic when Ashley and Mindy and I were doing worship planning and we read our Matthew text from this morning. It was one of those times when the Biblical text is like the beast with its exquisitely soft fur with the beautiful aroma who cradles me back to healing.
 
This may surprise you because this particular text has been used in such negative ways. But a theologian, Biblical scholar and activist named Walter Wink has helped me experience this text like an Aunt Beast—it appears ugly, but when one relaxes into it, it is a healing balm.
 
Wink’s book is called Violence and Non-Violence in South Africa: Jesus’ Third Way and his central message starts with setting our scripture for this morning in context.
 
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not strike back at evil (or one who has done you evil) in kind. Do not give blow for blow. Do not retaliate against violence with violence.
 
Jesus is speaking to people living under Roman occupation. They are grappling with how to live in relationship to the Empire. Some have chosen fight. There was a violent uprising in Galilee that was crushed. Many of Jesus’ hearers would have seen some of the more than 2000 people crucified along the roadside for resisting the Empire. Or they would have known the inhabitants of Sepphoris just three miles north of Nazareth who had been sold into slavery for supporting the insurrectionists.
 
Others had chosen passivity or submission- an option which didn’t incur Roman crack-down but which was soul-crushing.
 
It is into this seemingly no-win situation—fight and be crushed or submit—that Jesus preaches.
 
But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;
 
Wink invites us to focus on Jesus’ referencing the right cheek. Why does he include the right cheek? The only way (in a right handed world—and there were fines in Jesus’ day for using your left hand which was reserved for unclean tasks) the only way to strike the right cheek of another person is to use the back of your hand. A backhand slap was the normal way of admonishing those with less power than you—those who are considered inferiors. As Wink says, “masters backhanded slaves; husbands, wives; parents, children; men, women; Romans, Jews. One black [South] African told me that during his youth white farmers still gave the backhand to disobedient workers. We have here a set of unequal relations, in each of which retaliation would be suicidal. The only normal response would be cowering submission.”
 
Jesus’ hearers would have been those being backhanded. They would have endured such dehumanizing treatment and been forced to stifle their rage due to the hierarchal system of caste and class, race and gender, age and status and imperial occupation. So why does he suggest turning the other cheek?
 
Because it robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate. It says, try again, your first blow failed to achieve its intended effect. But furthermore, it creates difficulty for the striker. If you hit the left cheek, you have to do so with your closed fist—acknowledging the other as your equal, your peer.
 
Likewise, the second example of and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well is another example of flipping the power dynamics. It is set in a court of law. Only the poorest of the poor would have nothing but an outer garment to use as collateral for a loan. And the economic system in Jesus’ day was one in which the Roman Empire had created a tax system in which people were falling further and further into spiraling debt. Many of Jesus’ hearers would understand that this was someone who owned only his coat (his outer garment) and his cloak (his underwear). Faced with a rigged legal and economic system, he isn’t going to win the trial. So when he is forced to give his outer coat, he takes off his underwear and hands it to his creditor. In his cultural context nakedness is a taboo and the shame falls on the one causing or seeing the nakedness, not the naked one.
 
By stripping, the naked one brings a curse upon his creditor. It becomes a public chastisement to both the system of Empire and the individual demanding his coat. And, as Wink points out, it might provide an opportunity for the creditor to have his participation in unjust systems revealed to him. It is a call to an ancient Jewish art of clowning. And it echoes a later saying in the Talmud which says, “If your neighbor calls you an ass, put a saddle on your back.” But it does more than that. “The Powers That Be literally stand on their dignity. Nothing [deflates their power] faster than deft lampooning. By refusing to be awed by their power, the powerless are emboldened to seize the initiative, even where structural change is not possible.”
 
Finally, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. This third example is also rooted in a context very familiar with Jesus’ hearers living under Roman imperial occupation. There existed a law that Roman soldiers could impose labor on subjected peoples. It was another bitter reminder that they were an occupied people in their own land. But to keep the subjected peoples from rebelling, there were strict rules that a solder could only make a person carry his belongings one mile and violation of them carried penalties for the soldier. So again, faced with an imbalance of power, Jesus counsels creativity which flips the power dynamic.
 
The soldier flaunts his power and demands that someone carry his bag (which often weighed sixty-five to eighty-five pounds). That person picks up the bag and starts walking, but when he gets to the mile marker where the soldier thinks he’s going to drop the bag, he keeps walking. The soldier doesn’t know what to do—are you being kind? Are you insulting his strength? Are you trying to get him disciplined for violating the rules? From a situation of servile impressment, you have taken back the power of choice. You have flipped the dynamic, claiming your own humanity and your equality with the soldier.[2]
 
[pause]
 
Seen through the lens that Walter Wink offers, this text can be a salve and a balm to the soul. In the midst of Empire, Jesus offers practical, creative resistance, rooted in the culture of his listeners that claims deep humanity, plays with humor and takes the rules of Empire and flips them on their head. It’s like the AIDS activists who, in the 1980’s in the face of a government who refused to do anything about this horrifying plague, wrapped Sen Jesse Helms’ house in a giant condom and at the same time made quilts for each person who had died with exquisite, palpable details about each, precious life. Claiming humor and satire and humanity.
 
I believe we are in similar times and the call to a kind of creative resistance is our call. It’s why Saturday Night Live is saving my life right now. Satire is one of the most profound kinds of resistance. It can expose and name and claim truth.
 
But it’s important to look at the last part of our scripture today.
 
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you
 
Any of this kind of resistance can easily be fueled by anger alone. And when we are driven only by anger, a kind of bitterness and hatred can be the motivation which drives us and begins to control us. And this is where the fact that we are followers of Jesus makes a difference. Jesus’ Third Way reminds us that our anger can be sacred, but unless we are rooted in love, we can become pawns of the very system or situation we are seeking to resist. To quote some of the signs at those women’s marches which are another wonderful example of Jesus’ Third Way, “only love trumps hate.”
 
[pause]
 
After she is healed by Aunt Beast, Meg is sent back to confront IT again. Her job is to try to save her brother, Charles Wallace, who is enslaved by IT. To help her, she is told by one of her teachers, Mrs. Whatsit, that she has something that IT does not.
 
As she saw him it was again as though she had been punched in the stomach, for she had to realize afresh that she was seeing Charles, and yet it was not Charles at all. Where was Charles Wallace, her own beloved Charles Wallace?
 
What is it I have got that IT hasn’t got?
 
“You have nothing that IT hasn’t got, “Charles Wallace said coldly. “How nice to have you back, dear sister. We have been waiting for you. We knew that Mrs. Whatsit would send you. She is our friend, you know.”
 
For an appalling moment Meg believed, and in that moment she felt her brain being gathered up into IT.
 
“No!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “No! You lie!”
 
For a moment she was free from ITs clutches again.
 
As long as I can stay angry enough IT can’t get me. Is that what I have that IT doesn’t have?
 
“Nonsense,” Charles Wallace said. “You have nothing that IT doesn’t have.”
 
“You’re lying,” she replied, and she felt only anger toward the boy who was not Charles Wallace at all. No, it was not anger, it was loathing; it was hatred, sheer and unadulterated, and as she became lost in hatred she also began to be lost in IT. The red miasma swam before her eyes; her stomach churned in ITs rhythm. Her body trembled with the strength of her hatred and the strength of IT.
 
With the last vestige of consciousness she jerked her mind and body. Hate was nothing IT didn’t have. IT knew all about hate.
 
“You are lying about that, and you were lying about Mrs. Whatsit!” she screamed.
 
“Mrs. Whatsit hates you,” Charles Wallace said.
 
And that was where IT made ITs fatal mistake, for as Meg said, automatically, “Mrs. Whatsit loves me; that’s what she told me, that she loves me,” suddenly she knew.
 
She knew!
 
Love.
 
That was what she had that IT did not have.
 
She had Mrs. Whatsit’s love, and her father’s, and her mother’s, and the real Charles Wallace’s love, and the twins’, and Aunt Beast’s.
 
And she had her love for them.
 
But how could she use it? What was she meant to do?
 
If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love. But she, in all her weakness and foolishness and baseness and nothingness, was incapable of loving IT. Perhaps it was not too much to ask of her, but she could not do it.
 
But she could love Charles Wallace.
 
She could stand there and she could love Charles Wallace.
 
Her own Charles Wallace, the real Charles Wallace, the child for whom she had come back to [this planet], to IT, the baby who was so much more than she was, and who was yet so utterly vulnerable.
 
She could love Charles Wallace.
 
Charles. Charles, I love you. My baby brother who always takes care of me. Come back to me, Charles Wallace, come away from IT, come back, come home. I love you, Charles. Oh, Charles Wallace, I love you.
 
Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she was unaware of them.
 
Now she was even able to look at him, at this animated thing that was not her own Charles Wallace at all. She was able to look and love.
 
I love you. Charles Wallace, you are my darling and my dear and the light of my life and the treasure of my heart. I love you. I love you. I love you.
 
Slowly his mouth closed. Slowly his eyes stopped their twirling. The tic in the forehead ceased its revolting twitch. Slowly he advanced toward her.
 
“I love you!” she cried. “I love you, Charles! I love you!”
 
Then suddenly he was running, pelting, he was in her arms, he was shrieking with sobs, “Meg! Meg! Meg!”
 
“I love you, Charles!” she cried again, her sobs almost as loud as his, her tears mingling with his. “I love you! I love you! I love you!”
 
A whirl of darkness. An icy cold blast. An angry, resentful howl that seemed to tear through her. Darkness again. Through the darkness to save her came a sense of Mrs. Whatsit’s presence, so that she knew it could not be IT who now had her in its clutches.
 
And then the feel of earth beneath her, of something in her arms, and she was rolling over on the sweet smelling autumnal earth, and Charles Wallace  was crying out, “Meg! Oh, Meg!”
 
Now she was hugging him close to her, and his little arms were clasped tightly around her neck. “Meg, you saved me! You saved me!” he said it over and over.[3]
 
Amen.
 
Readings for February 19, 2017
 
Matthew 5: 38-48
 
 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not strike back at evil (or one who has done you evil) in kind. Do not give blow for blow. Do not retaliate against violence with violence. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; 40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; 41 and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42 Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
 
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father/Mother in heaven; for s/he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father/Mother is perfect.
 
 
“The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”
                                                                        -James Baldwin
 
 
 


[1] Madeleine L’Engele A Wrinkle in Time (Square Fish: New York, 1962), 197-198

[2] Walter Wink, Violence and Non-Violence in South Africa: Jesus’ Third Way (New Society Publishers: Philadelphia, 1987), 12-23.

[3] Madeleine L’Engele A Wrinkle in Time (Square Fish: New York, 1962), 227-230.


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Dreams, Visitations and Epiphanic Interruptions

1/18/2017

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As we prepare for the inauguration of Donald Trump, here are some words which have been on my heart:  ​http://www.lyndaleucc.org/sermons/dreams-visitations-and-other-epiphanic-interruptions/
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Christians #StandingwithStandingRock- A Call for Confession, Repentance and Repair

11/5/2016

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What lesson did you learn from today,” I asked my nine year old daughter. I had brought her to the Clergy Call at Standing Rock because my partner and I (two middle-aged, white lesbian Christians) are trying to raise her (a white, Christian girl) to know both her power and agency AND her responsibility to work for justice. We don’t know exactly how to teach these lessons—since we are still trying to learn them ourselves. But we hope that acting for justice and sharing those experiences might be one part of that.
 
“I learned that Christians did and still do some terrible things to indigenous people and we have to help change that.”

Continue reading here: http://auburnseminary.org/standing-rock-collective-confession-and-repentance-was-our-first-action/


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"Ay, Lassie, a spirit like that never dies!"

11/5/2016

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I know I tell a lot of stories about my grammie, Mary Doyle MacKenzie Unwin. But she has been very present with me this week as I’ve been thinking and praying about All Saints Day. So I hope you’ll indulge me in another story about her.
 
Grammie was born in Inverness, Scotland in 1905. In her many stories, she often told me that her father’s first language was Gaelic and that his English wasn’t that good. She loved to recount the story of going to visit her father’s family in Applecross, a tiny village on the side of the mountain on the West Coast of Scotland.
 
On this particular evening, she was taking a walk with her uncle Murdo who spent most of his time dressed in tartan and hiking in the mountains since his job was to be the hunter for the wealthy land owner. As the darkness fell, Uncle Murdo turned to Grammie and said, “would you like to talk with Robbie Burns?”
 
Now, Robbie Burns was one of my grammie’s favorite poets. She had memorized dozens and dozens of his pieces—many of them in Gaelic. As he was known as the Scottish national poet, you can imagine that my grammie would have been thrilled to talk with him.
 
But she responded to Uncle Murdo’s request with deep fear, “Uncle Murdo, Robbie Burns has been dead for over a hundred years.” To which Uncle Murdo replied, “Ay, Lassie, a spirit like that never dies.”
 
Tomorrow we are marking All Saints Day. For me, my Uncle Murdo’s wisdom lies at the heart of this day. “Ay, Lassie, a spirit like that never dies.”
 
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.
 
But there’s a bit more to the story of Uncle Murdo and my great-grandfather. As I said, they had grown up in Applecross, on the West Coast of Scotland. But our family had originally lived in the Western Islands.
 
The story of how they got to Applecross is rooted in a century of brutality known as the Highland Clearances. In the mid-eighteenth century, as punishment for participating in the Scottish Clan uprising against English colonization, the Scottish wealthy class began clearing people, including my MacKenzie relatives, from the communal lands in the Highlands and the Western Islands. Then, those same lands were given to wealthy people to develop large-scale sheep farming.
 
The Clearances were marked by violence and brutality and often removed whole villages off their land on short notice. People were often left homeless, without any source of income or food. And, if they stole food to feed their families, many were arrested and sent to penal colonies in places like Australia. Additionally, wearing tartan was outlawed and punishable with arrest and deportation. And speaking Gaelic was discouraged and suffered greatly.
 
This use of forced displacement and cultural destruction as punishment for liberation struggles, coupled with rewarding the wealthy who are already aligned with the colonizer, are old, old tactics.
 
Robbie Burns, by the way, wrote much of his poetry during the Highland Clearances, in Gaelic. And his voice was one of resistance and resilience and cultural reclamation. These, too, are old, old tactics.
 
And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets-- who through faith… obtained promises… won strength out of weakness… others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.
 
So perhaps the second lesson of All Saints Day is that the spirit that never dies isn’t just the spirit of a single person. Perhaps it is the spirit of extravagant love and justice that never dies, either. Perhaps the promised resurrection that is both already and yet to come is both of our bodies and selves AND of the time of jubilee and justice and genuine shalom.
 
Ay, lassie, a spirit like that never dies!
 
But, it seems to me that there is yet a third All Saints Day lesson:
 
Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better…
 
You see, even as the spirit of Robbie Burns is alive and well, even as the spirit of jubilee and justice and genuine shalom surround us here and now, the fullness of God’s promises are not ours. We stand in a long line of those who have been surrounded. And we have been given the honor and the gift of tasting and feeling the promise. But ours is not to realize the fullness, but to rather bring God’s promises more fully to life so that we may hand our children and our children’s children the fruits of our faithfulness.
 
I have to tell you, I couldn’t help but be drawn over and over again to the story of Standing Rock as I remembered the stories of the Highland Clearances. And I can’t tell you how painful it is to know that some of my people, whose ancestors were violently cleared off of their land, whose language was stolen, whose cultural practices were repressed, some of these same people are now beating, shooting and pepper spraying Water Protectors who walk in the spirit of justice and love that never dies. 
 
So, maybe there’s even a fourth lesson of All Saint’s Day: we have a choice of which spirits we hearken to.
 
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.
 
When my grammie died, I sang this song written by Bernice Johnson Reagon at her memorial service. I think my Uncle Murdo might like it.
 
They are falling all around me
They are falling all around me 
They are falling all around me 
They are falling all around me
The strongest leaves of my tree 

Every paper brings the news that 
Every paper brings the news that 
Every paper brings the news that 
The teachers of my sound are movin' on 

Death it comes and rests so heavy 
Death it comes and rests so heavy 
Death comes and rests so heavy 
Your face I'll never see no more 

But you're not really going to leave me 
You're not really going to leave me 
You're not really going to leave me 

It is your path I walk 
It is your song I sing 
It is your load I take on 
It is your air that I breathe 
It's the record you set 
That makes me go on 
It's your strength that helps me stand 
You're not really 
You're not really going to leave me 

And I have tried to sing my song right 
I have tried to sing my song right 

I will try to sing my song right 
Be sure to let me hear from you

 
Amen.

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"We are alive"

9/9/2016

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“We are alive…. We are alive…. We are alive.”
 
This was the first thing we heard when we arrived at the Water Protectors camp established by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and inhabited by representatives of over 100 Tribal nations. It was sung, in Lakota, by all who knew it at the invitation of a Lakota elder.
 
I had come as a UCC clergyperson with three other non-Native people to be “witnesses and interpreters” at the behest of Rev. Marlene Helgamo, pastor of All Nations Indian Church and Director of the Council on American Indian Ministries in the United Church of Christ to help protect the water....

To read my whole blog, visit: ​http://auburnseminary.org/protecting-the-water-at-standing-rock/

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Healing Justice: Building a Religious Movement for Justice

7/1/2016

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We know that justice work is sacred work. And building intersectional movements for justice that take seriously racial, LGBTQ, economic, climate and food justice all at once is critically important.

But we cannot build justice movements that are populated with broken bodies, traumatized bodies, exhausted bodies. We must find a way to heal, build resiliency and practice new habits… personally, communally and as an earth-body.

The Center for Sustainable Justice will host its first conference this fall featuring skills-building, deep reflection, celebration and ethical spectacle to help us all learn to work religiously for justice. Co-sponsors are the Kaleo Center for Faith, Justice and Social Transformation and Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light.

Presenters include: Lisa Anderson from the Sojourner Truth Healing Circle through Auburn Seminary; Steve Newcom from Kaleo Center for Faith, Justice and Social Transformation; Erin Pratt from Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light; Lena Katherine Gardner from Black Lives Matter Minneapolis and more to come.

Scholarships available upon request. Contact: sustainjustice@gmail.com. Please note that building is fully accessible and gender-neutral bathrooms are available.

WHEN
Friday, September 23, 2016 at 6:30 PM - Saturday, September 24, 2016 at 8:00 PM (CDT) -Add to Calendar

​WHERE
SpringHouse Ministry Center - 610 West 28th Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408 - View Map

Register NOW:  ​https://www.eventbrite.com/e/healing-justice-building-a-religious-movement-for-justice-tickets-26306482397
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Sacred Intersextions

6/2/2016

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The intersection of sexuality and spirituality is deeply sacred in my life. For many years, I have read, asked questions, danced, played sports, sung, worshiped-- all in exploration of the weaving of sexuality and spirituality. At the beginning of April a dozen of us spent a long weekend sharing this exploration together. This blog post shares some of our ponderings, experiences and joys: ​Sacred Intersextions
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Our Nine-Year-Old  Daughter preached on Sunday...

4/19/2016

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This past Sunday, in honor of Earth Week, our daughter was asked to preach on why she was a vegetarian. As is so often the case, her words, the way she chose to share them and the wisdom contained, have taught us much. I share them as we, collectively, seek to be better connected to all of Life.

I was born a vegetarian. But sometimes I wonder, “Why do I stay a vegetarian?” I see cookbooks, chicken looks good. I hear my friends saying, “Bacon is so delicious.” But why do I stay a vegetarian? Well, I think for me, it has something to do with the Circle of Life. Because humans, sometimes we get a little too big for our britches and we think we’re smarter than everything else and we overbreed animals we kill for food and we poach the animals that usually would be predators so that the Circle of Life is chopped up and uneven.
 
I feel like being a vegetarian helps because I am not really part of making the Circle of Life uneven. But just because I don’t eat meat, it doesn’t make me automatically not part of making the Circle of Life uneven. But I do believe it also has something to do with the way I live. My moms buy cage-free eggs and we try to grow our own organic food so we help reduce all the shipping fumes and stuff.
 
And I found a story that goes with the theme of the Circle of Life because it tells about how long, long ago, all animals could walk around and talk like humans. I think this story has to do with how God created us all connected to each other in a Circle that never ends.
 
I want to share the story with you now:
 
Long, long ago, the animals and trees could walk around and talk to each other just like we can… Now, gray squirrel was very ungainly and not the sharpest knife in the drawer. One day, she came to be sad about this. She came to sit down undernearth the Cedar Tree. She sighed and said to herself, “I am not good at anything.” The Cedar Tree said, “Why don’t you try to make a basket? Go fetch bear grass and bark and some of my roots.” Gray squirrel went and fetched these things. “Now weave these things together and make a basket,” said Cedar Tree and gray squirrel did it.
 
“Now, go the river and dip the basket into the water. If it holds the water, you’ve made a fine basket.” Gray Squirrel did this but the water rushed through the basket and she started crying.
 
Cedar Tree said, “Go out and ask the animals for ideas, for designs, for materials.” And so Gray Squirrel went out into the world as Cedar Tree had said.
 
Rattle snake gave her the pattern off his back. Peacock gave her the pattern of his tail. Stream gave her the pattern of her waves. Quail gave her the pattern of her footprints. Soon Squirrel had made a basket of all these different designs. It was a beautiful basket and when she tested it, it held all the water.
 
She went to Cedar Tree and said, “I made a basket out of what you told me. And it worked.” Cedar Tree said, “Now, you must give it back to the earth.” 
 
So, Gray Squirrel made four baskets for the animals whose patterns she had used. Then Gray Squirrel went into the forest and put the basket on the forest floor.
 
Then, Coyote came and said, “Humans are coming very quickly.”  Cedar Tree said, “We must give these humans a gift. We will give the women weaving skills like Gray Squirrel has.”
 
For me, this story shows how even though we think we might be very different, we are linked to Gray Squirrel and all the animals in this way.
 
Thank you all for your time.


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Good Friday

3/25/2016

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This morning, I marched in solidarity with Planned Parenthood, as I have each of the last five Good Fridays. And this evening, I gathered with my beloved Lyndale United Church of Christ. In both contexts, I reflected on what Good Friday is and how it's been distorted. During worship, I shared the following words.

Too often, Good Friday in Christian churches have been opportunities to perpetrate crucifixion.  Too many of our Jewish kindred have been murdered in the name of Jesus on this day.  Too many have been abused in a distortion of the “ritual” of Good Friday.  Too often, Good Friday’s remembrance of Jesus’ execution has resulted in the torture of others.
 
But we gather tonight with a radically different understanding of what this night means.  We’ve been taking a journey through Lent, from ashes to the Cross, examining brokenness and what makes for resilience.  We’ve asked the question of how we are able to let go of the toxicity of vengeance and, instead, choose vulnerability. We’ve wrestled with individual, communal and societal brokenness and how we are both perpetrators and targets of oppression.  And, how, amidst it all, we resist the violence, vengeance and oppression through healing and revolutionary joy.
 
But before we can fully claim any joy; before we know resurrection, we must face into the reality of Good Friday. Pain, suffering, abuse, oppression…. These are the all-too-present realities of our day. Crucifixion happened and it continues to happen. But tonight, we name and claim the ways in which Jesus’ crucifixion is a moment of God’s radical solidarity with all who are oppressed, wounded and experience violence.  We name and claim God’s willingness to experience in God’s body what it was to be executed by the Powerful of the world, executed in the same way that countless people and the planet suffer at the hands of Power today.  Good Friday does not valorize crucifixion, it does not celebrate violence.  Good Friday condemns all that would break or injure God’s precious creation.  
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Raising Shannon

3/16/2016

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I have recently joined the MAM Network, a group of Minister *Activist* Moms. It is a community of folks seeking to work religiously for justice AND raise their children well. It's not an easy balance.

As part of that network, I was asked to reflect on raising a daughter amidst an activist family. Here is what I shared:

The day after Prop 8 passed in California in 2008, I was asked to speak at a local rally in downtown Minneapolis. We made the decision that the whole family would attend. After the speakers finished, we marched through the valleys of skyscrapers chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, discrimination has got to go” and hearing it echo off the glass and metal. Our daughter, Shannon, was not quite two years old at the time and sporting a purple cast on her foot from a misstep on the stairs which broke three bones. She held our hands, walked with an uneven gait and chanted along with us in her fiercest voice.... 

[For the full blog, visit: ​http://www.themamnetwork.org/#!Raising-Shannon/a3xnp/56e8abc00cf282fc9b002ca5 ]

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    Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel is a pastor, theologian and movement builder.  She is also a mom, partner, community-builder, biker, runner and swimmer.

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