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FALL 2020 Student Reflections
Where Deep Joys Meets Deep Need
Ihave always been passionate about the intersection of faith and social justice. Within my social justice work, I’ve seen how economic inequality connects so many different issues. It intersects with race, gender, sexual orientation, and ability; all of these have ethical, economic components to them. Focusing on economic justice is a way to show how all of these different concerns intersect. It allows us to look at how transformation, a focus on solutions, and economic justice can help to mitigate some of those other forms of inequality as well.
Currently, I work halftime at the Congregational Church of San Mateo, CA, which is a wonderful community. We have both an English service on Sunday mornings as well as a Spanish service on Wednesdays. Ours is a community that tries to look at its neighborhood and the changing demographics to a find a way to bring together different populations who might not otherwise interact. The church has tried to find ways to build community, to engage in social justice and solidarity, and to work together on issues of mutual concern such as immigration justice and economic justice. We look to see how we can support and learn from each other.
COVID-19 has encouraged us as a church to get people to share their needs, which can be challenging, especially for people who are not used to asking for help or would rather not ask for help. We all have different types of needs, and for us as a church, it is important to think about the ways in which we can meet those needs and find the ways in which people who have extra resources can contribute and be matched with people who really could use that help right now. It has been a great opportunity for the congregation to think about how we can have economic solidarity as one community, and how we reach out to the wider community as well.
It has been great to be rooted in a congregation that is already trying to do so many of the things that I think the church needs to be trying to do more broadly. That has been a hopeful experience in my day-to-day work by seeing how some of these things that I believe and write about as possible are actually possible, and are already happening in some communities.
A lot of us are not in our usual patterns, which can allow us the opportunity to reflect. Why have we been doing things as we have been doing them? Do we want to go back to the way that everything was? Many of us have reflections in our personal lives and collectively, as well as in terms of our society and what this is exposing about the things that need to be changed and have needed to be changed for some time. This is a very important moment that we need to think about critically and make sure that when we are getting ready for what comes next that we do so informed by what we have learned during this time.
It is great to know where you are situated. I love the idea of a vocation or call being where your deep joy meets the world’s deep needs. So I think that being the change is about knowing what you are equipped to do, what you are well situated to do, and then seeing how that could intersect to meet a need that the world has. Maybe the world as a whole is overwhelming, but it could be a particular community where you find that match between what is going to give you life and bring you joy, and also what is going to help and serve others and serve the world.
Sheryl Johnson is a PhD Student at the Graduate Theological Union.
By Leonard McMahon | OCTOBER 30, 2020 In Search of Common Ground
Religion often has a bad name in the public square right now because it is seen as a divisive factor in our politics, and there is a good reason for that. However, it is also good to remember that, throughout American history, religion has often been the source of healing and repair within our democracy. The civil rights movement is a classic example, of course, but you can go back to find encouraging examples at the turns of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Knowing this is what prompted me to ask, what is it about religion that prompts such amazing social change? How do we do religion in a way that allows it to be a positive resource for democracy as opposed to a negative one?
One of the things about religion that is important but that people forget— that American Protestants especially forget—is that traditions are never settled issues. There is no such thing as the Christian faith, for instance. Christian theology and Christian living are ongoing conversations about fundamentally unanswerable and perennial questions, which scholars organize into systematic theology. Questions such as: What is God? Who is Jesus Christ? What is Creation? What is evil? What are human beings? All these are fundamental, systematic theological questions. And in fact, keeping the conversations going is the point of the Christian theological tradition.
But there is a paradox at the heart of religion that makes it risky for democracy. Indeed, critics can reliably cite how religion has been detrimental for our society, where it has been dogmatic and oppressive and reactionary precisely because of this paradox. And the paradox is that while religion can be endlessly studied, making it work requires an emotional commitment to some set of answers to perennial questions. We must decide what answers we find compelling enough to risk our lives. Put another way, we must choose a faith out of the many possible faiths there are in the world. All the wonderful scholarship at the GTU tracks how these choices have been made over time and around the world, but the point is that being religious requires a narrowing of vision, a choice among choices, a selection of this over that, and every religious person does this, consciously or unconsciously.
The problems come when we forget, as we often do when living out our faith, that what we have committed to was, in fact, one choice in an ongoing conversation with many options, and this is difficult because what we do religiously does not, in the reverential moment, feel like a choice. It feels like something outside and beyond us, compelling and irresistible; in truth, it is unnerving to think we could have done otherwise. But alas, it is a choice, and it may be one we made consciously and urgently or it may be one that was made for us by family, community, or culture. But whatever the reason, we bear the responsibility for it. And if we do not take responsibility for our religious life at some point, we run a serious moral risk of hurting others. I think we recognize, across the board, that an adult who cannot or does not assume self-responsibility is missing something vital, and the same is true with the religious life.
Crucially, taking responsibility for our choices means acknowledging the choices we could have made but did not. Indeed, other people have chosen those answers we found unsatisfactory, and sometimes the answers we outright rejected. The hitch is that in a pluralistic democracy we are in conversation with these people, and not only the ones with whom we agree theologically. The fact of the matter is that, in a democracy, we are connected to people we will never meet and to people we would never want to meet, yet if the phrase, “the common good,” is to have any meaning at all, it must demand we think constructively about these folks as we go about our lives.
So, we are inextricably bound up, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., suggests, and in conversation with strangers, some View Leonard’s video reflection at gtu.edu/scel/leonard-mcmahon
of with whom we will fundamentally, vigorously, and righteously disagree. These are people who have made other religious choices, and how we get along with them depends on how we frame our religious faith. If we hold our faith as absolutely right, exclusive, and immutable, then the conflict and tension that naturally come from difference explode into rage and revenge, and this is what we see in our politics today. But if we hold our faith with a sense of contingency, then this allows religion to work productively within us, helping us discover something beyond irritation and uneasiness.
By the way, some of the worst advice we could follow would be to “resolve” conflict and tension. Tension and conflict are natural to human life, and signs that we are ironically but powerfully connected to those people with whom we vigorously disagree. The key is to make this connection work for everybody. I think people who want to resolve a conflict in fact want to resolve a crisis, an acute moment of discomfort that threatens disconnection, and this is quite laudable. But once the crisis has passed, tension and conflict should return and be managed by all concerned.
In the work I do with my diversity consultancy firm, Common Ground Dialogue (cgdialogue.org), I have developed a method for bringing people to a place of contingency, using my training in Christian and classical spirituality, theology, and political theory. I, and my colleagues and staff, help people understand that what they hold so dear is, at its root, not rational or obvious or inevitable, but something contingent and therefore precious. We help people feel how fragile and precious their own worldview is, and thus appreciate how others must feel when what they hold dear is faced with difference.
And there are many good people out there—civic groups, persuasive pundits, public intellectuals, and dedicated scholars—doing amazing work in trying to improve civility and civic engagement. There are good people talking across political difference, and there is wonderful work being done to, “repair the breach” and, “restore the streets,” as it says in Isaiah. However, what I have been able to bring through my work and my study here at the GTU is a theological rigor, robustness, and depth to precisely how and why a better body politic is possible. The work currently being done in anti-racism, for example, is rooted in psychology, sociology, and cultural theory, but I argue that only theology, that original science, reaches the heart of the problem and therefore offers the most promising solutions.
The upshot of my work is simple: If we do not first work through a contemplative process to deal with the tension within ourselves, our efforts to work across the table are going to be penultimate and possibly fruitless. They are going to be limited because they will be sourced in attempts to find common ground through education and empathy, or in other words, to seek some ground that we all have in common. Efforts to convince us that we all share the same ground, while principled, are misguided. It is not that we share the same ground, and that if only we could recognize this the world would be a better place. It is, rather, the fact that we each have a ground, but do not know it, that binds us in common.
Noble as efforts at education and empathy might be, eventually they will peter out in the heat of the moment, in the exigency of the discourse, and over the long haul of life. The pain of the tension will become too great. We will hit a wall at some point, and the connection will fracture, possibly forever. But when we practice a contemplative method, we will find that we sit atop an inexhaustible source of love, compassion, and respect for ourselves, qualities we can then share with other people, especially those with whom we vigorously disagree. The tension in each of us keeps us from appreciating our potential, but at Common Ground Dialogue, we work to deepen awareness of this tension and make it an avenue, not a roadblock, to civility, discourse, and engagement. Folks will go to the polls soon, and I urge them to vote and be part of the process because I think voting is not just a matter of accounting for the majority. I think it is a matter of social consolidation. Even when people feel their vote does not count, the voting process itself shapes a certain kind of democratic person. It is important because it helps us to think in terms of conversation across difference, and the conversation is the most important thing.
It is not about winning this election or the next one. It is about creating a community of strangers that allows people to feel connected—even when they lose and even when they win. This is what a democracy is, and it means, again, holding tension and being willing to live with conflict. An obsession with winning, even when we know we are morally right, is about doing away with conflict; and consequently, when we win, things still do not feel quite right. There is no peace outside because there is no peace inside.
Democracy is easier when we win, but it also requires we live with loss. Even when we think the consequences are absolutely dire, we must be able to access the moral and spiritual resources necessary to stay connected, and the only way to do that is with some kind of moral, emotional, spiritual, and ultimately contemplative work. There is a kind of vulnerability, contingency, and connection we can call the common ground. There is a place we can all touch together, but it is first and foremost inside of each one of us. True community, the kind we all dream about, comes only from within.
Leonard McMahon is pursuing his PhD in political theology at the Graduate Theological Union. He is the founder/CEO of Common Ground Dialogue, a diversity consulting firm that specializes in making political, racial, and cultural difference work for groups and organizations, and may be reached at cgdialogue.org and lmcmahon@ses.gtu.edu.
Building Bridges of Love
Iwas raised in a Reform Jewish household where my parents encouraged me to do mitzvahs—good deeds—for people, and to have a lifelong goal of doing tikkun olam, or repairing the world, in this world that is so heartbroken. Motivated by wonderful moral values, I committed to spending my time outside of school visiting nursing homes, giving resources to the needy, and helping out wherever it was needed. When I became a student at Arizona State University, I continued my community involvement by volunteering in every project. I have been a social justice activist ever since.
My family’s past motivated my activism as well. My maternal cousins were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps and endured so much suffering because of their heritage. Many of my family members died there. I make it my responsibility to tell new generations about the Holocaust, so that it will never be forgotten or happen again and to remember all of those who died. It has been over 70 years since the Holocaust happened, and we are beginning to see the signs of renewed violence on the horizon. It is essential that we talk about the events that led up to the Holocaust, and stop the genocides that are now occurring around the world.
Racism and anti-Semitism can find their some of their origins in the intergenerational and historical traumas that get passed down through the DNA, as pointed out by Resmaa Menakem in his phenomenal book My Grandmother’s Hands. Since the beginning of human history, people have been subjugated and victimized by one another. Being able to heal these traumas and stop the cycle of violence is essential work.
Another reason exists for this violence as well. People are yearning for their psycho-spiritual needs to be met in a world that tells them that they are not enough, that there is a scarcity of resources that they must fight for, and that others are to blame for what they lack. People need to know that they count, are worthy of love, and are valuable for who they are and not just for what they do.
At my Unity Church, as soon as COVID-19 came to our attention, we had to close our doors. We, as a congregation, found ourselves feeling lonely and needing something to make up for the socialization that we lacked. We needed a deeper meaning and purpose for our lives, a way to remember that we mattered. The COVID -19 quarantine showed us how badly our Unity values were really needed in the world beyond our doors. We witnessed horrible injustices like routine police brutalities against Black and brown people, especially involving the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others. Reverend Sheryl Padgett knew that I was attending the Starr King School for the Ministry to become a professional activist, and said, “hey, Vanessa, we want to do something about this. ” She asked me to lead anti-racism trainings for the congregation. I welcomed that opportunity with open arms. I feel that it is our responsibility as human beings to recognize systemic and institutionalized racism, call it what it is, and help dismantle it. Recognizing these injustices is the very first step to stopping them and to changing the policies that allow them. We all yearn for love, belonging, and connection with each other, and we need to develop a culture that engenders this. We live in a capitalist economy where competition for power and money are placed above all else. People are valued only by the amount and the efficiency at which they produce, not for their precious uniqueness. Money and power will never meet the deepest needs that we all have—empathy, compassion, understanding, inclusivity, peace, connection, and, most of all, love.
The borders and boundaries that we have erected to make ourselves feel better than others are artificial. We need to take these defenses down and let each other in so that we can all heal. This requires having hard conversations and talking about the elephant in the room. By engaging in peaceful cross-cultural and inter-religious dialogue, we can begin to envision the just and peaceful world we seek. It is a dream that can become and is becoming reality.
We all need to realize how interconnected we are. It is common for people to believe that humans are separate from each other and from Nature. Humans are in fact a part of Nature. Everything we do, say, and believe has an effect on everyone and every form of life around us. There are such wonderfully rich cultures and worlds that we are missing out on because we have shut each other out with our artificial walls.
Being able to listen to your heart and to others is the first step to becoming the change you wish to see in the world. The only value you need to be a leader is LOVE. As long as you can listen and love with your whole heart, you can lead and you can repair the world.
Vanessa Fox is pursuing a Master of Arts in Social Change at Starr King School for the Ministry.
Knitting Back our Community
Iam a student at the GTU pursuing my PhD in theology and ethics. I arrived here in Castro Valley back in May just before the George Floyd protests. I had just lost my uncle and came here through a friend of mine, who was so gracious because she just felt that I needed a change of environment to help with the grieving process. It’s an enormous blessing to have a place to relax and just read and to be safe and far away from the hassles of city life.
In all honesty, there’s no way to quantify the impact that the protests have had on me because it’s just so multifaceted, from every aspect, from every direction you look at it. Especially as an immigrant, as an international student, and as an alien—that’s how we are officially referred to, and that’s how it feels, the alien-ness. Because during the conversations around Black Lives Matter and all the protests, sometimes you feel like your voice is gagged. You can’t say anything because the expectation is that you have nothing much useful to add to the conversation. Yet you do. You have something to say, actually. So you’ve got to sit with with the possibilities of depression, sadness, deep sadness, and frustration, and you try to just try to stay sane in the process amid the pain. The story that really frames my approach to my ministry and project right now is this story about a hummingbird that I heard during a class at the GTU in the Spring semester, a Human Rights and Personhood class. Our professor invited us to listen to a speech that was given by the late Kenyan Professor Wangari Maathai, who was an environmental activist and social justice crusader. She told this story during her acceptance speech when she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for environmental conservation efforts.
The story goes like this: There was this big, huge fire in the forest and all the animals congregated out of panic, and they were like, “We are just done.” Just like here in California when there are all of these warnings and you’ve got to move out and evacuate. The elephants were ready for the next phase, whatever that might be. But the hummingbird decided to do something. They kept going back and forth, making endless trips to the river, and with their little beak they would ferry drops of water to try to put out the fire. The animals were like, “Are you crazy? Just relax and wait and see what happens.” But Wangari Maathai says the hummingbird just kept saying, “No, I’m doing what I can with what I’ve got.” That idea speaks to our situation —as a call for each of us to do what we can with what we’ve got.
The thing that I’ve got, that I feel that I can share, is my artwork. When I create art, I see it as having a threepronged effect: inward, outward, and upward. The inward is in the practice's ability to still me and calm me so that I have a sense of sanity.
One thing that I share with others is my knitting. As I knit, I envision a situation where relationships—broken relationships—are knit back together. Knitting back together our communities, our nations, and the global village. Knitting calms me down and is a subversive exercise, because where I come from men should not be knitting. So, by knitting I am reclaiming my agency.
Another art I practice is my music. When I’m stressed or something’s happening, I might just decide to listen to my music on YouTube and sing or compose spontaneously; or I might even share that music with someone; or I might just sing out loud, especially during birthday celebrations. For example, when I get an update on Facebook that it’s a friend’s birthday, I often contact them to sing “Happy Birthday” to them. And the many people that have said that my singing or my song made their day or made them rejoice or filled them with joy—across the globe, in Kenya, Canada, California, wherever—it is such a blessing.
The other thing that I love to share with others is my hospitality and my cooking. Just yesterday I shared a wonderful meal with guests of Kenyan ugali or Kenyan tea. Offering hospitality is our way of saying I can do something. I might be limited, but I can be a host with whatever I’ve got, with my Kenyan hospitality. By feeding
our friends, we make a change, and we impact other people’s lives. We fill their bellies and make their faces smile.
All of these small actions help to remind me that when you feel that you’ve come to an end, it will actually be the start of a fresh season. It has happened to me in the past, and it will happen again in the future. There’s a song that says, “Hold on just a little longer and it will be alright.” Now, I know that, but at the time it’s happening—during the depression and the loneliness and being in that helpless and paralyzed state—you feel like all hope is gone and even such songs don’t make sense. Well, from my experience, I can say that it shall be alright. But it takes work. You might have to reach out to others, call someone, chat with them, just be there. Reach out and be open to receiving love also.
As we wait for the maneuverings of Washington, D.C., we may not be there to say anything, our voice may be little. We might not make big changes, but we can do something in the process. We can take small actions to keep and maintain our sanity as we await that big day of salvation and deliverance.
Gideon M. M’Mwonyo Mbûûi is a doctoral student in the department of Theology and Ethics at the GTU, working on Constructive African Theology and Liberative Ethics.
The Steadfastness of God
Born and raised in the Presbyterian Church in Canada, I grew up in a small rural town on the eastern side of the country in Ontario, where the old style of church had long since ended. I had absolutely no intentions of being a minister. I was a church organist. When my music skills got to a point where I was proficient enough, I soon found myself being called upon in that capacity. I always assumed that would be my only capacity, and yet the good Lord had other plans.
In our small church where I grew up, a lot of what goes on in the church runs on the underground: in the gossip line, in the families, in the communities and those relationships in small towns. However, a lot of our churches here in Canada have pushed those relationship principles aside and said we are past that stage. Well, unfortunately, we are. I think COVID-19 has really just torn the Band-Aid off the fact that we have a serious problem with maintaining and building trustful relationships between preacher and congregation and between pew sitter and pew sitter.
When COVID-19 hit, it hit us right between the knees. We went from having a congregation of over a hundred people on a Sunday morning, ranging in ages from fifty-five to ninety-five or older, to having no one for six months because we were in lockdown due to the parameters in British Columbia. We have since opened up, but there is just a huge fear. You have a fear of what we’ve been through, a fear of stepping out, of inadvertently making ourselves ill, and now a greater fear, as in British Columbia, we are now moving into dangerous levels of round two.
In all of this, there is the sense of being lost. Some of my coursework over the summer was looking at Old Testament metaphors and layering them over top of COVID-19, things like wilderness experiences, Exodus, being an exile, and a promised land. There it is, now it’s not. So, there is just all of this uncertainty and all that solid ground that we feel we have lost.
The Moses story was in the lectionary this summer in the Old Testament. So, I simply threw all the New Testament stuff out and we just did this long quiet journey with Moses every week, one step at a time. It felt like we were journeying together not only biblically, but also in our own time, being able to layer the COVID-19 metaphor on top of that and finding that at the end of the journey, God was as steadfast and faithful with Moses, despite all the ups and downs, as he had been back at the burning bush at the very beginning. That, I felt, kept that quiet sense of hope very much alive without having to speak too heavily about it.
My congregation is filled with people who, for the most part, have been faithful churchgoers their entire life. They may not have been spiritually deep in those years, but one of the things that COVID-19 has done is forced all of us— but particularly the seniors—to look at their spiritual life and re-examine it. On a milder level, it is a continuation of what I was starting to see happen with the congregation before COVID-19. People were coming in desiring something new or something different, not just from their church, but from their God, from their faith, and from their spirituality.
And fortunately, with technology, we can continue to be there every Sunday. If we cannot be there in person, we can be there online. It is not the same, and we acknowledge that this is not quite what you are used to, but it is something and it is steady. For someone who is used to coming to church every Sunday and going to say their prayers, that’s important—the trustfulness, the calmness, and a re-examination of the steadfastness of God.
I’m a real advocate that we don’t need nice people in the pulpit anymore. Isn’t that an awful thing to say? We need passionate people. Today’s leaders in in the pulpit are called to be more than just acceptable. They are challenged to be exceptional. In a world filled with cynicism and hypocrisy, the time has come for the Church to once again take its place as a voice of reason and justice, but also act as an example of respectful and mature leadership.
Teresa Charlton is a Doctor of Divinity student at San Francisco Theological Seminary. View Teresa’s video reflection at gtu.edu/scel/teresa-charlton
Beloved Community in Land and Spirit
If you had told me just a few years ago that I would be studying at a theological seminary, I don’t think I would have believed you. The path that led me to study the intersections of ecology, Judaism, and Indigenous solidarity has been a winding one. In May of 2021, I will be graduating from Starr King School for the Ministry from the Masters in Social Change program. Upon reflection, I see my path’s origins in my childhood as well as the new bends that have been carved by the COVID-19 crisis.
I grew up two hours east of the Bay Area in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. My parents built our house on 12 acres in a meadow surrounded by oaks and pine trees. It was an idyllic and beautiful childhood. At that time, I did not know that the people indigenous to that place are the WopumnesNisenan-MeWuk tribe, nor did I know the violent history of genocide.
As a child, I felt connected to the land and developed a curiosity for sustainable food production, which I would later follow in my undergraduate studies. While my rural upbringing fostered my spiritual connection to the land, it disconnected me from my Jewish heritage. Because I was one of a few Jewish people in my town, I felt resistance and resentment toward my Jewish identity. After my bat mitzvah, I felt that I was done with God, with religion, and with my Jewish heritage. It was too painful to feel like I didn’t belong in my hometown.
In my undergraduate education, I followed my connection to land care and studied Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems. I also found a home in Queer Studies classes and minored in Gender & Sexualities. These two areas complemented each other because holistic land care requires understanding power structures and reimagining relationships. After I graduated, I wasn’t sure how to follow my passions. Eventually, I read Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent. While reading the reimagined story of Dinah and her four mothers, I realized I could claim a Jewish heritage that honored the feminine and find communities where it was safe and honoring to be Jewish.
I returned to the Jewish summer camp of my childhood where I lived and worked as the gardener for six months of the year for two seasons. The camp is located on 160 acres of MeWuk land. I loved the combination of living with the beautiful land and Jewish community. It felt like a homecoming of two identities that weren’t able to coexist in my childhood.
I also began to notice that, as the gardener, I was bringing a lot of techniques for growing food that didn’t really make sense in that ecosystem. I became curious about how Indigenous people tended that land. This curiosity led me to graduate school, where I ask a complex and painful question: What does it mean to be a Jewish person of European descent living in California, in lands that I love, that have been stolen from Indigenous people?
For me, that question can’t be “moved with” without spirituality, without the container of something greater than me. One of the ways I “move with” that question is through my work as an organizer with Jews on Ohlone Land (JOOL, https://www.jewsonohloneland.org/). JOOL has been my home base and my beloved community asking these questions, returning resources to Indigenous people, and engaging in collective Jewish healing. JOOL has allowed me to not only figure out as an individual how to be in right relationships with Indigenous people, but also as a member of a community of Jewish people who are working on this generations-long process.
Jews on Ohlone Land was founded by Rabbi Dev and Ariel Luckey who have long-term relationships with the founders of Sogorea Te’, a women-led indigenous land trust here in the East Bay (sogoreate-landtrust.org/). Jews on Ohlone Land works to activate the
East Bay Jewish community to support Indigenous solidarity, primarily through individual and organizational contributions to Shuumi—a land tax for non-Indigenous people. Sogorea Te’s vision is to return land to Indigenous stewardship in this land called Huichin. Because Ohlone Indigenous people are not federally recognized, they do not (yet) have the sovereign recognition that would allow them to govern their own ancestral homeland. Instead, they are working with a land trust model to take land off the speculative market and return it to Indigenous women-led communities, which is called “rematriation.”
One of Sogorea Te’s projects is called Himmetka—the “Chochenyo word for ‘in one place, together’”—which are resiliency hubs, with “ceremonial space, food and medicine gardens, water catchment, filtration, and storage, first-aid supplies, tools, and a seed saving library.” Himmetka hubs “provide essential, culturally relevant, resilience and survival support in some of the most marginalized parts of our city.” What speaks to me particularly about the project of Himmetka is the acknowledgment that when we go through times of chaos and catastrophe, our nervous systems will experience trauma and we will need rituals to work through that trauma. It has been an important learning for me to think about how preparing for disasters can and should include preparing ritual and ceremonial spaces.
Along with the disaster of COVID-19 and the underlying systemic injustices and neglect that have been highlighted (i.e. vaccine access, child care access, ability to work from home, and so much more), I also see something like a silver lining. COVID-19 has been a significant shift in reality, or at least our relationship with reality. Whenever there are significant shifts, there are also huge openings for new ways of looking at reality and new ways of connecting to ourselves and each other. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve had more time to reflect on questions: who am I, what am I responsible for, what have I inherited, and what do I want to pass on to the future generations? I’ve also had many sparkles of imaginings of what the world could be. If we were able, in the course of a weekend, to completely change our lives when shelter-in-place happened in the Bay Area, what would happen if we all got together to totally shift reality, in ways that are generative and good for this earth and each other?
If you asked me today how I feel being a student at a theological seminary, I’d say it feels quite perfect. Where else could I ask interreligious and interdisciplinary questions that will likely take generations to answer in the context of a beloved community?
To learn more and give to Shuumi, please visit the Sogorea Te’ website at www.sogoreate-landtrust.org/. Leora Cockrell is a Master of Social Change (MASC) student at Starr King School for Ministry.
Bridging Identities en Conjunto
Latinx people in California occupy multiple spaces, they carry multiple identities, and find unity through shared experience. That is what I study in my academic work, and now I’m able to live it personally as a ministerial vocation by serving as a bridge and companion to fellow Spanish-speaking people who want to have a voice in a church that is primarily white and Anglophone.
I’m a native speaker of English and Spanish. I identify as bicultural and bilingual. I heard from my church, which is the Episcopal Church in the Bay Area, or the Episcopal Diocese of California, about a group of communities in transition. They had lost their vicar of twenty-five years. They had a history of being dislocated from one borrowed space in a parish to another, and recently one of the communities had once again lost its worship space. That community had been renting space in a Lutheran church, which decided to remodel during the pandemic. I was invited by the diocese to work as a consultant to help bridge communication and accompany the communities through change.
It’s been an amazing experience to listen in both English and Spanish and to bridge the Diocese with a community that is resilient in spite of its challenges. I’m inspired by the opportunity to be part of a journey of self-empowerment in which the people meet to discern next steps, which involves identifying a new worship location and building a new relationship with a new host parish. It has involved working together to organize lay-led services in an online format that worked among people with limited access to the devices and internet bandwidth required for livestream online worship. The people in this community made live streaming through social media work. They tailored their worship to the media and as a result they widened their reach to include family members in other countries.
I’ve had the honor of participating in a process of finding unity across a variety of racial, cultural, social, and citizenship status differences, along a spectrum of religious pieties. By finding unity in a shared language and in the experiences of asylumseeking and living in the borderlands of multiculturality, we have practiced resilience en conjunto, together.
Our annual celebration of el Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, is one example of how we find unity. We combine the Christian observance of All Souls Day with a traditional ritual of community across the divide of death. Our community made an ofrenda, an altar of varying levels, and people brought photographs of their beloved difuntos, their departed family members. Members adorned the levels of the altar with favorite foods and drinks, paper flowers, and decorations. We brought in strings of cut paper decorations called papel picado, paper flowers, and cempasuchil, marigolds, which in indigenous religious tradition in Mexico evoke the sun. On the Day of the Dead we are all together again. There is reunion. We see fiesta as a way of bringing about unity even in times of challenge, change, and separation.
In this marrying of traditions indigenous to our local context here in California, a community with roots across Latin America and Spain found unity in a popular religious tradition. Amid a context of transition and pain, we accompany each other through transitions, just as we pray that the souls of our departed would both be with us and be accompanied on their eternal journey, and that our community remains unified.
Within our community, I often hear people repeat the phrase, si se puede, en conjunto. Yes we can, together. We can do it together; we are not alone. We face the pandemic the same way we have faced other adversity: together. For us, la comunidad, the community, has value. It provides a sense of belonging even across differences. La comunidad is critical to our survival and our resilience.
I was asked by a white colleague, well, what’s the activism focus for the Latinx people in these communities? What’s important to them? I think the answer is survival. Survival is its own form of activism, of resistance toward justice and community. We are a people of exile. We are asylum-seekers as Christians
One of the challenges we face is that while our members are adept social networkers, they find online meetings challenging. Our members struggle with online meetings due to a lack of dependable access to the internet, little experience with technology, and the lack of devices like computers and tablets. We were successful once in organizing a community meeting. It took us about two hours, but we finally got most of the community on Zoom in September. Our members hadn’t seen each other’s faces since March. People were smiling from ear to ear at the chance to spend time together. It was just really beautiful to connect people who had been separated for months from the in-person connections that are so important in Latinx culture.
I would say to anybody facing this time of change to trust that they’re not alone and to trust that they have community. Latinx people do not have the privilege of social distance at home in multi-generational households. We may not have the privileges of working from home, meeting on Zoom, or traveling in private vehicles. Nevertheless, in our Latinx community, we have practiced resilience by building community and by enduring together.
One person in our community lost his job at a hotel and got a job picking grapes in the smoke and suffered physical damage due to limited access to personal protective equipment. Another person works three part-time jobs without benefits and was out for more than a month with the COVID-19 virus. Others continue to use public transportation to public spaces where they can get access to free wifi. What keeps us going and what helps us is our ability to reach out to each other and to find ways to connect to each other creatively, however we are able so that we can continue en conjunto.
Pamela Stevens is a PhD candidate at the GTU.
Love Thy Neighbor
My research at the GTU has been largely based on historical analysis and ethnography, but with the emergence of COVID-19, my focus has shifted to include more of the practical aspects of Hindu studies. The research that I have done in the last nine months or so—and that I plan to continue throughout my PhD and beyond—will assess disability and inclusion in digital religious spaces, specifically focusing on how Hindus in America and around the world have reacted to these kinds of issues.
I have always been aware of the needs of the disabled community because of my dad, who has been a coach for the Special Olympics for many years. He has always made it known to me how important the issues of the disabled community are, and I am overjoyed that I now have the chance to include disability studies in my own work.
Over the last year, COVID-19 has shined a spotlight on how useful digital communication technologies can be for including disabled individuals into spaces that they might not have access to offline. The pandemic has made room for these technologies to be improved and to be more accessible for disabled individuals who need specific accommodations to participate in online services. But it’s important to emphasize that while technology can be inclusive, it can also be limiting, and it’s important that we pay attention to who is getting included and who is being excluded, even when we implement new technologies.
Religious institutions in general take stances on a lot of important issues like homelessness, food scarcity, and wealth inequality, but one of the places that a lot of religious institutions are lacking clear platforms is on the issue of disability and inclusion.
In fact, when the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990, a lot of religious organizations actually went to the courts to argue that they did not need to comply with ADA requirements either for their buildings or their practices. And they won. So even though there is a belief across religions that we should help other members of society who are in need, there seems to be a disconnect between that belief and what is actually being practiced.
This is why I am so passionate about advocating for this. Something that I want to argue for is liberation theology across traditions, but liberation theology that specifically addresses issues of disability.
An issue that has come up during COVID-19, especially in Christian churches is the need to sanctify the host during Eucharist. How do church leaders expand their theology to be able to include people who cannot physically be in the building? There are so many different theological boundaries in place. In some traditions, they cannot sanctify the host over a screen. In other traditions, the host, once it’s sanctified cannot leave the building. In some traditions, there is a little more latitude; they can sanctify the host in the building and bring it outside the building to those who cannot be present. This is the case in the Catholic Church that I grew up in, where one can sanctify the host in the church, place it in a specific capsule, and bring it to someone in a nursing home or the hospital.
For people who have limitations and cannot physically be there, how do you open up your theology to include them? If you cannot sanctify the host over a screen, or have people be physically present, then it creates an exclusionary space for people who do not have the ability to be physically present or have access to technology. I am specifically thinking about people with age-related disabilities, people with Alzheimer’s and dementia, or people who are in nursing homes who do not have regular access to religious services. In many cases, having an online service is not the best option for them, because they don’t feel like the service is happening in their home or in their physical space, whereas younger people who have disabilities, if they’ve grown up with View Victoria’s video reflection at gtu.edu/scel/victoria-price
I was fortunate to do a three-part podcast series earlier in the semester for Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Lafayette where I talked about the history of online religion. I looked at things like radio and televangelism and then brought it back around to what different communities have specifically done during COVID-19. In the final episode of that series I talked about issues of disability and inclusivity and how disabled people are impacted by the uptick in the use of digital communication technologies. I think just having that conversation and having those kinds of things out in the open is a good way to just get the ball rolling.
When we finished the podcast, the pastor of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, who is leading that program, specifically told me at the end of our recording that he realized after listening to my episode just how important disability ministry and providing inclusive opportunities are. I hope that small things like that, talking to religious leaders, urging them to take a deeper look at their theology and their sacred texts, advocating for inclusivity—not just in the physical building of a mosque or a church or a temple, but in the clerical and lay leadership roles as well—I hope that bringing those ideas into conversation will spark something.
I want to avoid the narrative that disabled folks need to be saved. They have been thriving in their own spaces for centuries. What I am trying to advocate for is not some sort of ableist savior complex, but instead just the idea of inclusion and inclusivity. I want to make it abundantly clear that disabled folks do not need nondisabled folks to save them. They just need to know that if they want to be part of a specific community, that there is an accessible way for them to do so without the risk of discrimination, harassment or any sort of undue burden.
There needs to be a wider conversation in religious traditions across the board about how to be more mindful of including more folks, especially those who have disabilities and would not otherwise have regular access to their tradition. The “love thy neighbor” aspect of Christianity that is so present in the Gospel—how do you bring that into the work that you are doing in your church? How are you actively bringing that idea of loving your neighbor as yourself back into your practice? If I were talking to someone from a Dharma tradition, I would remind them that we are all God. If they were a non-dual practitioner I would remind them that we are all God and that we all come from the same source. We are all made of the same divine material.
We need to bring these ideas of loving our neighbors as ourselves and loving each individual and each creature on the earth as the divine back into the work that we are doing.
Victoria Price is a PhD student at the Graduate Theological Union.
Freedom and Knowledge within a Spiritually Fluid Faith Journey
My mother was a disaffected Baptist. She had a problem with the “woman as a second class citizen” attitude she was exposed to from some of the church leaders. Women were seen as “less than” and expected to “walk two steps behind the husband,” that kind of thing. My father really didn’t have an active religious life that I knew of and they did not raise us with that, despite the fact that there was a church located at the end of the block we lived on in Detroit. As I grew up, I became more of a seeker. I was looking for what would feel right to me—in my heart and in my soul—and that would also resonate with my growing level of intelligence.
My parents were big on education, though neither one of them had the opportunity to pursue all of the education they wanted due to their race. They wanted to make sure that their children could pursue more than just basic education through high school—we were expected to go as far as our intellect would take us.
After moving to Norwich, Connecticut, and being unchurched for a couple of years, my family and I were invited to services at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Norwich. I lived right around the corner from the church, so I was able to be very involved in the church’s activities, and extend the connection to the community. One of the things that mattered the most to me about the church was their insistence and their commitment to helping those less fortunate. Every month our church threw open the doors and hosted what they called a “Community Meal.” If you walked through the door, we fed you. There was no need to profess anything or commit to anything religious or spiritual. If you wanted food and you were hungry, there we were. And we did that for many, many years.
The people I fell in love with from the pulpit, those ministers who came to speak to us and brought relatable, spirit-enhancing messages, overwhelmingly, were from Starr King School for the Ministry. So when I started to hear that “still small voice within” and that pull toward ministry and a potential career in ministry, Starr King was really the only choice for me.
One of the best things about Starr King is the summer education sessions. We can participate in courses called intensives. I’m sure other universities and seminaries offer those as well, where you can get an entire semester’s worth of education and class content in a week or two.
During one of my summer courses, the August 2020 Multi Religious Intensive, our professor assigned us a book written by Dwayne Bidwell entitled What Do You Do When One Religion is Not Enough? It explored the lives and religious and spiritual journeys of “Spiritually Fluid” people who claim and are claimed by multiple religious traditions. I received a much clearer understanding that religious and spiritual lines can be blurred as we go through difficulty, or through upheavals, I find a lot of people like me—I now describe myself as “Spiritually Fluid”—are realizing that one exclusive definition of religion and/or spirituality just doesn’t authentically describe us anymore.
For me, it hearkens back to my family history. I did not know, until I started doing some genealogy work, why my father did not recognize religion in the way that people who attend church regularly on Sunday morning think of it. He chose a different path, more of a seekers’ path. And my mother was the same way. She turned away from traditional religion and started looking more at a different path.
There are many of us out there, and the ranks of people who call themselves “Spiritually Fluid” are growing every year. Spiritually Fluid people want to explore all of who we are, and sometimes, a recognized or traditional faith does not do that. Unfortunately, people have been made to feel that you can only choose one path, and that’s not true.
You can have more than one path, just like someone can have more than one
career. This will be my fourth career when I graduate and am ordained and become a minister. I started out in information technology, way back in the punched-card days. I continued with that for more than twenty years. I’ve worked in management and have been a supervisor, leading teams of various sizes through my work. I’m now a Registrar of Voters in my home city, and when I finish my degree, I will be committed to the ministry. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that. We have to give ourselves the grace and the room to explore what touches our hearts and our souls, even if it’s not the path we thought we were going to follow.
Starr King did not ask me to give up any part of who I was in order to become a part of their community. There were no rigid rules or rigid structures about what I could and could not study. One of the things I love about the Unitarian Universalist faith is that they live and promote a number of foundational beliefs—the 7 main principles. The first principle—and to me one of the most important—is a strong belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all people. That struck a chord with me because I’m an African-American woman. There have been times in history when someone like me, African-American and female, would not have been treated with the care, dignity, and concern I deserve. If I were to adopt that as prevailing wisdom, and see myself as prejudiced “others” see me, I might not blossom to my full potential.
That can also happen with regard to religion. If you are ready to ask questions that your religion cannot seem to answer, first start by trying to find the answers right where you are. There’s a reason you are there. Something resonated with you right there where you are. If you cannot find those answers, then it’s time to start looking a little further afield. Because we are free people, you shouldn’t necessarily have to ask for permission to look further or dig a little deeper. And if you do have to ask permission to look outside your current situation, that for me would be a challenge, because why would leaders of a faith that supposedly want the best for you be afraid of what you might find? The more I find out about other religions that I’ve studied because of my schooling, and the more people that I meet and talk with, the more I return to Unitarian Universalism. I know that it’s the right foundation for me because I’ve had the chance to explore, to listen, to learn and, yes, even to practice other paths. I’ve found that for me, a rigid path means that I’m taught to be afraid of what I might learn or be exposed to next. I really, really pursue knowledge as a blessing, because the more I learn, the more I realize I need to learn. That’s what helps keep me moving forward: being energized and excited about what’s coming next for me. I get to learn something new, and I can live into what my Mama often told me: “It’s a poor day when you don’t learn something new.” I know I’ll spend the rest of my life pursuing knowledge—there’s SO much to learn!
Dianne Daniels is a Master of Divinity student at the Starr King School for the Ministry.
Voices of Hope Walking Together
“Amidst this great crisis, this unprecedented challenge that we’ve all confronted, amidst the grief and the anxieties, the frustrations . . . there is still hope to be found.”
My name is Mark Guevara. I’m a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Theology and Ethics at the GTU. I’m very interested in synodality, a method presented by Pope Francis, recovered in the Christian tradition.
Going to school at the GTU was a choice that I made because I wanted to be in a place where all voices are heard and all voices are privileged. And so, to be able to explore my tradition from the perspective and a community of other traditions, really enriches my own. I think this is how we are to be in this world today; a world that is so diverse, that has different values, experiences, and histories. That the way to peace and bridge building is precisely dialogue. It is something within myself, to draw myself outside of myself, to hear and encounter the other, to engage peacefully, to listen before I speak, and then to walk together.
Synodality comes from the Greek words for walking together. The GTU is a beautiful place where such diverse backgrounds of people can walk together. So, if we can do it here amongst a community of diverse religions and other Christian traditions, then hopefully we can do it in our world so longing for unity, for harmony, for peace, and for a way forward amidst this brokenness amongst us. In addition to being a student, I’m a fellow with an organization called Call to Action. Call to Action was founded in the 1970s to build a more inclusive Catholic Church and this cohort that I’m a part of is called Re/generation. It is igniting young adults to come forward in the wonderful task of inclusion. There are about 30 of us across the country and we are put into small groups with mentors who’ve been in social justice work for decades and we were given the task of doing a project together to build inclusion. It could be an educational project. It could be direct action. It could be some form of lobbying. What we’ve decided to do is an Advent calendar.
In the Christian tradition, Advent is the season before Christmas, and in that season we prepare for the coming of Jesus in the celebration of Christmas. In this Advent calendar we have invited a variety of voices: pastors, educators, scholars, and artists to reflect on the scripture reading for the day. Sharing insight from their perspective and sharing their work in social justice, education, and advocacy so that the general public can hear from their perspective—their richness—that they’re able to bring forward from the scripture reading of the day.
My research interest, synodality, is a calling forth of voices. Synodality is a maturing of faith that says, “What truth do you bring that I can listen to that might transform me?” And so during the COVID-19 crisis I’m thinking to myself, we’re kind of in it for ourselves, like with this mad rush to buy toilet paper. It became very survival of the fittest and we lost a sense of the common good. We lost sense of our connection to one another, and that was problematic for me. And so, I thought for a project, what we can do to build community, to restore a sense of siblinghood, is to hear voices, to draw ourselves out of ourselves by listening to the other. And so, we thought why not, in this season of Advent, do a daily reflection? Why not hear from those different voices so that we can rebuild a sense of unity, of communion, of togetherness? It might be just a superficial reaction, that says, “Oh, that’s nice.” But it might cause within us a sense of conversion to say you know there is something there that I do have a responsibility to care for the other. So it is a hopeful project because it calls us out of ourselves and it calls us to change the world.
We have managed to collect over 20 different voices and we’ve tried to privilege women, queer voices, indigenous folks, and people of color. We have folks who are scholars, educators, pastors, artists, dancers, activists, and visionaries. We are a couple of weeks into it already and you can go to our website Advent of Liberation from Call
to Action [www.cta-usa.org/news/ adventcalendar] and you can already access the different reflections. Some have posted music and videos and some have provided very challenging messages. We are very excited to feature some GTU community members including Professor Bernie Schlager from Pacific School of Religion as well as some alumni from the GTU and current students including Ish Ruiz, a friend of mine who is reflecting from a queer Latino perspective. So it’s very exciting that we have such a unique and broad selection of voices from folks who might see themselves as marginalized, from folks who don’t, from folks who see themselves as well within the tradition. It’s been great to be able to privilege those voices especially in our times when it is people of color, folks from less mainstream backgrounds that are suffering the most from this pandemic.
I think the overwhelming hope that I want people to take away from this project is hope itself: is that amidst this great crisis this unprecedented challenge that we’ve all confronted, amidst the grief and the anxieties, the frustrations that even amongst these marginalized, these fringe voices, that there is still hope to be found. In their work, their courage, their service, and their education, we can find goodness incarnated, which is the message of Christmas—that light enters into a dark world. And hopefully in the lives and the stories, the work, the ministry, and the creativity of these individuals that becomes affirmed in all of us and that there is hope, that there is light, and that there is joy and peace in this dark time.
Mark Guevarra is a PhD student at the Graduate Theological Union.
