Notes for the Week Trinity Sunday June 7 2020
Dear friends,
Sometimes you just feel paralyzed. You don’t know what to do…..what you, me, I….can do. We know things are very seriously messed up and need fixing, but we keep coming back to the same question, what can I do to make it right? We feel small, inconsequential, unable to make even a small impact or difference. It’s why humankind in the thousands upon thousands around the world take to the streets to join bodies and voices in one long, loud lament. It takes courage and passion to be there. It takes dedication to the cause for change. Above all, it takes a willingness to make a statement for all of us who were there in spirit, if not physically present. Most of us feel the same need to join in the collective statement, and we give thanks for those who helped raise our voices sounding at home, with theirs.
Maybe the year 2020 will go down in history as being one of catalytic change due to jolting global awareness of human vulnerability, where warring over national borders suddenly had to take a back seat, if only for a moment. Maybe it will be remembered as the year an unseen virus which stopped the world was juxtaposed with a last straw of systemic racism finally breaking the proverbial camel’s back.
If so, we can only pray that maybe one day, teachers will tell their amazed students about 2020, and how it became the year in history when change actually happened, and that the reason all people of color, all white people, all women, all different faiths, all different personal identities and all sexual preferences feel totally safe to be who they are, wherever they are is because humankind finally figured out what and which are really important priorities.
Instead of our priorities continually circling around ourselves, our nations and our superiority, maybe we will begin to understand the simple but hard lesson Jesus taught: to love God with all our hearts, minds and souls, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Even if people have never heard Jesus’ words, or care to, perhaps there is a universal primal longing for something like his words which sends those thousands out into the streets in protest against injustice and cruelty. Like us, they don’t have the capacity to find the words to express their collective anger, hurt, and helplessness. Those of us who do know about the greatest of all the commandments, can thank God Jesus had the words we are all trying to express and hopefully act upon.
If the year 2020 could teach us all that simply lesson, the rest of the mess really would be history and the world, coming after our time in it, would be a very different place.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
“The Bible teaches us that “God is love.” Jesus of Nazareth taught, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ The prophet Micah taught that the Lord requires us to ‘do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.’”(From a June 1, 2020 statement from The Most Reverend Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church.)
