Loading...If you are opening your newsletter right away after finding it in your inbox, I ask your prayers for Jeff and me, and all those who will be with us on the diocesan pilgrimage to Selma, Hayneville, and Montgomery in Alabama.
We drove down on Wednesday to begin a two-day educational journey to learn more about the history of civil rights in America. We return on Saturday.
In our travels, Jeff and I visited the National Civil Rights Museum, which is attached to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where MLK Jr. was murdered. While this was a meaningful experience, I anticipate this week’s pilgrimage, with two full days of learning and walking into the heart of key and transformational moments of the movement will leave me with a new understanding for what happened in those volatile years.
I am very interested in going to Hayneville to the Jonathan Myrick Daniels’s Memorial. If you don’t know about Jonathan, I encourage you to watch THIS FILM. He was an Episcopal seminarian who became a civil rights activist, was arrested, released, and on that day, was murdered as he shielded then 17-year-old Ruby Sales at a corner store. We celebrate his life with special prayers on August 14.
Having experienced deep emotions when in places where people have been (or currently are) living complex lives made more complicated by the injustices and prejudices of people in power and of those who hold fear towards cultures and people who do not look, speak, or think like them, I anticipate this experience will leave me wounded, wondering, and wandering. This will be a time of introspection and ultimately, in sharing, over time, from my experience with you.
Your prayers are requested for all of us on this pilgrimage. But not just for us. Pray for those who seek understanding as they participate in educational training that lead us closer to dismantling racism. Pray also, for those, like Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who have gone and will go to the front line, the Edmond Pettus bridges, to stand for the mercy, justice, and peace that is required of those who follow God.
With curiosity and abundant hope,
Rev. Debbie+
