George of Sylvania

Tag: local

  • Black History Month

    On Sunday, Black History Month kicked off, and things are a little bit different this year. While the current president made a proclamation on 1/31 of the celebrating of Black history, federal agencies are baring the celebration/observation of it and other things. In this post, I just want to share a few things about it’s official founding, a bit of importance of it, the way my denomination has been impacted by Black history, and some books to read.

    In 1976 Republican President Gerald Ford designated the month of February as Black History Month. This came after years of work from scholar Carter G. Woodson, who established the original, “Negro History Week” which took place the second week of February (make no mistake, Woodson never confined Black history education and celebration to just one week). The reason for this, was it held both Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglas’s birthdays. The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASAALH) continues Woodson’s work and continues to be a great resource for learning about Black history. For a reading of Black history and the Episcopal Church, Joyce Crittenden has an incredible article titled, Condensed History of the Black Episcopalian, published on the website for Episcopal Church of All Saints and Ascension’s website that can be reached here.

    The importance of learning Black history can never be understated. Black history is the history of America, and we are tied to it in ways that will never be undone, no matter how may people try. It is a history that must be celebrated even if it is embarrassing or hard for white people to read. With that, I’d like to recommend a few books that changed my life for this month that will open your eyes and break your heart for the better (in no particular order):

    • The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
    • Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot
    • The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby
    • The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther by Jeffery Haas
    • Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope by Esau McCauley
    • On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
    • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
    • Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experiments on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
    • Black Birds in the Sky: The Story and Legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by Brandy Colbert
    • The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. by Peniel E. Joseph 
    • The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone
    • Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr.
    • The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
    • Tears We Cannot Stop by Michael Eric Dyson

    As I close out this first short post on Black History Month, I would like to share the following prayer by Canon Carla Robinson. It was prayed at a Circles of Color meeting in 2023 and can be found here. This was shortly after the death of another young Black man, Tyre Nichols. Nichols was beaten by five police officers during a traffic stop, and died in the hospital three days later:

    May God bless the memory of Tyre Nichols. We pray for his family during this time of unspeakable loss and grief. His life mattered. Tragically we have been here time & time again. Lord, grants us the strength and courage to never accept injustice & cruelty as the price for public safety. And give us grace to truly strive for justice and peace and to honestly respect the dignity of every human being.

    Creator, we lift up and thank you for our Black siblings who have shaped history. We pray that the learning happening this month in schools, homes and workplaces will be meaningful and deep-rooted. We pray for open hearts and minds, and spirits willing to learn and be transformed by you. May this month be a time of curiosity and sharing, conversations and celebrations, challenge and encouragement. Loving God, help us to dig deeper, look closer, and think bigger.

    In Jesus name, amen.

    As we celebrate our beloved siblings and continue to work towards being beloved community, may we continue to learn what we do not know, and celebrate from the mountain top.

    Black Lives Matter.
    Black Trans Lives Matter.
    Black Queer Lives Matter.
    Black Women Lives Matter.
    Black Men Lives Matter.
    Black Children Lives Matter.
    Black Healthcare Matters.

    May we never stop saying it, may we never lose sight of it, and may we never forget it.

    Grace and peace friends.

  • Welp… it isn’t much

    I took that picture on my way into work Monday. What a nice view.

    This week, I do not have much to say. The writers block has been very present these past few weeks, and it is what it is. It doesn’t help we said so long to the interim priest we have been working with for over a year, and everyone’s favorite staff member is on tour for the North American production of Dirty Dancing.

    So what is blocking the ideas from flowing? Well, we are less than a week away from another nightmare of a presidential term, and I am nervous for friends and loved ones. And if the confirmation hearing of Hegseth that occurred yesterday is a taste of what is to come…

    Speaking of cabinet picks, I will never forget when my wife and I lived in West Michigan, and the first Tr*mp administration had been going for a little while. The church we had attended the majority of the time we lived there was Mars Hill Bible Church, founded by Rob Bell. Bell had been long gone by the time we had gotten there, and the place was changing under the newly called pastor. Things started off well, but the moment Betsy DeVos, who had been the Secretary of Education for a few months, came over to me during the passing of the peace. She gave me the most uncomfortable hug I have ever had in my life, and while she was trying to make small talk, I just kept reminding myself that the person standing in front of me was a child of God. We left the church pretty soon after.

    The look on my wife’s face though, seared into my memory. One of shock, horror, and concern about what was going to come out of my mouth. I was in such shock at what was unfolding before me that I was pretty much frozen.

    Scraping the barrel but still showing up is strength in its self, and that is what I wanted to remind everyone of today. So, to close today, I want to offer up the closing prayer I lead every other week during the Wednesday intercessory prayer services. It was introduced to me by a dear friend who passed away almost a year ago called, The Coventry Litany of Reconciliation. Because it is me however, I tweaked a few things to make it more inclusive.

    The Lord be with you my friends, never forget you all are loved, and not alone during this dark time to come.

    An updated version of the Coventry Litany of Reconciliation:

    All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

    The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,
    Lord, forgive.

    The covetous desires of people and nations to poses what is not their own,
    Lord, forgive.

    The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth,
    Lord, forgive.

    Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,
    Lord, forgive.

    Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the unhoused, the refugee,
    Lord, forgive.

    The lust which dishonors the bodies of men, women, non-binary, and children,
    Lord, forgive.

    The pride which leads us to trust ourselves and not in God,
    Lord, forgive.

    Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

    In peace, we pray to you, Lord God.

  • Darts

    You can watch the scene here

    There are few scenes from television that I can re-watch like the dart scene from Ted Lasso. I’m sure most of those reading will have seen it but if not, let me set the scene. Two men are playing darts in a crowded English pub, and there is a bet on the line. The bet is that if the former owner of the team Ted works for wins, he can pick the lineup for the rest of the season. If Ted wins, the former owner can’t come near the owners box while Rebecca (his ex-wife) owns the team.

    Ted is down in points, and needs to triple twenties and a bullseye to win the game. Before he takes his turn, he begins to speak to his opponent about how he has been underestimated by guys like him his entire life. Ted points out how those people aren’t curious, and their assumptions of him, had nothing to do with who he actually is. Ted comes to this because, curious people ask questions, they don’t make assumptions.

    It is a such a simple observation by Ted, but personally, it really packs a blow at the same time.

    The ability to be curious in a world we know is such a rare thing found in adulthood. This is why I think Ted Lasso stands out compared to other positive characters written for TV. It is also something I think tends to be lost in the Church, an observation pointed out to me by a former mentor. One of the things I had found most helpful during the major deconstruction phase of my faith were good questions. It took a little while for me to want to be curious about reconstructing my faith, but curiosity is what helped it grow.

    Reading rabbinic materials did a great job in re-cultivating the curiosity that evangelicalism killed. Knowing that there is space in faith traditions to play with the text, imagine what it was like, and disagree was such a foreign concept. Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Weinreb in his article, Korack: Two Jews, Three Opinions, writes:

    It is noteworthy in this regard that every single chapter of the work known as the Mishnah, which is the core around which the Talmud developed, contains a dispute between the rabbis on one point or another.

    With the heaviness of the world to come, and the rhetoric that will continue to ramp up (we saw last week at the capitol over bathrooms), it is good to remember that curiosity and questions belong. Not only do they belong, but it curiosity is how we grow and become humans deeper in the image of God. Only those who are afraid (toxic people, christian nationalists, homophobes, transphobes, etc.) will tell you otherwise. The way the writers of Ted Lasso nail this point home in such a disarming way lends to the longevity of the show.

    Stay curious my friends, it will only strengthen our resolve as we march forward. I needed a somewhat uplifting post because I have been stressed, worried, and even a little scared. I hope this gives you room to jump into something new to help balance the way things are going. You can’t fight fascism without remembering the beauty that exists and is worth maintaining. Try Ted Lasso if you haven’t seen it, or Gardner’s World with Monty Don, two sources that allow you to unplug and be filled for an hour.

    Barbecue sauce.

  • Super Tuesday

    I just left the line to vote. This is the first time since moving here that I had seen a line that will last more than 5 minutes.

    The picture above is one I took while dropping something off to a friend back in August. The heart your neighbor sign came from a group trying to reach out to neighbors. Their mission is, “during a year where neighborly love and values are tested through voting, we strive to bring neighbors together in love and harmony.”

    On the surface, it’s a great idea. But I, for the life of me, cannot understand how someone can put a sign like that their yard and vote for hate. Maybe in 2016 I could have understood.

    Maybe.

    But we know better now, and I’m only speaking for myself.

    To love your neighbor is to do what is best for everyone with the privilege you hold. Former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry wrote during the 2016 election:

    Go and vote.  Vote your conscience.  Your conscience informed by what it means to love your neighbor.  To participate in the process of seeking the common good.  To participate in the process of making this a better world.  However you vote, go and vote.  And do that as a follower of Jesus. 

    I would amend that to say, if you are a follower of Jesus;

    If you are someone who seeks justice, cares about the poor, widow, and orphan;

    If you strive to till the soil of this world to usher in the kin-dom of heaven;

    Do not vote for him. Lives are on the line.

    Women’s lives are on the line.

    LGBTQIA+ lives are on the line.

    People of Color lives are in the line.

    Those who rely on social security lives are on the line.

    Those who live on the margins lives are on the line.

    I support Palestinians, and she took too long to talk about Gaza in any “meaningful” way. And I’m not sure I trust the outcome. But like uncle Bernie said, “he must be defeated.”

    I can go on, and on but I’ll end it with this:

    Christ have mercy,

    Lord have mercy,

    Christ have mercy.

  • “Awaking” from our “Dullness”

    “We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.” – Hildegard of Bingen

    This morning in the Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, I came across this quote. In one of the many iterations of a blog, I wrote a series on Hildegard. This included writing on her life and going through some of her works. As a recovering evangelical-received-Episcopal, I am still familiarizing myself with the saints and quite a bit of church history. Spiritual practices like reading the Daily Office, and others were okay to adapt to. But the idea of “awakening from our dullness” struck me this morning. And I think I know why.

    I have a two and a half year old who has been awake between, 3:30am and 5am, for two months. Some days he naps well, and others he does not. At times he’s fighting his two year molars. Other times, he just wants to get a jump start on the day. My wife and I take turns getting up with him. Depending on how the morning goes, it is a long day for everyone. At this time in our life, there is no awaking from our dullness.

    There is only dullness.

    Dullness, Ms. Rachel, Elmo, and the Toy Story saga.

    Without knowing it, in an attempt to break the dullness, I started decorating my yard for Halloween a month early. This year I decided that instead of spending one marathon day getting it all up, I’d take my time and enjoy it. This is something I look forward to every year. This has been a small way of awaking from the dullness for me. But it has done it in a different way that I awaken from the dullness with my kid. Right now, as we are in “second summer,” our kid’s favorite pastime is turning on the hose and watering our house and everything else he can. He will do this every day, and he will find joy in it. I, at times, find it monotonous.

    Dullness and monotony are synonyms, they are ways to describe mediocrity.

    I have one compact disk in my car, and it is the second half to the Mars Hill Bible Church worship album that came out in the early 2000s. Between songs, Aaron Niequist, former worship pastor (I think that’s the title), quoted a G.K. Chesterton book. In Orthodox, Chesterton writes:

    The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun, and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

    It is hard to awaken from the dullness of life without coffee and being sleep deprived. But this guy, God bless him, awakes every day saying, “do it again!” and I’ve been too old to hear him. Instead, I have been trying to re-enter practices, and trying to find different ways to awaken from the dullness, when one person right in front of me is showing me how to do it.

    Grace and peace.

  • Ignorance isn’t Bliss, it’s Dangerous

    Trigger warning: this post addresses bigotry against the LGBTQIA+ community.

    Something I have learned as I have aged is my opinion is not needed on most things. Especially as someone who society has catered to for a very long time. It has been almost a month since the opening ceremony for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, and I am still upset about some of the backlash. The weird moral outrage thinking it was aimed as an attack on the Last Supper is laughable. But one post in particular still gets under my skin, and it came from a family member’s blog.

    A few weeks ago, a friend of mine messaged me asking if I had read their newest post, and to be honest, I try hard not to. It is usually filled with bad grammar, and rambling thoughts one would expect from a conservative religious boomer who lives in an echo chamber. The title itself was a redflag, I had a feeling this one would be different than normal. Looking back, it took me somewhere around 10 minutes to click on the link because I had to try and prepare what was about to unfold.

    Truely, I wish I were surprised but, there was a lot of anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric, though the author I am sure would never see it that way. From comparing the film, The Dallas Buyers Club, all but stating that is how “real” marginalized Drag Queens live, to reminding readers that the world has always been this way and that’s why God destroyed it during Noah’s time. Stating that there has been “queer” behavior all over the pagan world, until the rise of Christendom, in which it went underground.

    The ignorance displayed in this post, is the same we see all over social media when it comes to the LGBTQIA+ community. It reminds me of a story my dad told me about he and his dad. My father was born and raised in Dayton Ohio. During the 1960’s, he was in elementary school, and one day my grandfather and he were walking into the library. When my dad looked down the street he saw something he didn’t understand. So, he asked, “dad, what are all those people doing wearing their bedsheets out?” Not knowing he was witnessing a Klu Klux Klan demonstration, my grandfather responded with, “son, that is ignorance personified.”

    This, without a doubt in my mind, is ignorance personified.

    This type of ignorance is a choice, and people use it as a crutch. It is not on anyone but themselves to learn about what they do not know after they have become aware of it. I have had a lot of conversations with family, friends, and others about the LGBTQIA+ community, and what it means to be an ally. It is always clear who engages, those who are afraid to give up social or societal standing, and those who know they’re “right.” Continued intentional ignorance about the LGBTQIA+ has cost a lot of lives. Especially in the trans community most recently, for example, stated in the medical journal, Innovation in Clinical Neuroscience, “Gender-affirming care has consistently been shown to improve quality of life, improve health outcomes” yet religious conservatives continue to try and block it.

    This week is Pride in exotic Toledo Ohio, and the church I work for has been planning our involvement for most of the year. Pride, being radically welcoming, and actively being a safe space is who our big queer church is. It is how we show others we can be the hands and feet of God. It is how we express the love of Jesus to the stranger, and those millions of sheep that have left the flock. It is how we reach out and say, I see you, and I love you. And I am so honored to belong to this house of worship.

  • Toledo Area Gay and Lesbian Affiliation’s Digital Exhibit

    Mayor Wade and the raising of the 2023 Pride Flag at One Government Center

    This week I was reading our local paper, The Toledo Blade, when I came across an article by Andrew Cramer (which you can read here). It is about the Toledo Area Gay and Lesbian Affiliation newsletter which ran from 1983 to 2019. The Toledo Lucas County Public Library has released a digital exhibition, housing all of the 442 issues released. As we are planning our August Pride festivities for our church it is nice to know this exhibition exists.

    According to Cramer, TAGALA’s newsletter stood out as a, “single publication for a wide range of LGBTQ+ groups, including those focused on political activism, religion, community service, and more.” My uncle Ricky and his partner Ken were staples at big family parties when I was growing up in the 90’s and 00’s, and I couldn’t help but think of them while reading. They both passed away from cancer in the late 00’s, and I was very fond of them, especially Ken.

    I work at one of the oldest churches in downtown Toledo, and everywhere you walk there is a sense of history passing through its doors. The history this church has with the LGBTQIA+ community in Toledo is long lasting, and firm. Long before the days of Obergefell, people were safe and welcomed here. In the 90’s we hosted the Toledo Gay Men’s Chorus, and I can’t help but think of the newsletters from TAGALA that came through these halls.

    One of the things that jumped out to me from Cramer’s article was how different the coverage in the newsletter is versus national press:

    “TAGALA’s more private dialogues stand in stark contrast to the mainstream storytelling. First-person opinion pieces offer genuine response to the events of the day, not as an observer, but as someone who has lived the relevant experiences.”

    The first person narrative in a time of great oppression, discrimination, and harassment (which unfortunately continues today), is crucial. This resource that the library is hosting is such an important part of history, and as an ally, I am excited to share the news about it. Last year I had the honor and privilege of attending the raising of the Pride Flag outside of One Government Center (as seen above). During this time I heard tales of the way Toledo has grown over the decades to become such an open and affirming place.