ADULT DEVOTIONS

Last week I met with a group of people from town who wanted to follow up on the discussion that began at our Martin Luther King breakfast. The presentation that day lifted up some of the areas of prejudice and racism in our world. More poignantly, we heard stories of painful experiences endured within our town within recent years. The group was very concerned to create a committee to bring a conversation to the whole town regarding all the isms in our world; from racism, to sexism, to ageism, to classism, to heterosexism and beyond. At the town meeting this week I offered the following quotes and prayer for the invocation:

Jerome Nathanson, author of “THE POSSIBILITIES OF HUMAN NATURE," in John Dewey’s, The Reconstruction of the Democratic Life said, “The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people's differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.”

This past week a group of citizens of our town gathered together to reflect on the rich and rewarding variety of human experience in our neighbors and neighborhoods. They claimed a mission for their work.

The goal of this committee is:TO HELP OUR COMMUNITY CELEBRATE AND CHERISH THE DIVERSITY IN OUR TOWN AND OUR WORLD SO THAT ALL PEOPLE WILL FEEL SAFE AND COMFORTABLE HERE BEING WHO THEY ARE.

Franklin Thomas, Assistant U.S. Attorney said: “One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.”

Let us Pray: Holy God, in this community you are called by many names by people of many heritages, creeds, orientations, ages, genders, races and class. Yet all of us seek the common welfare for our town, our families, our lives our nation. Help us to listen. To listen even more deeply when we disagree, that we may examine more closely our own truths and hear more fully the truths within the words of our neighbors. Help us to cherish this not as an obstacle to what we seek, but as an opportunity to enlarge our rich and rewarding human experience. Amen