Hello and a virtual hug!

I’m sharing several pieces of news today.

First, I have been working to become familiar with interfaith and faith-based groups in Nashville. Some of these are NOAH, Pray for Nashville, Interdenominational Ministers, “Rabbi & Reverend” Weekly Discussions, Gamaliel Faith Leaders, Gideon’s Army, West Nashville Clergy and the Atlantic Institute.

That brings me to the current crisis around policing and racial profiling. (Of course, this is not new but it’s being addressed and exposed in ways not seen before.) Because of the pandemic and quarantine, most of us can not go to the many protests, vigils, and meetings, as much as we’d love to. I hope you are finding ways to donate money, supplies, and time (for example making calls) to the NAACP, M4BL, Black Lives Matter, and in our own city, NOAH and others leading the movement. Or, perhaps you can read something to yourselves or to the children in your life. You can study so that you are informed. I am re-reading James Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power.

Children’s BOOK click here.

Our congregation along with FUUN contributed over $10,000 to Black-led organizations through a grant and your donations. These funds for tornado relief, but they have opened up points of entry with the Black organizers. Again, this is not to take away from the many here who have advocated, contributed, and worked in the city of Nashville and beyond.

We’ve ordered a Black Lives Matter flag and will display the flag when it arrives. I’m aware that in the past, concerns were expressed about the choice of flags. It seems to me that now is the time to put those to rest. Here are some questions you may have:

Will it change anything? Maybe not, but neither will our silence. My experience, having been an Interim at one of the first congregations to post a Black Lives Matter billboard/sign in 2015 in very conservative South Jersey, is that while five years on, many things have not changed, the process changed all of us. It opened doors and hearts, including the hearts of the congregation.

Will it endanger our facility or our members? In the NJ congregation, the sign was defaced and replaced numerous times. Racism is not confined to the South! When we got threatening messages, we traced them and found they came from other parts of the country. Nonetheless, members of the Atlantic City Muslim community (this is a Black organization in AC) attended many services and stood in the back by the doors. Even with all the vitriol, and five years later, no attacks other than the defacing of the sign have occurred. The fact that a BLM sign might put us in danger leads to two observations: We see that even the words, “Black Lives Matter” are enough to anger people. Two, we recognize that people of color wake every day to danger and threat just living their daily lives.

But what about the bad things BLM has supposedly done? Black Lives Matter is not an authoritarian or even a centralized organization. The fact that a person or person who is using those words did something you see as bad or wrong is no aspersion on the movement.

Do we want to be anti-police? Isn’t that what Black Lives Matter stands for? That is an over-simplification and a tactic used to discredit this widely accepted mantra and group. As I told you months ago, the opposite of Black Lives Matter is not All Lives Matter; it is Black Lives Don’t Matter. Even large corporations like Amazon and Facebook are now saying BlackLivesMatter. Here’s a message from Calm, a mainstream app for meditation and stories.

June 10, 2020: Times are Changing! Are you?