Troublemaker Saints

 

As someone who regularly uses picture books in my roles as parent and pastor, I follow multiple social media accounts that help me find books for children. I look for books that marry themes of justice and God's love, diversity in characters and inspiring stories.  So a couple years ago when I came across a Kickstarter to support an author who was trying to publish a book about unconventional saints, it seemed like a no-brainer.

Often the way we think about a saint is that it's someone who's larger than life, holier than your average human and with an extra-ordinary connection to the divine.  Someone who's golden halo reflects the soft light of candles or the fire of their zeal.  A saint is definitely dead.

Daneen Akers' book, Holy Troublemakers and Unconventional Saints redefines - or maybe reclaims - the notion of saints as those who "are people of faith who have worked for love, compassion and justice in their corners of the world and eras, even when that meant rocking the religious boat…[T]hey used their faith to work for the good of everyone."  With this re-claimed definition, sainthood is bestowed upon those whose lives help us connect to God and to the world with our hearts more open.

Akers' book is a thick anthology of such saints.  Though some, like Francis of Assisi or Fred Rogers or Rachel Held Evans are dead, many of the people in Holy Troublemakers are still living and (in their saintly human way) leading their communities with wisdom and compassion.  Potawatomi theologian and writer Kaitlin Curtis grounds her faith in her identity as an indigenous person, the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney's scholarship is known for its womanist interpretations of scripture, Lisbeth Meléndez Rivera has been an activist for the LGBTQ folks for almost 40 years and is active in the Rainbow Catholics organization, seeking welcome and affirmation for the people in her community.

This Sunday is All Saints Day. On this day we remember and name those beloved who have died.  All Saints is also the time to reflect on those people past and present who help point our way to the love, justice and compassion of God.  Those people whose lives inspire us to love justice and compassion ourselves.  We all have holy troublemakers in our lives, unconventional saints who have influenced us for the better and strengthened our faith. 

My hope is that we can share the stories of saints in this book and those like them with our kids.  Stories of family saints, saints of our communities.  Akers notes that since she ditched conservative Christianity, it's been hard to find stories and devotional literature for kids that help point them toward God's desire for them.  In this book she fills that gap.  But we can also fill the gap, at least a little, with our own creativity and narratives. In this All Saints week, may we tell stories of unconventional saints, share their work and follow in their footsteps.

A Hot Holy Mess

When Megan talked in her sermon this past Sunday about Hannah's hot, holy mess of a life, which she brings before God in prayer, I thought, "Yup, sounds about right." The hot mess part, anyway. It doesn't much feel holy. 

 
Last week you didn't get a Midweek Message from me because of the hot mess of the Epp Hamilton household, including: very noisy window construction/replacement (also a literal mess), two full-time working adults and children doing online school, one of whom needs constant oversight, a COVID scare, which turned out to probably be Norovirus, but which was still very unpleasant, and the increasingly dark and stormy weather. I'm not trying to complain or seek sympathy, I just want to say: Folks, I'm right there with you in the very messy middle of this pandemic.

At our recent meeting of the 'Discerning Returning Team' (increasingly this seems like a misnomer, since we're definitely not returning to gathered in-person worship any time soon) we acknowledged how difficult the labor of families with young children is at this time. Even when things are going pretty well, there is emotional labor we parents are doing constantly in caring for our own mental health and the mental health of your kids.

But even though last week was a really big bummer, I've had some lovely highlights in the past few weeks. Every year we gift our 3rd grade students with Bibles, recognizing that by this age they're good readers and critical thinkers and ready to have a Bible of their own. I visited with the 3rd grade families on front porches and in backyards and got to see what's up in their families and say hello to their pets. It was so lovely.

So yes, life is messy. So messy that it makes me want to (and sometimes causes me to) scream in frustration and helplessness. But in my more grounded moments I realize that God is right there with me. And you are there with me. And there are these beautiful bright spots in the midst of it: the brilliant red leaves on my neighbor's maple tree outside my new windows, long walks - with my kids and without them, finding I might be a dog person after all, and the hope of seeing more of your faces in the coming weeks.

All that is very holy - just filled with the Divine. I pray that you too find the holy in the mess of each day. I hope to see a few of your kids in Sunday school this Sunday for a story and game and to see how they're doing. If not, I look forward to seeing your faces in person.

Mennonites: The OG Anti-Racist Heroes

Three hundred and thirty seven years ago this week (1683, in case that math takes too long) the first Mennonites arrived in what's now the United States and founded Germantown - now a neighborhood in Philadelphia. After sharing a meal with the local indigenous people (probably Lenape) Francis Daniel Pastorius, a German Mennonite lawyer and teacher wrote, "they have never in their lives heard the teaching of Jesus concerning temperance and contentment, yet they far excel the Christians in carrying it out.”

Anniversaries are natural times to tell stories. We use birthdays to tell our children about when they were born, wedding anniversaries to tell the stories of meeting and getting married, the anniversary of our church to tell stories of its founding and its first families. For some of us white folks, though, telling our immigration stories has become a little cringe-y. Our histories include colonization, enslavement of other humans, intentional and internalized bias based on white supremacist notions. So, when I read the quote above on the Salt Project's Theologian's Almanac, and shortly afterward the following quote about those first Mennonites in Jason Reynolds YA book Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism and You, (a "remix" of Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning) I was psyched!

Mennonites didn't want to leave behind one place of oppression to build another in America, so they circulated an antislavery petition on April, 1688, denouncing oppression due to skin color by equating it with oppression due to religion. Both oppressions were wrong. This petition - the 1688 Germantown Petition Against Slavery - was the first piece of writing that was antiracist among European settlers in colonial America.

Yes! Mennonites, recognized as the OG anti-racists! And they did it based on the teaching of Jesus. Patting myself on the back over here for coming from such enlightened and woke white folks. Well, sort of. My own Mennonite ancestors immigrated to Canada in the late 19th century also fleeing oppression in southern Russia, also seeking religious freedom and opportunity to thrive in a new environment. And, of course, using the advantages of whiteness to cheaply purchase land that had been stolen from indigenous people.

The theme this month for children's and youth spiritual formation is "Making Sense of Our Stories" and our stories are complicated. When we're building our storytelling repertoire, it's really important to be able to understand our story from all perspectives, so that we don't repeat mistakes of oppression and injustice - and so that we can participate in repair. Authors like Jennifer Harvey and Anastasia Higginbotham, who write about talking with white kids about race, talk about the importance for developing a white identity that's grounded in more than just stories of hate, destruction and oppression. We also need to find stories of ancestors and heroes (Mennonite and otherwise) who were active in interrupting patterns of oppressions like racism and white supremacy. Those are stories we can embrace and seek to identify with.

Reynolds writes about the history of race and racial inequity in Stamped but he's insistent that it isn't a history book. "This book, this not history history book, this present book, is meant to take you on a race journey from then to now, to show why we feel how we feel, why we live how we live, and why this poison, whether recognizable or unrecognizable, whether it's a scream or a whisper, just won't go away." And then he tells stories - stories of wrongness and stories of people getting in the way of that wrong.

All that to say: tell your stories. Look for the stories that are hidden and find out why. Look for the stories that haven't been told and tell them. Look at the stories of the country and community and think about where and how your people intersected with them. Amplify the stories of justice and learn from them. And may we be the ancestors whose stories our children will tell with pride.

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A final note, speaking of stories, here are a couple book related links I've come across recently. Of course, everyone should read Stamped and everything else that Jason Reynolds has written. And that Ibram X. Kendi has written (I'm still working on that myself.) Also, UW Bookstore has created anti-racist book kits for kids and adults of all ages. And The Conscious Kid has a reading list for kids from 0-18 on confronting anti-blackness and on how to support conversations on race, antiracism and resistance.
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image: Thones Kunder's house, 5109 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia PA, where the 688 Petition Against Slavery was written