Author: fpnadmin

I heard it read at another church event and found it very helpful. It begins
“I heard Joanna Macy talk about a Great Turning many years ago and now we who are on the
ground in metro MN are experiencing a powerful manifestation of it. I, who have been longing
for this all my life, did not truly expect to witness the profound realms of connection and
knowing of our oneness with all of life that we are encountering day by day in multiple ways.
I could write a huge amount about the cruelty, the fear, the widespread trauma, the physical
injuries, the ripping apart of families, devastation of lives, closure of immigrant businesses
throughout the city, and on, but I want this piece to ignite your own visions of who we humans
are when we follow love and connection.
Here are some of the threads of this web we have built through everyone responding from their
hearts to what is happening. There is no sequenced plan organized hierarchically. For those
taking on dangerous pieces, there is a lot of coding underway to protect identities. For every
thread that I have named here, imagine three or four similar supports going on that aren’t listed.
Carpenters repairing doors for those whose houses have been broken into, doors
kicked in and busted with a battering ram.
Tow truck drivers recovering vehicles left behind after an ICE abduction, in which
they leave cars stopped or idling in the middle of the road. Every effort is made to
learn who the vehicle belongs to and return it to the family.
Over 5 million Skymiles donated to help folks get home safely from detention
facilities around the country. Those needing help can reach out for flight assistance.
A Signal Group called Laundromat that assists those sheltering at home with
laundry. They pick up dirty clothes and return them clean. Imagine being trapped in
your home with no way to do laundry.
Various Signal groups for emotional support for people in different 
traumatic situations: commuters, observers, immigrants, medics and
more. Acupuncturists and massage therapists offering free sessions. Audios that
support activists’ self-care at youtube.com/@kaiasvien

People tracking ICE vans, blowing whistles, activating rapid response networks so
that there are many of us witnessing, filming, protesting arrests.
Vets and medics visiting sheltered families at no charge, watching for ICE vans as
they go.
Training of 5000 or so who film arrests, getting as much info as possible about the
victim for family and attorneys.
A system for phones in which an immigrant pushes a button as ICE approaches and
word gets out with birthdate, country of origin, contacts, etc to a select group.
Groups of chaplains ready to help, present at nearly every action, sometimes
kneeling in prayer as they are arrested.
Churches that have turned themselves into huge food-packing enterprises with 150 or so
drivers daily who take a number of boxes out to people who are sheltering. A careful
system that has drivers eating the list of names and addresses if ICE follows and stops
them.
Resistance Singers who travel in groups of 1000 thru neighborhoods where people are
sheltering singing cheerful songs so that they know they are remembered. Last week, 
1500 people singing welcoming songs outside ICE hotels like “You are one of us, you
know. You are one of us who knows that pain and love live in every heart. Don’t let fear
pull us apart.”
Monitors around elementary – high schools with high immigrant populations during drop
off and pick up hours to watch for ICE. People driving kids to and from school if parents
are afraid to leave home.
Three or four huge rallies each week, at the sites of the two deaths, at the airport when
flights are taking detainees to another state, at the Whipple Building where detainees are
taken (before being released into below zero weather without a coat or hat, no money, no
cell.) Small vigils at night on neighborhood blocks, people gathered around a fire with hot
chocolate.
Art supplies collected and given to families with kids who cannot leave for school. 
Immigration attorneys available when a person is released from detainment. Local sheriffs
speaking out against ICE tactics.
Monthly activist meetings that include inspirational offerings, small groups to tend to
emotions, sharing of all ideas coming through and something upbeat and motivational to
end the meeting with.

The Wound is the Medicine
It’s challenging to find words to tell you what this experience is like for us personally. The
tragedy of Renee Good’s death dissolved in one moment the unconscious “othering” that many
of us of European descent have had about “only people of color not being safe in the US”.
Frightening to have our white façade of safety fall, ah, but the liberation of belonging FINALLY
to the larger family of all cultures is magnificent! “A Dozen Roses for Renee” tells a story about this. Yesterday, Feb 7, a Native American collective held an honoring ceremony for Renee
Good. 
Another experience we are having is enormous gratitude for whatever in our lives has taught us
that we have the ability to care for the well-being of those we’ll never meet. You can sense
people reveling in that joy when they smile as their eyes meet on a school block, at a protest,
packing food and so on. Individual egos seems to need much less attention as an excitement
about what collaboration brings us abounds. And the creativity that is unleashed… So many
ideas coming forth that shine like facets of a diamond. There is much more that hasn’t become
words for me yet…
Back to Joanna Macy who knew that people cannot move from Business as Usual to the Great
Turning; they must go through the Great Unraveling to get here. We are in the midst of a
gigantic Unraveling and that pain opens our love since they come from the same source: our
interbeing with all of life. And, no one person or group is orchestrating this. It is coming from inside each of us involved.
Thanks for reading this.

Wish you were here
Kaia Svien

It is an early summer afternoon, and it is about to pour.  You are reading this in August, so you might remember our rainy spring. I am sitting in my car, having arrived at my destination, but I can’t get out.   Getting out feels disrespectful. 

Disrespectful because another American tragedy has just happened.  No, not another Trump executive order.

Another story that when I was a kid, felt like an annual moment of despair, a wow, what a tragedy, has become a weekly sad sigh. 

I am listening to the news report, from a radio station I stream from Chicago where among others shot a 14 year old boy was killed.  Three bullets in an 8^th grader.  I obviously don’t know the kid but really, it is sadly just another unacceptable story that had I and we have come to know that would be followed by another one just like it.  And another one.  A decade or two ago, I might feel like this kind of story might be the last straw.  I’m smarter now.  More cynical.

I bet you have had a similar experience. Or many.

Sometimes like, well…nearly every week now our news has the feel of the first few scenes in a movie designed to present the context of a society slowly unraveling. 

Sitting in my car, seat tipped back,my leg propped up on the dash, comfortable but only physically, I wonder fearfully if we have reached the saturation point where these gun stories don’t elicit in us a demand for change anymore but have devolved to a deeper numbness.  An acceptance that this is cost of being an American.  I know that I feel a little bit that way.   Let’s remember, it is only in our country, among other “developed nations” where this unique version of indifference and insanity lives. 

Only in America can you regularly find so many tragedies filmed by helicopters.  Only in America are there so reliably images of reporters wringing their hands followed by video from a tearful vigil where short clips of poignant speeches calling for peace take place. 

Only in America are these news stories so sort lived because room must be made for the next tragic news item.  It’s frustrating that these stories feel so much like the directions on the back of a shampoo bottle—“lather, rinse, and repeat”

I think it is disconcerting that no matter how many Columbines, Newtown’s, Orlando’s, etc there are these stories don’t seem to lead to the natural conclusion that we as a people, likely a species are not capable of successfully having more and more guns in society and find them not to be used.  When will we learn the so obvious a truth that guns are the problem not the solution.

Hasn’t the experiment of how well we manage guns been run. 

Do people who like guns, not get the consequences of what might be for them, and likely is a fun sport or pastime.

Do the people who advocate for gun right not get that their hobby produces the same side effects, hard core drug trafficking, or drunk driving does. 

Sitting in my car, the rain having started I begin to silently run through a list of practical questions and responses that make me feel like the gun folks are winning.

Have we gone far enough that we should put a security guard at every school and public door? We haven’t gone that far. Have we?

Why do we resist that running a free modern society simply demands that more resources and attention go towards mental health, or higher taxes on the wealthy for it to work well.

Sitting in the car, I wonder if there might be a class action law suit crafted to hold responsible gun producers.  Or, a federal tax on bullets, that is pro-rated for how many innocent people are shot by each kind. 

I am reminded that in general, all our cultural/political problems are problems of limited will, not of creative problems.  

When I was in Grad school I got a chance to study with Jim Wallis, who is the Evangelical but progressive Editor of Sojourners magazine.  Note-Yes, there are evangelical Christians, who are also essentially progressives. 

Wallis, who was close with consistently said to us Divinity School students that it was our sacred task, our job description in fact as people of faith, “to act as the political conscience of society.”  Essentially to be prophets.

I remember Wallis reminding us that in the Bible it reads, “Without a vision, the people perish,” and points out a different translation: “Without prophecy, the people cast off restraint.”  Both deep and catchy phrases.  I agreed and agree with all of it.

For Jim Wallis the two elements of being a prophet were to first cry out against injustice, and second to cast a new vision before the people.  I know that I don’t always, or even usually, live up to that calling, but I do agree that it is true.

It’s not like we as modern Americans are not aware of the injustice of innocents dying.  We do-at least for a while- collectively cry out against the injustice of innocent lives lost pretty well. 

I believe our unwillingness and inability to act is the result of our nation having a vision of itself as living in a world that frankly doesn’t exist anymore.  One in which our country is more frontier than civilization.  And even more fearfully that justice is if not found here, it will be found in the next life. 

Eventually, and not too soon, we will come to the realization that this latest tragedy will not be the last straw, until we care enough that it is less, not more guns that are the answer.

I am optimistic that it is inevitable that we will get there. the only question is, how long will it take us to get there?  And that is dependent on how much those of us who know what is obvious, care.

Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Steve  

GUIDANCE

• Masking is optional at First Parish Northboro, EXCEPT the back 3 rows of the Meeting House and upstairs which are reserved for masked members.
• If you have tested positive for an illness or have symptoms please remain home and attend with Zoom.
• If you learn you have COVID or other contagious illness and may have exposed one or more people at First Parish Northboro, please either reach out to those people directly or to the minister.

The holidays are just around the corner and we would like to get an idea how many kids our church will be able to sponsor this year in the gift drive. Each person/family who signs up sponsors a child, whose age, gender, or wish list will be available in November.

Please email Tracey Turner, if you would like to participate in this annual First Parish holiday tradition. 

Gifts will be due in by 12/14. The children are under the care of a long term Northborough Foster Family who works with the Department of Children and Families (DCF). DCF, in partnership with families and communities, works to keep children safe from abuse and neglect and toward establishing the permanency and well-being of children by providing supports and services to families at home when it is safe to do so.  

The Community Meals Program is gearing up to offer in-person meals again at Trinity Church starting this December. We are looking for volunteers to help prepare meals and/or set up/serve/clean up. The time commitment for the entire process is from about 4:30 pm – 7 pm on the Wednesday we are hosting. If you can commit to helping for part of that time, that would be great.  

Please contact Alicia Coderre if you are interested in helping out. We will be coordinating our efforts with the Church of the Nativity in Northborough, and plan to host 3 meals over a 12 month period. Our first hosting event will be in late January, 2024.

If the weather makes coming to the church building a safety hazard, then your Board President, in consultation with your Interim Co-Ministers, will make the decision early Sunday morning.

If there is a decision to not meet in person, this will be announced in the Sunday morning Perspective emailed early Sunday mornings, posted in the church’s Facebook page, and given to the local radio station.

If possible we will still meet on zoom.

Receive a weekly email from the Braver/Wiser team every Wednesday they deliver an original written reflection and brief prayer, grounded in Unitarian Universalism. sign up todayNot quite sure you want more emails?Check out last week’s reflection from Rev. Megan Lloyd Joiner.https://www.uua.org/braverwiser/waiting-time