image by NotChris @ Zazzle.com
Dear readers of the On The Way blog-
I am attending a three day anti-racism training conducted by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (http://pisab.org) here in State College with 27 other Episcopalians from our diocese. This training has been made possible by the prayerful discernment of our Eliminating Racism Task Force, and by our 2018 Convention budget that named working for racial reconciliation as a diocesan missional priority.
The work in these three days promises to be challenging and transformational.
Tonight we got off to a good start with a meal and fellowship, the beginning of creating a timeline of racism and resistance in our country, and introductions that invited us to share who we are, what we do and why we think it is important for our diocese to engage this work at this time.
We were presented with some theological ideas to ground the work ; consider that we are the Family of God, intimately connected to each other. There are sacred stories that have been taken from us that we need to re-claim , and God calls us, the faithful, to this work that reaches backwards into brokenness and forward, in promise, to reconciliation.
The work promises to be rich.
You’ll hear more, when we have finished-
+Audrey
This morning I was bemoaning to myself the need to cancel our Recovery Day. Then the thought came, that racism is a form of addiction. Perhaps when one addiction is examined, all addictions, all idolatries are on the way to being healed.