Prayers of the People: June 28th, 2020

Nichelle Keatley prayed this prayer on our 4th Sunday discussion, “Taking Place Seriously: Where We’ve Been & Where We’re Going”:

Dear God, Creator of All Things,

 We come today, with questions laid before us. While we seek to know the answer of HOW You would use this land for the welfare of the city, we pray first to align our hearts and minds with You. May You meet us here in a time of confession, a time of gratitude and acknowledgement of the blessing this land has been, and a time of prayerful consideration.

Lord, we confess that this land we currently occupy was long inhabited by the traditional and first peoples of Seattle, the Duwamish Tribe. Still present and living in this land today, we acknowledge the complex history our country, state, and city has with the Indigenous peoples - the broken treaties, the stolen land, and genocidal laws - all of which paved the way for us to occupy 415 Westlake Avenue as we know it today. Lord, we confess this history to You, we say it out loud, to honor and respect the Indigenous Peoples who have come before us, and to resist erasing their history from this land.

We are immensely grateful for the land and building that we have occupied these last 12 years. On numerous occasions, it appeared that we would be looking for a new "home", but You, Lord, provided the means and opportunities for us to purchase the building, perfectly appointed in the center of a developing hub in Seattle and a window to the larger world. As we seek to be "for the neighborhood", You have blessed us with relationships in the cafe, partnerships with organizations big and small, and a growing heart and ministry that serves the homeless, feeds the hungry, and seeks justice for the oppressed. We are so grateful for the relationships we have developed with Compass House, Catholic Health Services, CHOOSE 180, DADs, Lake Union Village, Street Youth Ministries, Lowell Elementary, One Parish One Prisoner, the IF Project, and the many other organizations that I have failed to mention. Lord, bless those organizations in the tireless work they do, and we pray that we may authentically walk in partnership with them to bring the wholeness of life that You promise.

Lord, we are thankful for the building and how it has been such a blessing. While at times it has felt small, the life that is bursting forth from our growing number of children and families, the loud second Sunday conversations, community events, weekly women's shelter, and lively Kakao cafe, all of these are representative of the fact that You bring forth life. We are so grateful for a building and location that allows us to come together and celebrate the life that You bring, and is so evident in our gathering together and going out into the community. We are grateful for the flexibility this space has afforded us: a worshipful space that has allowed us to authentically connect with the community through the cafe and the 415 event space, and a gathering place for this Union community as well.

Lord, as we ponder what the future of this space may be, we want to give thanks for the 415 Vision Studio that has met every other week for many months, discerning and listening to God's voice and this community, learning how this space has been used, and carefully planning how we can move ahead in a physically and fiscally responsible manner. We pray that they would remain attentive to Your Holy Spirit, particularly as we find ourselves in a new time of pandemic, economic uncertainty, and a reckoning of how our country has historically under-valued and oppressed our Black, Brown, and Indigenous brothers and sisters. Give the 415 Vision Studio clarity and endurance for the remainder of this process, and a strong sense of peace with whatever final decisions are laid before them.

And Lord, we lift before You the question of how You would use this building and land. May we have Your Spirit of creativity as we consider how we can continue to be "for the neighborhood" in radically new ways that You call us to be. May we seek restoration, healing, wholeness, and transformation for all people. Show us how we can be a place of hope and engagement that brings healing and opportunity and restoration. May we be a part of "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth (in South Lake Union) as it is in heaven." We pray that as we reach out to our neighbors in South Lake Union, we would attentively listen and hear what is on their hearts for people that live in this city, and that we would center the voices of those individuals that are oftentimes underrepresented AND vital to our community. Guard us from developing a "Savior" mentality that many predominantly white churches and organizations can fall into and can be so harmful for communities experiencing oppression. Lord, we seek clarity in how this new building can be a blessing to the community, and how our church can be Your living hands and feet in South Lake Union for years to come.  And we pray for the courage and bravery to live into that calling. 

Finally, Lord, we pray for wisdom and discernment for James B, Renée, and Studio 3 as they weigh the decisions before them over the next year. May Your Holy Spirit be present and guide them and us, communally and individually, today and every tomorrow that you grant us.

Lord, we offer this prayer to you.

Amen

Eco-Act 008: Learn Native History

Colonization was the first environmental injustice

start there.

As our eco-act for this week, we invite you to learn more about Indigenous histories and movements for environmental justice. Also, please join us in the KTC author talk this Tuesday.

Water Protectors at Standing Rock pictured above. Adrienne reflects below on what the Kitchen Table Conversations have covered in the Environmental Justice (EJ) conversation this spring/summer.

Starting earlier this year at 415 and moving in March over to Zoom, we have been privileged to create a safe space to engage in really, really difficult conversations around Indigenous-settler relations, and specifically environmental (in)justice. Our group is open to all and offered through kakáo, which has allowed us to have a diverse cross-section of folks at the table. The group is facilitated by Lydia Heberling, consistent 2nd Sunday facilitator, former kakáo barista, and PhD at UW studying Native American Literature. Lydia has thoughtfully connected us with media and art, dynamic speakers, and a variety of sub-topics within Indigenous movements.

Some common Indigenous EJ themes and questions that we have explored include:

• “Environment” definition: Beyond just the naturalistic, pristine wilderness that we often think of, our environment includes the schools, businesses, housing, health care systems, green spaces, and people around us. Such social realities invite us to think about the history of how our environment came to be, and how such factors continue to shape community.

• Progress & environmentalism: The program of progress and environmentalism does not often acknowledge or support the complexities and varied histories of Native communities. An example: animal activists are divided over Makah whaling, which is covered in their treaty rights. Here are a few articles: KUOW & Seattle Times Opinion piece. Rather than understanding complexities, environmentalism tends to fetishize and extract Indigenous culture for its supposed mystical wisdom and relationship to the environment.

• Colonialism as the original environmental injustice: As the above suggests, environmentalists do not always center Indigenous EJ as a starting place. The legacy of settler colonialism includes one of forced removal, slavery, ecocide, and continual separation from ancestral land and thus cultural practices that tribes rely on. “If we assume an estimate of eighteen million Indigenous people on the continent…in 1492 and compare that to the Native American population count of roughly 228,000 in the 1890 census…we see a population decline of approximately 99 percent.” (Gilio-Whitaker, 49). Our praxis of environmental justice must address the devastating legacy of Colonialism and how BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Color) are affected disproportionately compared to white people.

• History, Christianity, Capitalism, & Western society: Unfortunately, Western ideals around Manifest Destiny and the belief that Native life (bodies, culture, ways of being) was inferior to Christian doctrine and social norms were popular among European settlers since first contact was made. Such racial and religious presumptions justified ill-treatment and removal of Natives, and continue to perpetuate the idea that corporations and the US gov’t/legal system know better than Indigenous communities. For many of us as Christians embedded in our capitalist society, we have wondered what a way forward could look like that accounts for our religion’s history and our current complicity in our nation’s Settler State policies that continue erasing Indigenous people.

• Indigenous EJ histories: Different tribes have different histories. There have actually been many attempts to address Native EJ at the US Federal level (ie: the EPA), however, tribal consultation and recommendations have not historically panned out, especially with the tangle of corporate / gov’t interest, and inconsistencies in Federal and State recognition of tribal sovereignties. Many Native protests and occupations have led to increments of change, though their struggle has been continual for the last 500 years. Environmental injustice and our current climate crisis is not recent history for Indigenous communities.

Other topics discussed include the health of Indigenous land, ecosystems, and people; the National Park formation and the harmful roots of the conservation/preservation movements; Native food (and land) sovereignty; Indigenous women in the EJ movement; what a new framework for coalition building could look like; and Christian confession and responsibility.

Overall, the space created by the virtual Kitchen Table Conversations has been especially formative and fruitful. As we continue to faithfully resist ongoing racial injustice (really any injustice) in our country, we have been reminded how necessary it is to do this critical work in community. KTC will be taking a summer break for July, stay tuned for updates!

Many of these topics have been guided by our reading of *Dina Gilio-Whitaker’s book As Long as the Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock. We have the incredible opportunity to talk with her this Tuesday and we hope you’ll join us!

Our Dear Brother Jojo

We continue to be strengthened & encouraged by this Easter message that Jojo was able to give us:

Write Jojo a letter at:

Jojo Bayana (A#76633612), 1623 East J Street, Suite 5, Tacoma, Washington 98421-1615

Prayers of the People: June 21, 2020

Ted Thwing led us in this conversation with God.

Let us talk to God.
Good morning, God.  We’re here…  Such as we are… We need to talk with you and we really need to hear from you this morning. We and our world need your power and compassion at work in our midst.

Some of us really need your healing touch.  We pray that you would come alongside us to bring your loving care  and healing where we need it most.  We pray that we would sense your comforting and healing presence.  God, how are you preparing our hearts to care for people around us this week?

Some of us have experienced injustice this week or in the past.  It really hurts.  We need to know that you are at work to bring justice and healing and reconciliation in the world around us. We know that this work is very important to you How can we join up with you in what you are already at work doing ahead of us?

We pray for those in our government, that they may be insightful and courageous in their decision-making and that their decisions and actions will lead to the deep justice, healing, and reconciliation.  God, may your justice roll down with a mighty river sound.

God, I particularly pray for our brother Jojo.  Our hearts are in anguish over his unjust detention at the NW Detention Center.   I pray that by your power, you would make it possible for him to be freed and to rejoin us as part of our Union Church family.

We pray for those around us who are serving in medical jobs.

• We pray for those who have direct contact with patients, we pray for those who are doing medical research, we pray for those who are working on providing healthcare systems to meet  needs in our city and around the world. 

• We ask that you provide them with extra doses of wisdom, insight, compassion and skill as they serve in these challenging times.  We ask that as you come alongside them, they will sense your presence and be deeply encouraged by it. 

We pray for those around us who are graduating this month. May they have a strong sense of accomplishment in the face of the unusual challenges they have faced over the last few months.  And we pray that you will lead them to new jobs, or responsibilities, or further education even in the midst of this period of unusual uncertainty.

God, we want to be listening to you and to follow you, but often we aren’t very good at it.  Help us this week to discover that where we are weak, the Holy Spirit can use us anyway (not because of our power, but because of his).

God, what are you up to today and this week? 

We ask that you help us to see what you see, to hear what you hear and to join in on your work of transformation in each of us, in our families, in our neighborhood and city, and in our nation and our world. We ask that you speak to our hearts, O God.

In Step with Jesus {based on Matthew 7:29-8:17}

A follow up to our message from 2nd Sunday by Renée Notkin

Recently I’ve been ruminating on the title of Eugene Peterson’s 1980 book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. (I highly recommend this timeless book). How do we stay the course and keep in step with Jesus in this time of grief and uncertainty as we pray for a new day of justice?  I am convinced that prayer is vital to keeping our eyes on Jesus and living as people who believe it can “be on earth as it is in heaven.”

Dr. Rev. William Barber, co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign states: “To be a person of faith is to be ever at protest against injustice” as he echoes Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”

By his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus protests against injustice to break down the walls of hostility, that we as humans erect, and becomes our peace to restore a new humanity.

As the Wednesday Evening Conversation group has been studying together The Acts of the Apostles (and I would add, the Holy Spirit), this verse has become foundational for me: Acts 1:12, “(they) were constantly devoting themselves to prayer” while they waited in Jerusalem as Jesus invited them to wait.  The disciples (and this includes the women) will act but they begin with a devotion to prayer.

Prayer is a form of protest as we pray to our Lord in humility, repentance, despair, and hope to guide us into a new way of being. Our prayers join the choruses of voices that go before us to say “NO,” to that which destroys and dehumanizes and discards and “YES” to God’s Kingdom of life, restoration and reconciliation. 

You may be asking, in this time of pandemic, as your heart is grieving over the realities of racial and socioeconomic injustice that still permeates our nation, what can I do?  Please do not hear this as a trite answer….You can pray.  And, in your prayers, listen to where God is guiding you to act.  

This summer we want to become even more a community that prays. We are posting prayers on our webpage.  We are providing multiple opportunities to pray together throughout the week and there will be more coming. Some of us are gathering to pray at CHOP (Cap Hill Occuppied Protest) and while we protest; others of us pray from our homes. We want to know how we can pray for you. What helps you pray? We want to know.

As we continue to grieve, repent and seek to act counterculturally to that which destroys and dehumanizes, Jesus invites us to confess, to face ourselves -- our racism, our prejudice, our biases, and our fears that prevent us from seeing people through Jesus’ love.  In Matthew 8, as we watch Jesus heal three people who would be viewed on the outskirts of society, we are given a vision to live in a new way that defies systems of oppression and to embrace a just way of living as Jesus showed, as Jesus lived and Jesus gave his life for.  This same Jesus Christ, our Advocate, now empowers us to walk in his steps by his Spirit.  This same Jesus Christ invites us to pray for the bonds of injustice to be broken and for God’s Spirit to bring healing between people.

This same Jesus Christ invites you to trust he has already said “YES” to you. Jesus invites you to be in dialogue with him.  And then, Jesus invites you on a journey to say “yes” to one another and to join with him in reaching across walls of injustice, barriers of hate, and systems that divide us. To love one another as Jesus loved.

Eco-Act 007: “eating local” vs. eating intentionally

“eating local” vs. eating intentionally

it’s the WHAT that matters

We describe local food fans or “locavores” as people who intentionally choose locally grown food whenever possible. Definitions of “local” vary, but let’s say it means within 100 miles of home. Locavores see a variety of benefits to intentionally eating local, including food that’s fresher, tastier, and healthier, and supporting local farmers and small businesses. Many of us probably agree.

Is “eating local” also kinder to the environment? Hmm…. We know that organic food, grown without chemical pesticides or fertilizers, doesn’t have to be grown nearby; we enjoy organic berries sourced in Mexico or South America, for example. Still, most of us are probably comfortable with the notion of some link between local and organic.

How about greenhouse gas emissions generated in transporting food? Does eating locally grown food help the environment by reducing “food miles?” It turns out that “…the share of emissions from transport … is generally pretty tiny; the distance our food travels to get to us actually accounts for less than 10 percent of most food products’ carbon footprint.”[1] So we can’t automatically take a carbon footprint victory lap just because we choose locally-grown food.

What matters more is WHAT we eat. Global data published in Science in 2018[2] deals with a variety of protein-rich foods and shows a range of carbon footprint impacts. The worst offenders? Beef and lamb. Better choices: poultry and pork. Better still: dairy and fish. And the most eco-friendly: plant-based protein sources.

So, at the end of the day, what might our eco-acts be? First, we can be intentional about what we choose to eat. Maybe we cut back on the beef and lamb, choosing options with a smaller carbon footprint. And second, we can happily eat locally grown food for its freshness, great taste, and health benefits; because we can relatively easily ensure we’re buying organic; because we love farmers’ markets; and so that we can continue to have a sense of where our food comes from—small farms, greenhouses and orchards located not too far from us.

Last, we encourage you to purchase food from local Black-owned farms, restaurants, and businesses. Here is a list of Black-owned Seattle food spots; see our post on farms here. Intentionally eating from these local businesses is one part of the greater movement toward creating a society where Black lives truly matter. And this seems like a way of caring for and connecting with the greenness and life of our local world.

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[1] “How to reduce your food’s carbon footprint, in 2 charts,” Sigal Samuel, February 20, 2020

[2] The Science study and “Our World in Data” were both cited in the Sigal Samuel Vox article referenced above.

T&J Edition 6: Juneteenth

Dear Union Community,

In the previous email, there were numerous ways to learn and engage, but one major event/holiday was overlooked, my apologies! This Friday, June 19th, is a holiday in many parts of the country known as Juneteenth. Though not federally recognized, the black community celebrates the end of slavery on this day as on June 19, 1865, slaves in Galveston Texas were told that slavery had ended.  Despite Lincoln having signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, it wasn't until the Civil War ended in April 1865, that the message was able to be carried all the way to Galveston Texas, some 2.5 years later!

Take some time to learn more about this holiday and celebrate the end of slavery!

• Watch the Washington Post's "The History behind Juneteenth and why it resonates today"

• Watch Ta-Nehisi Coates' full opening statement on reparations at the House hearing on June 19, 2019. 

• Share with your kids too! Watch this video together.

• March with CHOOSE 180 on Saturday June 20th to show that Black Fathers Matter. Details are here.

• There are a number of celebrations, marches, and speakers throughout this week celebrating Juneteenth - look here for a list. 

• Purchase dinner from JuneBaby Chef Edouardo Jordan's lauded Southern-inspired restaurant, a three-course Juneteenth dinner special ($60)

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.Truth & Justice Studio MISSION STATEMENT :: Truth & Justice creates space to educate and mobilize people by lifting up marginalized voices as catalyst for social change. We are a community within Union Church in Seattle, WA.