Church on the Green Newsletter November 2017 | Page 4

Associate Pastor's Note

The month of November makes me think first about the Thanksgiving table coming up so soon. It has been a place for me that was often a location of perilous conversation among many family members of different generations and perspectives across my growing up. Maybe so for you too? But now, perilous conversation is all around us everywhere,

not just at family tables – also in schools and classrooms, offices and boardrooms, nightly news and local headlines.

It is now a year since the presidential election brought Donald Trump to office. In this time, public policy and justice issues have risen to intense debate at break-neck rates and whatever your positions on issues like immigration, Transgender rights, women’s reproductive care, mass incarceration, racial equality, public monuments, climate change, international conflicts, and so much more - you have likely been provoked and stirred up. It has been a year that invites us to think and pray deeply about what our response should be. If we speak, what do we say? Do we rally, protest, make phone calls, blog, make signs? If we are silent, what are we saying then?

As followers of Jesus Christ, our call to live out the Gospel life is complex. I hear us being called to speak truth to power but also to be peacemakers; to be voice for the voiceless but also to lift up those on the margins to speak for themselves; to love our neighbor as ourselves and to love our enemy; to be prophetic but also merciful. The more I try to do these things, the more I am humbled by the complexity of discipleship.

In this time of polarization & high passions that take sides, I find myself trying to speak up but not interrupt; to listen deeply before speaking, and then to listen some more. To be visible but not an obstacle to others. To listen to the voice of my conscience but also to hear the side(s) of an issue I want to shut out. Zeal can give us strength but it can also cause irreversible harm. Most of all, I do not believe we win just because we out-shout or out-demonstrate or out-argue an issue. We don’t even win when the person we want gets elected to office. I increasingly feel like winning is when we come together in real committed relationship and find a solution we all can live with.

In November & December, I get to practice what I’m preaching more with my dear friend, Rabbi Amy Katz from Temple Beth-El. I invite you to come practice with us. We will be taking up again the issue of peace in the Middle East, and the UCC’s recent voice nationally about the plight of the Palestinians amidst the protracted and disputed lands where Israeli settlements continue to grow.

You know from prior eblasts that I was a Synod delegate this summer in Baltimore, where another pro-Palestinian Resolution was passed (similarly to my time there in 2015) and there is increasing upset/sense of being