Dear Friends,
As we build the Beloved Community, we pray for you every day that you might continue to bring it about in your little corner of the world.
Today's Meditation features Fannie Lou Hamer, leader in the Civil Rights Movement. I was particularly inspired by her saying: “I feel sorry for anybody that could let hate wrap them up. Ain’t no such thing as I can hate anybody and hope to see God’s face.”
We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in the church, in healthcare, in the workplace--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron and Jean
MEDITATION: Fannie Lou Hamer:
Fannie Lou Hamer
Robert Ellsberg - Post published:Mar 14, 2023 - Reading time:2 mins read
Fannie Lou Hamer, Wikimedia, public domain.
Until 1962, the life of Fannie Lou Hamer was little different from that of her parents or other poor Black women in the Mississippi Delta. One of twenty children, she was educated to the fourth grade and then fell into the life of sharecropping. Her life changed after attending a civil rights rally when she decided to register to vote, an action, at the time, that literally courted death. As a result, she and her family were evicted from their home. She took this as a sign to work full time as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, quickly rising to a position of leadership.
In 1963 she was arrested while trying to desegregate a bus terminal in Charleston, South Carolina. In jail she was savagely beaten, emerging with a damaged kidney and permanently impaired eyesight. In 1964 she led a “Freedom Delegation” from Mississippi to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired,” she proclaimed. Though the delegation was evicted by the party bosses, Hamer touched the conscience of the nation with her eloquent account of the oppression of Blacks in the segregated South and their nonviolent struggle to affirm their dignity and human rights.
She continued in that struggle, battling injustice, war, and poverty, sustained by her deep faith in the God of the oppressed. “If I fall,” she said, “I will fall five-feet four-inches forward in the fight for freedom.” She died on March 14, 1977.
“I feel sorry for anybody that could let hate wrap them up. Ain’t no such thing as I can hate anybody and hope to see God’s face.” —Fannie Lou Hamer
Upcoming Events
On Wednesday Evenings during Lent, we will meet from 7-8PM on Zoom using the poetry of Wendell Berry to reflect on Lenten themes.
On Wednesday March 15, at 7:00 PM on ZOOM, Fr. Yaroslav Nalysnyk, Pastor of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Jamaica Plain will speak to the community on the War In Ukraine. We have been channeling our donat