Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership

Week One: Getting Over it.

We will remember where we were when King died, where social conditions were when he was born, what his leadership meant to us. We will mourn, lament and yield ourselves to hope. We will let go of the great sadness that he is not here to see this new day.

Harriet Tubman said, “And when there is a promise of a storm, if you want change in your life, walk into it. If you get on the other side you will be different. And if you want change in your life and you’re avoiding the trouble, you can forget it. Wade on in the water, it’s really going to be troubled water.”

Read the story of Babel in Genesis 14 and following and the story of the exile and the covenant, Genesis 12 : 1 – 3. Read it out loud to yourself and with others. Read the story of Pentecost in Acts 2.

Consider what racism is to you and to yours.

“White folk want everything but the burden,” said James Cone. Many like to respond to human suffering by saying, “It’s not my fault.” This is the cul de sac we are in. We circle and circle, offloading the responsibility for racism. Stokeley Carmichael said “Racism may not be your fault but it is your responsibility.”

Define your fault and your responsibility with regard to racism.

Define your community’s fault and its responsibility with regard to racism.

Enter into a pattern of forgiveness but not forgetting. Push yourself beyond the luxury of guilt.

Tell at least one other person the story of where you were when King was murdered.

Tell that same person what you plan to do now and in the first 100 days of the new administration to live free from the past on behalf of the beloved community.

Week Two: Getting On with it.

“What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness." George Bernard Shaw

Read Ezekiel 37: 15 – 19; 22 – 24a, which is the theme for the 2009 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, January 18 – 25. Find a stick on which to write that we are all one. It takes about 4 acres to feed one human being. The planet no longer has 4 acres for each human being. We are full up. The average American takes 24 acres to produce his or her food. Imagine what that means.

Rethink what it took for King to defend Vietnamese people in his Riverside speech. What must he have been thinking about? Remember how unpopular it was for him to link one people’s suffering to another’s.

The nation is in a profound period of turmoil, inner and outer. The poor suffer. Markets tumble. Barney Smith – a laid off factory worker, representing many – speaks at the Democratic National convention while the congress bails out Smith Barney. The poor suffer some more and have new people added to their ranks. Health insurance languishes. Immigrants are deported. The earth, air and water are threatened. The young will probably not have Social……Security. Or clean water.

We go through a campaign in a kind of denial of the depth and length of the problems, then we come to anger. Many suggest that we just “accept” it. We refuse to accept injustice. We remember Tookie, Abner, Sean Bell – and many more whose names are less well known. We remember. We do not forget. We are furious. Statistics are just numbers with tears on them.

Touch the anger in your heart about injustice. Recall that the Zapatistas call us to creative rage and dignity as our only weapons. Don’t tell each other, any more, that we have no power. Read Sara Luria’s sermon on power, appendix 6.

See what King did with anger. Learn non violence in your heart, then in your behaviour and then in our movement. Give yourself a Sabbath from anger, every week, till it has gone and has dissolved into the love at its base. Anger is love misspent. It is passion wasted. Turn from anger towards the community.

Week Three: Getting to it.

“Fidelity to truth butters no parsnips.” Scott Nearing

First we must secure ourselves. We must learn to live together, take responsibility for ourselves as well as the beloved community. Confronting materialism in ourselves is an important step. Before we can take the kind of political risks which will be essential in the future (and have been essential in the past), we must follow the laws of Tzdekah, which tell us to take care of ourselves first. We don’t need to become dependent on the community; we need to depend on the community and make sure we ourselves are dependable. Personal responsibility joins public repsponsibilty. What does this mean? It means taking care of our own health so that we are well. It means living simply so that we not use more than our share. It means raising our children with vigor and joy and loving our partners well. Are you secure enough to be a part of a movement? Can you really afford to tithe and to Sabbath with others? Or are you in time famine or money famine? If so, eat first.

You are ready now to read the King Speech on the triplets. You have confronted your own materialism and the fact that you are a body. Read it and choose a few lines to memorize by heart. Speak them softly and to others when the time is right.

How do we change our legacy and become good ancestors? What will we do about militarism, materialism and racism – now that their siblings of climate change, peak oil, homophobia, and ongoing sexism join them? How will we keep from going crazy from the multiplying gone wrongness? What is the nugget of hope in the nastiness of the interlocking messes? Some of us are so tangled that no one even wants to bother to unravel us. We must Sabbath our way to freedom from distortion and distractions. We must help each other. We can Sabbath our way to freedom from distortion and distractions. We can help each other.

The tomato on my lunch sandwich has a source in creation – and another human being picked it. Tomato workers in Florida just received a one per cent increase in the 32 pound bucket of tomatoes they pick. It will cost one cent more and is the first pay increase workers have received in thirty years.

Some people cal these matters political. They say we should steer clear of them, especially from the context of religion. I disagree. Reverencing people who pick 15 32 pound buckets an hour to earn Florida’ s minimum wage of $6.79 cents an hour is a spiritual, not a political act. Give thanks for the people who pick tomatoes, for the policeman in the squad car, for the soldier in Iraq. Humanize all people, as you have humanized yourself.

Week Four: Celebrating the Change we are Free to be and become

“We must undergo a vigorous reordering of our national priorities,” and could start by halting the bombing of North Vietnam and declaring a willingness to negotiate with the Viet Cong. American society simply had to alter its entire course, King Emphasized. “I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, extreme materialism and militarism.”

We have looked at racism, just a little. We have looked at materialism just a little. We have grieved, we have become acquainted with our rage. We are ready for a change – and its name is not acceptance. It is to come to terms with the joy we know in the beloved community – and how the forces of violence will not like it. This is no time to forget Bull Connor or the children murdered in Birmingham. When we take our joy to the movements it deserves, we need to be ready for violence as one possible response.

Partner with as many people as you can. Tell them you will help them stay safe as the movements build. Learn the arts of non violence. Get a trainer. Be ready.

Secondly, learn the art of linking as a nonviolent response to the destruction of lumping. Note that King’s key strategy was to see the smorgasboard of issues as one. He saw God’s people as one. Not as scattered exiles but home comers. Not as babbling Babels but as spirit filled people. Not as yellow people or black people but as people membered and remembered in the beloved community.

Read the essay “Life is Too Short to be White …or Straight” and learn how to put things together in a world where others fling them apart. Discuss with others your response.

Reread the Exodus texts and the Babel Text and the Ezekiel 37 selections. Write them on your heart. Restate out loud the segment you have written on your heart from King’s speech. Let the cup of endurance overflow into the cup of hope. Pray from your heart for peace and justice. Tithe your time and energy and money, and Sabbath your way to genuine peace for yourself and for all. We are ready.