The Voices of St. Johns Youngstown

When my son Phil was about 8, his elementary school started a wrestling club. He and his brothers were interested so we signed them up. It was right after school and I would watch them practice when I could. I always saw the same thing. 

At the start of the practice the coach would demonstrate whatever he wanted them to learn, and then broke them up into smaller groups and had them work on the new skill. When I watched Phil, he would always lose the first round, and then he would pin that person the second time around in about a minute. Then the opponent would win, and then Phil would win. It was clear that Phil was almost always the better wrestler by far, and not just because I am his mother. But he would always let the opponent win as much as he did.

As I caught on to what was actually happening I casually mentioned to Phil that this was not how it was supposed to go. You know, winning was the point. And he would just smile, like I had a lot to learn. His gentle generosity has always been a moving example for me, and I am grateful for it.

In so many ways right now, winning seems to be the most important thing. There are no concessions, and very little discussion.  You either agree with me or you are wrong, and if you disagree with me enough, I will block you and find an opinion more to my liking. Our country has lost its ability to listen with reasonable respect. We have lost the center and live in the extremes, and it is literally killing us. 

What I find most disheartening is the binary view that there are nice people or not nice people, good people or bad people. We see this represented in the choice to wear masks, how you imagine the future of policing, or views on racism. Depending on your point of view, you are good and the other person is bad. And we can’t seem to get past that. 

I know people who hold views and make choices very different from my own. I know they are good people who do good things in the world. The blessing of knowing them is the reminder that there are not just two choices, good and bad, right and wrong, my way or the highway. I see that they are wonderful parents, generous to the community, kind to elders, reading the same book I am reading. I see that there are more potential connections than I might have realized but only because I looked past what we disagree on. 

But we have to look, I have to want to find this connection and respect. It is certainly easier to say that they are “them” and dismiss them as tragically mislead. I am not saying that we have to then come to an agreement on everything. I will probably not change my position much. That isn’t the goal. The goal is respect and seeing good in everyone and believing in the good in everyone. The goal is the possibility of compromise and civility in a world that is desperate for just that. Maybe the goal is staying in a conversation for more than a few minutes. 

Here is the bottom line, it doesn’t matter who wins in November if we don’t do the work of becoming a democracy again. A democracy where everyone is valued, where everyone has a right to their own opinion, where the common good is our goal, where we don’t have to agree but we have to take care of each other. If we don’t do this, we will continue this freefall into selfishness and worship of our individual rights that can only lead to violent tyranny. 

So how do we do this? We listen more than we talk, we don’t dismiss people because we know they are different. We hold to a standard of kindness and compassion that moves us past judgement. But mostly we have conversations that are specifically about finding what we share and value, finding the connections. There is a deep bond that is created when we listen to someone’s story. 

I am tired of the hatred, tired of the meanness, tired of the cruelty. I am ready to listen. Tell me your story. There is more to be done, but we can start there. 

July 20, 2020

Last week was a tough one for surviving giants of the civil rights movement, as well as everyone who cherishes racial justice in America, especially during these dark days.  The great John Lewis’s passing justifiably garnered most of the attention, but we also lost the Rev. C.T. Vivian, one of Martin Luther King’s close advisers and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  

When I heard the news about Rev. Vivian, I was transported back to my childhood in Youngstown, Ohio. I recall vividly the day he sat in the den of our upper middle class suburban home sharing drinks with my parents. A rare scene in 1969 Ohio – an iconic Black preacher socializing with white country club types – perhaps still rare today. I was fifteen and awed to silence by the conversation with this elegant, precise man; his every word seemed weighted with importance. He’d been at Dr. King’s side, he’d been beaten and jailed countless times, he was once nearly killed by police in St. Augustine, Florida. A life so very different from my own brief, sheltered existence. Yet here he was in my house talking to my parents about things that mattered. I was proud and amazed.

Rev. Vivian wouldn’t be the last prominent civil rights figure to pass through our home. Writer Amiri Baraka (known then as LeRoi Jones), Rev. Malcom Boyd (the “Espresso Priest”), Ron Daniels (activist and one-time presidential candidate) and many others made appearances during the late sixties and seventies. The odd thing is that my parents had been staunch Republicans as recently as 1964, when our Chevy Impala station wagon sported a bumper sticker reading OH AU H2O 64 – Ohioans for Goldwater 64. I thought this was very clever. 

But soon after the LBJ landslide my parents joined Youngstown’s St John’s Episcopal Church, and they began to change. The Vietnam War was raging, protests were growing. The Bloody Sunday march from Selma to Montgomery, the Birmingham Church bombing, the Mississippi murders of civil rights workers – they all happened in 1965 and my parents couldn’t look away. A young white priest at St John’s preached every Sunday of social justice and community engagement, which was all it took. My parents were in, and they brought my siblings and me along.

My dad became a founding member of the Episcopal Society for Racial and Cultural Unity (ESCRU). They organized, lobbied, held conferences and sponsored lectures – hence the parade of notables through our home. But the famous visitors were not the most important. 

In those days St. John’s was an all-white parish. St. Augustine Episcopal Church, a few blocks away, was all-Black. Members of St. John’s reached out to St. Augustine’s, proposing joint worship, community projects and social events. It became a years-long endeavor with mixed success. What I remember most are the barbecues, many of them at our house.

I recently came upon home movies of the first one, shot by my dad. It must have been 1966. I remember standing beside him at the front door as he greeted guests by pointing the camera and its powerful lights in their faces, inducing temporary blindness in some, I’m sure. Probably not an ideal welcome. But he was determined to capture the moment because it felt momentous. And it was. I was only 12 and felt the same sense of pride and amazement I’d feel years later looking across the room at C.T. Vivian.

The film is silent but revealing. Most folks seem excited but a little nervous. A lot of the white men mug for camera and their wives beam movie star smiles. Most of the Black guests are more reserved – smiling and friendly to be sure, but their posture more upright, their demeanor projecting dignity and a hint of wariness. The arrival footage is all that exists now – I don’t know if more was shot, but I do remember a party that became increasingly loud and joyous, like the many that followed. I will never tire of looking at that film.

One may cast this tale as one of naïve, do-gooding white liberals assuaging their guilt with gestures that ultimately did little to extinguish racism – society’s or their own. And that would be partly true. Many of the white guests at that party remained members of an all-white country club, including my parents – a contradiction I have struggled with to this day.

But I think there’s also something real and good in who my parents became, however imperfectly. The events of 1965 opened their eyes to racism and they decided to do something about it. Their example is forever stamped in the consciousness of their children and grandchildren and beyond. It’s driven me throughout my career in broadcast journalism to seek out stories related to social justice and racial inequality. It’s also made me hyper-aware of my advantages as a white person, every day of my life.

Which brings us to this moment, with its sudden explosion of white awareness of Black lives, racism and white advantage.  I am hopeful that our collective outrage in this moment will be a lasting catalyst, similar to the way the events of 1965 impelled my parents and so many like them to metamorphize and agitate for change.  An outcome John Lewis and C.T. Vivian would surely cheer.

Dan Morris is an Emmy-winning producer who spent fifteen years at ABC’s Nightline and has more recently been a contributor to the PBS NewsHour.

If you are my Facebook friend you saw a post today about home repair. A branch fell on my electrical line which pulled the line and some siding away from my house. The electric company said I needed an electrician. The electrician replaced the insulator and said the electric company had to cut back branches. The electric company came, removed branches, but wouldn’t fix the box. The electrician said I needed a line man with a bucket truck. The electric company said OK but then took 10 days to come. In the meantime it rained and stormed and I think there might be bees. 

So in normal times this is a first world problem, and you deal with it, and it gets done. But these are not normal times. These are times where frustration is already through the ceiling, where we are feeling pretty helpless anyway, where every little thing feels so much bigger than it is. Plus it is dangerous!!

I cannot say that my response was always perfect, but I will tell you the three coping mechanisms I used to get through this without resorting to the coping mechanisms that are not so healthy.

First, I was unfailingly polite. I know that how I behaved toward others is important to me. I am judgmental about that, I admit it. And most of the people I talked to are not in charge of what happens. So I was kind while explaining just how frustrated or anxious I was. And people responded to that kindness consistently far above my expectation. Kindness not only makes me feel good about myself, it brings positive results.

Second, I took a gratitude moment. I have a lot to be thankful for. A lot. And even in the midst of this ongoing problem I never lost my power (electrical power and otherwise). So when I started despairing, I made myself say 10 things I am grateful for, and then 10 more for good measure. It is a reality check to realize how very blessed you really are. There are many more blessings than anything else 

Finally, I accomplished something. In other words, I took control where I could. Maybe I cleaned the kitchen or emptied a drawer or finished a book or called a friend. I did something concrete that gave me, an admitted overachiever, a sense of accomplishment.  I could point to a good result and feel a bit better. 

You probably have your own ways of positive coping. Just be aware of them, practice them, make them a habit. Health doesn’t just happen, we have to practice it. Take very good care of yourselves and behave in ways that help you to know how wonderful you are!!

It has seemed to me lately that my dining room/office/window to the world is getting smaller and smaller. So it was with great relief that I took a few days last week to meet some friends at an AirBnB we rented in the middle of nowhere in southern Ohio.  This was vacation pandemic-style. Essentially trading one room for another. But the standard that I measured all choices by was, Is it my dining room?  And no, it was not. Plus it was great to talk to people in three dimensions instead of always by Zoom.

We did everything we could to be safe. We disinfected when we got there, we brought our own food and cooked most of our own meals. I brought my own pillow cases. It was almost comical what choices we made to protect ourselves. And it was great. Really a nice few days.

I was a little surprised the second afternoon that all I really wanted to do was nap. I was so tired. We were all yawning a lot, and had several conversations about how weary we were. Pandemics and radical social change are definitely exhausting. So we napped, which was helpful. However, I am still tired, and no amount of napping or sleeping a good number of hours seems to take care of it.

I think this has to do with grief, and anxiety, and helplessness. The heat doesn’t help either. But mostly, this is emotional. So let’s be honest. We are all feeling weary, all tired of the current status quo, all acknowledging that even if we had energy there isn’t the usual options for expressing it. We are all struggling. 

So take care of yourself. Safely, intentionally, in a heathy way, take care of yourself. This isn’t the time for overachievement. This is a time for steady, reasonable self-care. Don’t feel guilty about it, just do it. We have to see this as the marathon that it is. Take good care of yourself!  

I will be praying for you!!

When I was a kid, we visited my Polish Grandma regularly. My Dad wasn’t always with us but when he was, he would make a Polish joke, as in how dumb they were or something like that. He had a rotating list of choices, and we could tell, every time, that my Grandma hated it. Hated it. I think my Dad knew that too.

Whenever that happened my Mother would turn to whichever of her children were present and say, you know why they call those Christmas lights Italian lights (my Dad was Italian), and we were expected as part of the drama, to say no, why? And she would say, they aren’t too bright. We knew my Dad could hear that but he never acknowledged it.

Every family has their banter. Every family knows what buttons to push and how to irritate each other. But there is a deeper lesson here that I am only recently aware of, a socialization of behavior that is hard to pinpoint if you aren’t looking. We were being asked to choose. To pick what part of our heritage was better. We were being taught that there was a better choice and that there was a certain power and reward behind making it.

The immediate power as a child was recognizing which parent to side with in the moment. Who could make our life easier and who could make it harder? Do you side with the victor or the underdog? There are consequences to both. 

But long term, we learn to see ourselves as good, powerful, better than others. We learn to be individuals, successfully crafted into an ideal. We learn that others are not like us, and that makes them less than us, and sometimes a threat. Us and them. Good and bad. We create a binary world where there isn’t a lot of neutral, not a lot of gray.

I think this is the root of a lot of our social problems. We don’t know how to create a world where everyone is good, welcome and equal. We are afraid to be less than the best, less than perfect, and so we need people who can be less than us. We don’t know how to build community where everyone is regarded for who they are and not expected to become something, This binary world of winners isn’t real. But it is killing us. Please pray about how we can heal from this false learning and become a Body of Christ that values all its parts as beloved. 

I really miss singing. It struck me the other day as I was humming a hymn that I hardly sing at all these days. Since the pandemic has quashed singing in church for the duration, my opportunities for expressing myself in prayer that way have really dried up. I sing a little bit around the house, but even that has been rare these days.

Singing is such an integral part of praying for me. When I am the most deeply lamenting and the most stunningly joyful I naturally sing. It expresses so much more than words. It is physical. Using the very body God has created to give expression to my relationship with God. I am sure my neighbors have raised their eyebrows, as well as drivers at a variety of stoplights. 

Since I noticed I am missing it, I have been more intentional in including singing in my personal worship. And it has made clear to me that I am not a victim or in any way disadvantaged. Nothing can separate me from God’s love and nothing can contain my worship. I will keep everyone as safe as I can, and I will praise God, and express my laments, as well.

Worship. Pray. Don’t be daunted. We need to be connected with God more than ever, and more deeply than ever!

I was talking to someone recently about how hard it is to keep track of days. Just yesterday I thought there was a zoom call that is actually today but I got mixed up and said where is everyone and someone got back to me and said, uh, it’s tomorrow. Sigh.

I think this is a symptom of grief. We have experienced wave after wave of grief. Life isn’t the same, fear is constant. Church isn’t the same. We can’t do what we want. People are dying, people we love are dying. Every decision carries with it the weight of unknown dangers. 

The way we get through grief is one day at a time. Some griefs never leave us, like the death of a loved one. Some griefs work themselves out, like moving or a new job. Some things we think are a loss are just changes that are inevitable, like aging. But one thing is certain, grief will not be ignored. 

And so we have to recognize grief for what it is, a time of adjustment, a time of reordering, a time for asking who we are in this new normal. And do we love those questions, no we do not. Grief is a beginning, and we determine how that goes. We write the next chapter.

First, we have to recognize the grief. We have to be honest about our losses. We have to be open to feeling crummy for a while. The unending grief we are experiencing requires heightened kindness, patience and calm. We are all suffering, we are all afraid, we are all anxious, we are all trying to figure out how to keep ourselves and others safe. Let’s be nice to each other. 

Prayer, exercise and reaching out to friends are healthy ways to cope. They take practice. Ask for help when you need it. Know that Jesus loves you, and so does your church.

The plan was that this outdoor service in June would be our annual Hawaiian shirt Sunday. One of my favorite services of the year!!  I love all the color as I scan the congregation. I love the creativity. I love when families all dress up together, or when someone passes out leis. And I truly, truly love passing out pineapples. It is a highlight for me, and has been a moment of fun in a year of solemnity and dignified worship. 

This year we will not be having a Hawaiian shirt Sunday. It was discussed at the Executive Committee meeting that the symbol has been coopted by White Supremacist groups. And we want to be crystal clear that we have nothing to do with that. Crystal clear that we do not stand with or for racism. 

Some will say that is an extreme response, that no one will notice, especially since we have been doing this for years. Some will say that we are giving those groups too much power by changing anything. And I understand that. 

Years ago, at my previous parish, I wrote a weekly parish email. I was trying to make a point about something and wrote, “Boy you would not believe…”. One of my members who almost never came to church sent me a scathing reply, saying the origin of Boy was what male slaves were called to demean and dehumanize them, and I had to be more careful and thoughtful with my language.

At first, I didn’t pay much attention. Because she didn’t participate much I didn’t take her seriously, didn’t think she had a right to criticize. But after some prayer and humility, I realized she was absolutely right. If I hurt even one person by being careless about my language, that was too many. And it helped me to be careful about how I craft a message, to think about from more than just my own perspective. 

So we will not be wearing Hawaiian shirts on the 21^st. Because we only want to be a part of healing and welcome and love. And every precaution is worth not hurting one more person. 

At 11:25 last Sunday, a group of people from St. John’s and a few friends of the parish walked over to the corner of Wick and Wood for the march against racism. The marchers were asked to wear black for mourning, to wear masks for safety, and to be silent out of respect for those who died. It was organized by a young woman who had a vision for an appropriate expression of grief and outrage. 

When we arrived there were already hundreds of people. Even with masks I recognized friends and colleagues. There was excitement at the large turnout, and people had banners and signs expressing their thoughts and frustrations at a system that would allow the murder of an unarmed Black man to occur, not just once but regularly.

We couldn’t hear the directions very well but people were encouraged to spread out, be careful and respectful. And people did. There was a sense of respect for people’s safety. We marched down to the courthouse. Police officers closed the streets and kept people safe. When we all arrived and gathered and spread out, there were a series of speakers.

With absolutely appropriateness, the speakers raised some painful truths, expressed deep grief and anger, stirred up people’s hearts. There was some dissension, but there always is. What struck me was the depth of anguish that was expressed by the Black community. 

I was there to express my condolences. It was not a time for connection or unity. It was a time for the African American community to educate white people about the extent of their pain. I was there to listen. It was not to offer easy solutions, diluted promises or false hopes. It was to be present and brokenhearted. 

And it still is. My job in this time of reckoning is to be an ally. My job is to stand with the leaders of the African American community as they lead the call for immediate change. My job is to talk about how racism is a public health crisis, and how white advantage often prevents us from being honest about our own complicity. I will show up, I will listen, and I will act nonviolently to create a world of equity and justice. 

I hope you will join me. 

GIFT IDEAS FOR

your children

who refuse to stay at home because

they believe

Black Lives Matter

Lab goggles to protect from tear gas, pepper spray and mace

Bottles of water or milk to dilute the effects of tear gas, pepper spray or mace

N 95 masks (good luck) or cloth masks with filters and hand sanitizer to protect against Covid 19

PRAYER

because NO

• mask
• goggles
• hand sanitizer

WILL PROTECT THEM

AGAINST

• Batons
• Rubber bullets
• REAL BULLETS FIRED BY THE FORCES OF TYRANNY

REFUSE TO BE SILENT

SILENCE IS COMPLICITY

karen