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A Travel Meditation on a Civil Right Pilgrimage to ALSermon preached by Reverend Carolyn PatiernoMay 5, 2019

Sermon begins with song: “Jacob’s Ladder”

We are traveling from Montgomery to Tuskegee and the Staple Singers’ album “Freedom Highway” is our soundtrack. “Jacob’s Ladder” is up and the car becomes the sanctuary as we sing and sway. The Jew, the AME Zion, the UCC (United Church of Christ), and the Unitarian Universalist – we are climbing Jacob’s ladder! It ends with the Rabbi’s robust, “Amen!”

The music lifts our spirits as Freedom Songs are meant to do. We have just left the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Memorial followed by the Freedom Riders Museum. Both have served as reminders of the seemingly bottomless pit of the human capacity for cruelty. But more importantly, the stories of dignified courage, tenacity, resilience, righteousness, and beauty are amplified with a dignity long deserved.

Many of you know of Bryan Stevenson, the lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, AL. You know him because you read his book, Just Mercy back in 2015 when it was the One Book / One Region pick. Maybe you heard him speak at CT College. Stevenson encourages four strategies to bring about greater understanding and peace: proximate – get close to folks who are different than you: find ways to create justice; stay hopeful because hopelessness is the enemy of justice; and change the narrative.

The civil rights pilgrimage from which I am returning is all about changing the narrative so that the narrative reflects our history in its totality. Maya Angelou says it right:

Sermon © Reverend Carolyn Patierno. All rights reserved. Reproduction by permission only.

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Let’s say it together:“History despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again.” “On the Pulse of Morning” 1993 Inaugural Poem

This public mural is placed on the wall of the Legacy Museum, a project of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) that shares the brutal truths of slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration. Like the rest of the civil rights pilgrimage, the Legacy Museum demands that Americans courageously face our history and change the narrative.

It is a trip that should be made possible for and required of every American.

The encouraging news is that Montgomery was packed with Americans who like me and the colleagues with whom I traveled were seeking cohesion and truth in our shared history.

Like many of you, I’ve been studying this history for a long time and still, there was much to learn and inspiration to keep on learning. Each of us said at one point or another, “For as much as knew, I didn’t know that … or that or that.” And to witness this history right in the cradle of what had been the seat both of the domestic slave trade and later the civil rights movement is to integrate these stories on a level that moves into the depths of one’s soul.

You cannot NOT be moved. You cannot look away.

And with so little time this morning, I can concentrate only on a sliver of what I experienced. I will share more with you in time but this morning, I’m going to focus on the role of faith communities to learn about and share this story largely because as a faith community, we cannot lose sight of our power to “heal and not to harm, to bless and not to curse, to help and not to hinder and to serve in the spirit of Love.” (Passover Haggadah) We cannot lose sight of our responsibility.

Recently I heard someone say – and I wish I could remember who – that today white people are not guilty of the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow’s but we are responsible for helping to rectify the harm created by both of these evil systems – harm that passes through generations and through to this day. It is a history with which we are confronted and one that we must see with unflinching eyes.


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We have a responsibility.

As Elie Wiesel said, “We must takes sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”

This is the last image you see as you are leaving the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Early one morning I go for a walk with Rabbi Marc Ekstrand of Temple Emanu ‘El. We are staying just up the street from the River Front in the center of Montgomery where human beings were sold into bondage. EJI has recently erected markers that tell that history and we want to check it out.

Marc and I walk and read and learn while also taking in the stunning beauty of the river.


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As we are leaving the River Walk, we come across a large group of what I recognize as pastors – largely because many of them are wearing t-shirts and other garb that amplify their profession. “You know you’re a pastor if …” etc. emblazoned across their shirts. I stop them to say hello and ask where they are from. They’re from Minneapolis. 40 of them have traveled together, much like our own group of 13 from SE CT. They’re “Minnesota nice”. I notice that there’s not a woman among them. We wish them well and we continue back to the hotel.

Soon after, we are at the Legacy Museum. It is a small museum that packs a big and devastating and hopeful punch.

I had just copied the following into my notebook:

“Through the 20th century many white churches supported racial segregation. The role of the church supporting slavery; remaining silent about lynching; and justifying segregation has never been acknowledged.”

I just finished writing when I look up and recognize one of the men from my walk earlier that morning. He’s clearly agitated as he talks with his colleague. As I get closer I hear him say this, “If I talk about this to my congregation, they’ll say, ‘You’re going liberal. This is a liberal agenda.’”


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I turn the corner and read once again that EJI is committed to changing the narrative about race in America … perhaps they’ll do so one pastor, one lay-person, one congregation at a time.

Perhaps better proof that one is a pastor would be to don a t-shirt the front of which is emblazoned with these words: “You know you’re a pastor if you muster the courage to change the narrative about race in America to your majority white congregation.”

It’s important to note that the level of security the museums must have in place is significant and in no small part because there are those who refuse to accept this brutal truth as neither liberal nor conservative but simply as “truth.”

It is a hard and disruptive truth, a hard and disruptive narrative to hear.

Our group of 13 benefits from the hospitality of St. John’s Episcopal Church right in the center of downtown. We meet there for meals and de-briefing discussions. On our first night the rector greets us. He’s in his mid-60s and has served the 1000-member church since 1995 – a long ministry. He tells us what we have surmised – that Montgomery is a complicated city. Half Black, half white, he’s treated differently by his Black neighbors when he’s wearing his collar than when he’s walking around without vestments. Jefferson Davis, the man who served as president of the Confederacy, briefly attended church at St. John’s. He and his wife sat in a pew that was designated as theirs but wasn’t noted as such (with a plaque) until 1925. The pew was removed this past February with the support of most of the congregation although the rector shared that one of his parishioners exclaimed, “They want to take everything away from me and now you are doing the same thing.”Note the use of “they” and “everything” in this accusation.

Several of my colleagues with whom I traveled – progressive religionists, all – harbored similar concerns about alienating parishioners with this message. How to frame? What to say? How to frame so that parishioners won’t tune out immediately thinking, “You’re turning liberal. This is a liberal agenda. They want to take everything away from me and you are doing the same.”

You may be surprised to learn that Dr. King had parishioners and colleagues – white and black - who thought he was “too political” – or moving too quickly. In fact, when he was jailed for his work in


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Birmingham he wrote the famous letter from his jail cell to his white Christian brethren after they had accused him of the same.

You can’t not be moved.

I came home with a full mind and heart. I’m still processing. But this much is clear to me.

Here at All Souls, we will keep learning together about slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration – in short, racism and white supremacy - and their ill affects yesterday, today, and into our future. We will find more ways to create justice. We will proximate, getting to know our neighbors and those whose backs we must always have. We will help to change the race narrative in America. We will not lose hope.

After the 2016 presidential election the Board met as usual. I felt I needed to make clear that we must not change course in our commitment to our mission to create a welcoming, caring and justice seeking congregation no matter that there would undoubtedly be accusations of “too political” and “all you talk about is politics” in the months and yes, four years ahead of us. I was determined then and still that we would not be the ancestors about whom those who fill this sanctuary 100 years from now would shake their heads and say, “What were they thinking? What were they doing in the midst of this crisis?”

Not All Souls.

As I tumbled out of the exhibit and into the gift shop – all museums have caught on to what Disney figured out long ago – I was greeted by a lovely Southern Poverty Law Center staff person who I had connected Sermon © Reverend Carolyn Patierno. All rights reserved. Reproduction by permission only.

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with upon our entry. I had my hand over my heart and as I turned to her she looked at me carefully and said, “I know. There are no words.”

And something in me snapped.

“There are words! There are ALWAYS words. We cannot say that there are no words about THIS level of injustice.” You’ll be relieved to know that I quickly caught myself and reeled it in. I said, “You’re talking to a preacher. There are always words.”

She laughed. “My father was a preacher,” she said. “I get it.”

And yet, the most moving moments of this trip were those that were filled with hushed and respectful silences before the beauty that has been wrested from a vile and corrupt history.

All of these jars are filled with the dirt on the site of where a lynching took place. Each jar has the victim’s name, the date they were lynched, and the location. Each holds a sacred story of a life and cruel death. Each one holds promise of an acknowledgement long overdue. These jars are on display both at the Legacy Museum and at the Peace and Justice Memorial.

The National Memorial for Peace & Justice employs “sculpture, prose, poetry, and architectural design to contextualize racial terror.” National Memorial for Peace & Justice program book. These sculptures are haunting in their simplicity.


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It is a spectacular accomplishment that sheds light on America’s story of racial terror. It is a story that is seldom told and must be faced with courage lest we repeat the mistakes of the past.

The sad truth is that in our lifetimes we will not see the end of racism and the systems of white supremacy long ago put in place and now kept there in ways more subtle but no less damaging. But we shall not be moved. By values we hold has liberal religionists, we will not be moved.

We’ll conclude with the words that visitors pass by as they leave the Memorial:

“Invocation” by Elizabeth Alexander

The wind brings your names.We will never dissever your namesnor your shadows beneath each branch and tree.

The truth comes in on the wind, is carried by water.There is such a thing as the truth. Tell ushow you got over. Say, Soul look back in wonder.

Your names were never lost,each name a holy word.The rocks cry out—

call out each name to sanctify this place.Sounds in human voices, silver and soil,a moan, a sorrow song,


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a keen, a cackle, harmony,a hymnal, handbook, chart,a sacred text, a stomp, an exhortation.

Ancestors, you will find us still in cages,despised and disciplined.You will find us still mis-named.

Here you will find us despite.You will not find us extinct.You will find us here memoried and storied.

You will find us here mighty.You will find us here divine.You will find us where you left us, but not as you left us.

Here you endure and are luminous.You are not lost to us.The wind carries sorrows, sighs, and shouts.

The wind brings everything. Nothing is not lost.

Amen.

Benediction:

We will remember. With hope because hopelessness is the enemy of justice. With courage because peace requires bravery. With faith because we shall overcome.

Engraving at the Memorial for Peace and Justice


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