Please join us this Sunday (30 August 2015) at 11:00 AM for “The Federal Flood and the Lesson of Listening” by Susan Caldwell. The All Souls Choir will sing in this worship service.
As we mark the 10th anniversary of Katrina, a particularly tone-deaf editorial by a writer for the Chicago Tribune has touched off a torrent of anger and pain among survivors in New Orleans, their friends and family and just about anyone with any connection to the storm, all over the country.
The oblivious and almost equally insensitive non-apology that followed is indicative of a wider problem … a pattern of not only failing to listen to other people’s experience but often going so far as to speak to those other people and to tell them how they should be thinking or feeling about their own experience.
We’ve seen it in the responses to Caitlyn Jenner and other trans people, to the Black Lives Matter movement, to immigration issues, and to multiple issues addressed by our current crop of Presidential candidates.
And yet our faith calls us to a wider understanding of each other.
True respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person allows us all to claim and tell our own stories, and calls us all to continually check those points where our stories may distort or dishonor the stories of others.
Religious education classes for children and youth are offered during the 11:00 AM service — children and youth attend the first 15-20 minutes of the service and then are dismissed to class.
