The contents and views expressed in this letter are mine and mine alone, and do not reflect direct action taken by John Knox Presbytery.

How do we respond to what is happening in our country right now? How do I respond and not make people mad or alienate half of my congregation? These are questions I have attempted to answer several times over the past weeks. 

Micah 6:8

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

I think it is fair to say so many of us just simply do not know what to say or do right now. The truth is that many of us are experiencing the reality that so many of our siblings of color have been telling us about for years. We have witnessed the murders of innocent law-abiding citizens before; this is nothing new in our country. This is a hard truth we struggle to name, but it is the reality. Our native siblings hold the generational trauma of having our homeland taken to make way for European settlers. Our siblings of African descent were dragged from their homelands and sold to those same settlers who built this country on their bloodied and bruised bodies. We fought for freedom from the crown to watch the very fabric of this great nation be ripped apart by the desire to enslave Brown and Black bodies. We have lived through the sin of failed reconstruction that led to the Jim Crow South and unspoken racism of the North. Our siblings from China, Ireland, Italy, Jewish, Christians, Muslims all made to feel and be treated as outcasts. They experienced the not so warm welcome of American hospitality, all while they were building the very economy and infrastructure we take for granted today.

This is not a new problem; this is a uniquely US problem. We have allowed ourselves to be played against one another. The civil rights movement was never won just as equal pay for equal work is a fantasy we choose to tell ourselves to feel better at night. All while forgetting about the humanity of the very workers being persecuted. Even Martin Luther King, Jr. found rebuke from his Clergy colleagues who told him to be silent and let policy changes happen over protest and civil disobedience. A letter from the Birmingham Jail is as relevant today as the day he wrote it in response to those critiques. We are a living witness to a historical shift in this great nation, and I do mean Great!

I love this country; I was born on the 4th of July. I have a brother who served in Vietnam and one who was a county deputy. I am also the proud daughter of a Native man and Scotch Irish woman. A couple who could not even travel together for most of their married lives because of the threat posed by being seen as a mixed-race couple in the South. A story I had never heard until I was in my mid-thirties. These are not the stories told around our dinner tables, yet the trauma still exists. 

Hear the good news! We serve a God who loves us so much Jesus came to physically become like us. We do not serve some far-off deity, we serve a God who came to us, in the words of John Dominic Crossan, "a Mediterranean peasant Jew." Jesus was a man of questionable birth even among his own Jewish community. A man who spoke truth to power, turned over tables, welcomed the stranger, the immigrant, people of all gender expressions, those who believed and those who persecuted. Jesus who was hung on a cross by the machine of Roman empire that chose to make an example of those whom it and its collaborators viewed as a threat to their power. Jesus has walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Jesus laid on the ground with George Floyd as the breath was squeezed out of him. Jesus welcomed him just as he welcomed Renee Good and Alex Pretti into the great cloud of witnesses. We are not alone. Jesus is with us. We have the Holy Spirit to sustain our work to create God’s heaven on earth. What we are living through in Minnesota and across this country is not new. We are called to serve all God’s people; we are called to protect the vulnerable, to care for the sick, the immigrant, the prisoner and the prison guards.

I have had amazing conversations with so many seeking guidance on how to navigate going to protest and not offending people. Unfortunately, there is no way to protest and not offend someone. We are each made for such a time as this. The only person who should make the decision on you attending a protest is you. Everyone in the PC(USA) has freedom of conscience, including TEs, REs, and Deacons if they are guided by the "essentials" of Reformed faith. All that to say, you are empowered to choose what is best for you and your family. My family has chosen to attend a “what to do when ICE arrives” workshop offered by the Wisconsin Council of Churches and to go to our local Driftless Region protests. I am speaking about the actions taken in Minneapolis every chance I get. All things through the love and kindness of Jesus. If you are a Session member, love and support your Pastoral leader/ leaders and meet them where they are. If you are a Pastoral leader, talk with your Sessions so that they know what you are and are not willing to do. Allow yourselves to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit. Along with the violence, we are witnessing what can happen when people show up for each other. We see and are participating in social action to protect our neighbors. If that is not doing God’s work, I don’t know what is.

Be kind to yourselves, rest, and prepare. God’s work is never easy but is made easier when we all work together.

Rev. Devon.