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Live Report!
Friday Reflection on Race, Class and Theology
The Rev. Dr. Tracey Robinson-Harris
In the corner of the cellar of my old house stretched between granite columns
and timber framing there is a spider web - about 5 feet high and 4 feet wide.
It has been there for more than 5 years, and is no longer occupied by its creator.
It is just to the left and in the corner so every time I go down the stairs
to do laundry, check the furnace, or read the oil gage, I see it stretched there
in its granite and timber frame a tangible reminder of
- the connections between us - the strands are real, constant, and
- the question to be asked - it is not "are we connected?" but "how are we
connected?"
The web is the heart of the matter for me, theologically speaking - our 7th
principle is the context for the other six, an antidote to the excessive individualism
that our religious community can encourage and promote. Our principles, the
anchoring strands of the web have both strength and a fragility woven into them
because they exist despite all that we use to separate and divide, deny and
destroy.
Because of its location, I can only see one side of this life-sized web. Like
it, the web of connection between and among us has two sides - one visible,
the one we choose to see, our public face and the other, an underside hidden
as a result of systematic concealment, cultivated blindness. Our theological
task is to break through the concealment, to know the underside of interdependence
where the strands of oppression bind us. And until the answer to the question
"how are we connected?" is "not by oppression but in beloved community" I pray
that I, that we, will not rest.
Reported for the web by Deborah Weiner; formatted
for the web by Jonathan Kinghorn.
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