Bishop Hughes shares her experience of finding community both with the pilgrims who last week heard first-hand accounts of the civil rights movement in Alabama and at a conference for Black clergy women this week in Chicago, and talks about what community means to her. (Time: 5:39.)
Video Transcript
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark, and I am not in our diocese this week, nor was I last week. Last week, I joined together with people from our diocese as we went on pilgrimage to the American South. We spent the week in Alabama learning about, exploring, discovering the issues leading up to the civil rights movement and how the civil rights movement was experienced by people in Birmingham and in Montgomery and in Selma.
We had the incredible honor of listening to people talk to us in each of those cities, they are called foot soldiers. They were all children. They were 13 when they were a part of the civil rights movement. They gathered and marched together. They had instructions in how to participate in civil disobedience in non-violent ways, and all of them could point to the place where they were either chased down by police, by dogs, or had fire hoses turned upon them. They could point to those places. They could also point to the place where they were arrested, to the jail that they were sent to at 13. And as they told us these stories, one of the things that they said over and over again that was so important to them, as they so passionately told these stories, is it that they tell them because it’s important for us to know our history. It’s important for us to not make the same mistakes again and again, and that knowledge of history is the only way to prevent that.
Something else wonderful happened on that time together is that the community, those of us who gathered to be a part of this pilgrimage, that we as a community, leaned upon each other. We experienced sadness. Shock. It was hard to hear, at times, the things that had happened, hard to read about, to see about, but also, we found ourselves inspired and uplifted by the story of others, and in that five days that we spent together, we became a very solid community together.
I said goodbye to that group on pilgrimage in Selma, and as they headed back to Newark, I headed on to Chicago to gather for a conference hosted by some of the Black women bishops in The Episcopal Church for Black clergy women, both deacons and priests, across the United States. There are about 70 of them that were able to gather with us, and we’ve been spending time talking about what ministry is like for us these days, learning from a theologian, the Reverend Dr Renita Weems has been with us, and also supporting each other in our ministries. And we, too, in the short time we have been together, have become a very strong and deep community.
And I, when I think of these two experiences being back to back the way they are, there is something that that both of them have in common, though they were very different gatherings and were together for very different reasons. But what they hold in common is what happened to us as a place of community. We have been honest with each other, we have told the truth, we have said exactly what we think and what we feel, and not tried to blame anybody else for our feelings, but have been able to hold each other in the things that we feel. We’ve been able also to talk about our hopes and dreams and the things that we worry will not ever come true. And we’ve also been able to talk about the ways that we have seen God do nothing short of a miracle in our own lives. We became very strong communities in a short amount of time.
And I cannot help but say to you, as we head into the deepest part of the summer: please use this summer as a time to be a part of a strong community. And I’m not just talking about coffee hour conversation after church. I’m talking about being in the place where you can tell the truth, when you can let down the facade, when you can be genuinely who you are, a place where you can be hopeful, where you can be sad, where you can be shocked, where you can be weary, and where you can look for where God is doing something in life and in the world. Be a part of community.
It’s interesting to me right now how people want a place where they belong, but they don’t want to belong to anything. It’s as if we have forgotten how to be in community. But I can tell you this, that if you start, if you try, you’ll be surprised how fast it all comes back to you.
I would say, both on that pilgrimage and in this conference, the biggest gift that everyone received was the gift of community. I hope that you will go after that gift. It is there. It is waiting for you. Go find it this summer.
