Blog:FOREST LAKE TALKS

Dear Friends,

A member of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, whom I have befriended through our congregations’ work in MORE Justice, was reflecting on what participation in MORE Justice has meant to her. She said that she began going to MORE Justice meetings because she found out that Richland County had one of the highest rates of eviction in the nation, and because she was worried about gun violence and the murder rate in our community. But, she told me, after seven years of showing up for MORE Justice events, she realized that the real value of showing up has been how she has been changed.

She said that because the problems of providing more affordable housing or lowering the gun violence numbers are such complex problems, the rate of progress on those issues can be extremely frustrating. I do know that MORE Justice has made a difference in Columbia, but the problems are so large and intractable. Mary Ann said that the real value for her has been in the ability to hear from people whose life experience is very different from hers, and to have her own assumptions challenged and her own heart changed. That experience really mirrors my own.

We will begin our tenth season of participation in MORE Justice at the end of this month. The season always begins with internal “house” meetings. I invite you to come to one of them: Tuesday, August 25th at 6pm in the Church Parlor, or Sunday, August 30th at 11:15am (right after worship) in the Church Parlor. These “house” meetings give us a chance to share our stories with each other, and to talk about the aspects of our own local community that we would like to change. These meetings alone, allow us to listen to each other – within the walls of FLPC. I have learned we are a compassionate group, and also that for the most part we have the resources to get what we need.

But these internal meetings are only the beginning. Participation in the next steps of the listening process puts us all in contact with people of faith (Christians mostly with also our Jewish neighbors and a few Muslim neighbors), from every walk of life. Listening to their experience of living in our community is sometimes affirming and sometimes disturbing but it is always enlightening. MORE Justice is one of the most racially and theologically diverse things our congregation does. Consider participation at least in a house meeting, but also (even more heart changing) in the other large group gatherings.

God does command us to pursue both mercy and justice. But before we can know how best to do either, our own hearts need to be transformed, opened, and educated. Consider the challenge of opening your heart by participation in the processes and meetings of MORE Justice. If we will show up, I am confident that God will change us. Then, we might be more useful to God in changing our community.