There are so many things happening, this week’s column is going to be a “potpourri” to address them all.
First, you may have seen the weather forecast that we may be getting icy freezing conditions this weekend. For those who were here in 2021, this may stir up some feelings, including panicky ones. But from everything they’re predicting, this is not coming to be like that. It’ll be two days at most. Unfortunately, that may include Sunday. We are hoping we will know by Saturday afternoon if we need to cancel church. If we do, we will send out a message via email and text, and we’ll post on our website and on Facebook. So, Sunday morning: go to https://liveoakuu.org/ before leaving your house.
Ice of a different sort has, of course, been all over the news, especially with their actions (and the responding protests) happening in Minneapolis. Minnesota UUs such as Rev. Ashley Horan have been hard at work, coordinating care, protesting, and serving as witness. Many more of my colleagues will be going there this week and we will be sharing news of that on our Facebook page.
“Side with Love,” the social justice organizing wing of the Unitarian Universalist Association released this statement on the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE:
We grieve the killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37 year-old mother and legal observer, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis yesterday—an act of state violence that has stolen a life and reverberates through an already-wounded community. This is not an isolated incident, but the result of policies that criminalize immigration and enforce borders through fear, surveillance, and force rather than care.
Side With Love is in solidarity with immigrant communities in Minneapolis and across the country who live under constant threat of detention, separation, and death at the hands of the state. We are in solidarity with the faithful masses of people showing up to build a world where the worth and dignity of all are held as sacred and unshakable truth. As people of faith and conscience, we are called by love to tell the truth about this violence, to accompany those most impacted, and to keep organizing toward fulfilling the promise of our communities and institutions to make safety, belonging, and freedom real for all.
We join many others in demanding accountability and an immediate end to I.C.E. operations in all our communities. We invite all people of faith and conscience to grieve together, to refuse the normalization of state violence, and to commit themselves to the long work of transforming the systems that betray our deepest moral and spiritual commitments.
And lastly, we shared last week that the Rev. Meg Barnhouse had died. Former senior minister of First UU Austin, we were especially close with Rev. Meg both through shared activities and because her wife, the Rev. Kiya Heartwood, did her internship at Live Oak. Rev. Meg was beloved throughout our faith, ministering to others with her writings and music. And for me, I was so lucky as to call her not just “colleague” but friend.
There are so many things that Meg has written or recorded. Just type her name into your favorite search engine or on Spotify, and you’ll get many examples. But here are two of my favorites:
All Will Be Well — a note about this recording – you can find far more polished versions, but this one is special to me. When lockdown first began in 2020 for the pandemic, I asked Meg and Kiya if they’d do a version just right there in their living room in Pflugerville, to make us feel a little braver. They did. And on weeks like this one, when reality feels so overwhelming, so incomprehensible, it still works to make me feel a little less alone, a little more soothed, and a little more brave.