Remembering Trayvon Martin (February 5, 1995 – February 26, 2012)

by Diane D’Souza, Director of Lifelong Learning at EDS and The Mission Institute

A few weeks ago, in a town outside of Boston, a father opened his heart to people who thought they knew him. This father holds an important job, and you might find his wife teaching in a classroom at Harvard when she’s not in a hospital or conducting research at Tufts. They’re not expressly political, and the town they live in is a stable, wealthy, largely white one. In a church basement on a Sunday in December, this father described the moment he looked up at the TV and saw his son looking back at him in the face of Trayvon Martin. This father has two sons; one is nearing college age. As he watched the news that night nearly two years ago his mind kept flipping: Trayvon’s face, and that of his own boys, their hoodies pulled up as they came home from school.

In a room where you could hear a pin drop, the father told his white church friends something they had never heard, and something every black family has experienced or can identify with. He talked about what it’s like being a parent of a child whose skin happens to be black. He talked about the conversation he and his wife had with the boys about the police. Remember, they told them, if a police officer stops you, you could die in that moment. Move slowly; be respectful. I thought of the lessons I learned about hiking in the woods: if you hear a rattle, stop, don’t move, slowly back away. If the snake bites you make a tourniquet, make an incision at the bite marks, suck out the poison. Be prepared: this is a life threatening moment. The point is not to frighten but to prepare, to learn, to survive. For many of our black children life threatening moments are a daily occurrence---even when you’re walking home with a bag of skittles from a 7-11 grocery store.

This father spoke about the conversation he and his wife had with their eldest son about college. I’ve had that experience. It’s not always easy. It’s a bit of a tense time for our sons and daughters. Yet I’ve never had to tell my children, I’m sorry but you can’t go to a school in a state with a Stand Your Ground law. That’s non-negotiable. I love you too much, and the risk is too high. When he finished sharing and our adult forum was over, the minister of the church and other friends went up to this father to learn more about the world he and his family occupy right in their midst. They learned how well-meaning teachers and aides often stop the boys in school hallways at the end of the day, telling them to hurry so they don’t miss the METCO bus. That’s the transport run by the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunities which brings economically disadvantaged urban kids of color to this largely white suburban town.

We have a long way to go to move beyond our assumptions about each other. We have a long way to go drop the stereotypes which cripple and shame us. We have a long way to go to name the privilege that allows parents like me to take my children’s safety for granted---even if it is an illusion. We have a long way to go to create the beloved community that was part of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream. There is much unfinished work.

I am grateful to live in a world where the Dream Defenders, the “sons and daughters of slaves and farm-workers… a generation of world changers, writers, readers, rebels, marchers, dreamers, leaders, thinkers, organizers, activists and revolutionaries” remind us that we are all complicit in the death of Trayvon Martin. These young leaders remind us that real change begins right here and now: by finding the humanity in each other; by questioning our truths; by having real conversations with ourselves, with friends, with strangers; by channeling our anger, our confusion, our angst into a burning passion for positive action. We need the energy and vision of the young, the wisdom and experience of the old, the perspectives of those different from ourselves, and the gift and hard work of shedding our assumptions. Only then, through a re-energized commitment to bettering ourselves and the societies we create, do we truly honor the life of Trayvon Martin.

Equipping People for God's Mission

By Hall Kirkham

Episcopal Divinity School is a magical place. It felt that way to me the first time I bumped into it on a walk down Brattle Street fifteen years ago when I wandered through the campus during a February snowstorm. It has played a crucial, transformative role in my formation as a clergyperson and human being. This formation is ongoing and – if I am fortunate – will always be. Three learnings come to mind when I try to describe my experience at EDS.

First, if sin is separation from God, then oppression is separation from each other, and racism is the particular sin of oppression of the United States. It is the lens through which we who live and operate in the United States can view oppression in all its forms.

“Foundations for Theological Praxis” is training in anti-oppression and anti-racism, and is the first course all students encounter at EDS. It provides the language and orientation that inform all subsequent work at the school and interactions within the community. It is the main ingredient in the EDS mission to form leaders of hope, courage and vision who serve God’s mission of justice, compassion and reconciliation.

It seems to me from this work that these efforts – anti-racism and anti-oppression – are not just good ideas. They are THE ideas, if we are to have any hope for this wonderful project of God and God’s dream.

No one gets out of Foundations unscathed or untouched. All discover things that are profoundly unsettling and profoundly reassuring about the way we humans are with each other, and about the way we can be. This is work that everyone should do, and the earlier the better, because then one has more time to practice and be liberated by it.

Foundations introduced me to my varied privileges, privileges well beyond my due or awareness, that enable me as a white male to do things in America that will meaningfully add to or detract from my own and fellow travelers’ journeys towards God’s dream. So I continue to try and seek and serve the marginalized other, particularly the sick and in prison, in my work inside and outside the parish.

My second major discovery at EDS was that community matters. At the very least, our shared experience from Foundations enabled each of us to help in the learning and recovery process over lunch, during the week, and as we moved through our days. Community at EDS was exhilarating and redeeming, words I’d never used to describe anything in my life before. We hear a lot about community at EDS, and I’m not entirely sure how it happens or what it means when folks say, “We do community well.” But EDS does.

When my wife and I were expecting twins, the community celebrated alongside us in each of the milestones of pregnancy. When those twins were delivered to us at 21 weeks and were unable to survive for more than a few hours, the community mourned and wept with us, and helped us get up and step back blinking into the daylight.

Community – and, in particular, community bonded by a shared faith – is one of those things I recognize when I experience it. Something primal and organic now guides me to try and to nourish it. Maybe community in its best sense is common fare in God’s dream?

My third learning was in the work EDS invited me to do – along with all of my classmates– in finding “voice.” Not every one of us joins the ranks of clergy, but each of us is responsible to figure out how to express what our experience has given us. Doing this helps carry us further towards God’s dream.

I am a great fan of Woody Guthrie, who would have loved EDS. I think he would have loved it so much that I decided to “try on” as a voice his music and lyrics. One sermon I preached in a class combined my spoken text with quotes from Woody, sung through his music (guitar and all). It resulted in an unusual – albeit probably incomprehensible – sermon.

We won’t all speak or preach. Some of us will write and paint or play music or dance, or even offer our presence in silence. I think that our voice is how we share the gifts that we discover within ourselves and that emerge from our shared experiences. EDS worked hard to help me find a voice that I am still learning to use effectively.

EDS isn’t just an important resource for the formation of leaders in the Christian faith. It is vital. And it is vital for the Diocese of Massachusetts, the national Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion and – hear me out on this – God’s mission. And I look forward to sowing and harvesting its gifts, and sowing and harvesting again, for the rest of my life.

* The Reverend Hall Kirkham, M.Div. '08, is Assistant Rector at St Peter's Episcopal Church in Weston and a trustee of the Episcopal Divinity School.

Creating a future to support the exceptional

By Doug O Fitzsimmons

Across the world educational institutions are struggling with finances. In Britain university tuition has been increased 300%. In the United States and other nations schools, colleges and seminaries have been forced to close because of financial pressure. All are looking at ways to survive. The example of Episcopal Divinity School which sold some of its land and buildings and entered into agreements with neighbouring Lesley University to share certain resources such as the library, refectory and maintenance is instructive, for more go to the EDS press release of December 15, 2010 http://www.eds.edu/sec.asp?pageID=376  Here an EDS trustee explains the decision.

I voted for the partnership between Episcopal Divinity School and Lesley University in 2008 as a trustee of EDS.

Since then many people have asked me what it was I had in mind.

“Growth” was what I had in mind. Greater freedom for EDS to grow from its established strength. Years of further opportunity to help the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion strengthen parishes to meet the leadership needs of today and tomorrow. 

The context in the United States seemed clear: decades of membership decline and challenges around financial resources in the Episcopal Church and other mainline denominations. We are all experiencing stressful, rapidly changing lives because of globalization and accelerating technology. US exceptionalism is being questioned. But with that all is a quest for spiritual growth.

And the context at Episcopal Divinity School also seemed clear. Decades of superior academic training and community formation for ministry with a progressive focus on issues of social justice: anti-racism, anti-oppression, gender equality, and a strong pool of candidates for enrollment but steadily fewer who were able to afford the costs of living in Cambridge.

Episcopal Divinity School has a track record of educating lay and ordained leaders with skills particularly well adapted to urban and rural budget-squeezed communities.

The prospect of a partnership with Lesley University illuminated a path forward. In addition to a residential program, we would have an opportunity to develop curricular modifications by which we might offer degrees to students across the country without requiring that they disrupt their lives, sell their residences, and experience the costs of moving to Cambridge. We would also be able to upgrade the quality of our campus facilities for the resident student body we hoped to grow.

In short, we saw opportunities for growth: more students from more locations, domestically and abroad. More graduates serving a greater number of parishes. Strong training for more lay leaders.

“But haven’t you failed to tell us about the financial story? Surely fiduciary obligations were uppermost in your mind when you voted for the Lesley arrangement.” Those who question me ask.

“Yes,” fiduciary concerns were prominent. For some years we were operating a campus of high market value, with elegant but aging buildings beyond the needs of our student enrollment. Deferred capital infusions would, in time, have created a very difficult financial picture for us, a difficulty our endowment would not have been able to meet. Fortunately, we were able to envision a creative a shift in our pedagogies that would make the partnership with Lesley work for us.

That is what I was thinking.

* Douglas O Fitzsimmons has been an EDS Trustee since 2003. He is retired from Mobil Corporation where he worked in Human Resources Management. Doug lives in Cambridge, MA and serves on the Vestry of Trinity Church in the City of Boston.