Piloting Faith: Oppressive language does more than represent violence

A Word for the Day...

Life feels heartbreaking these days. It's all so heavy. Shootings. Hate manifestos. Impeachment debates. Radical differences in values. Division that splits our nation and our families. I was actually tempted today to ask you all to send me puppy pictures. Sometimes we all need reminders that life can also be cute and fun.

We lost one of our saints on Monday night - Toni Morrison. She was brave, wise, brilliant, and powerful. She helped us all tell the truth about our lives through her writing. She was unbowed in her honesty about how we can treat one another - for good and ill.

During her Nobel Lecture, she said: "Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge."

Our language is killing us. Our readiness to defend talking points without the discipline to research their validity is killing us. We are taking sides in ways that split our souls.

We have hard work ahead of us as a nation, as local communities and as families. We are the victims of extreme rhetoric, which is hurting us all.

Dr. Morrison gave us another word which might help us in this contentious time. In Beloved (1987), she wrote, "Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another."

We must now claim ownership over the type of world we wish to create. We will either create one that maintains the hierarchy of privilege or we will create one that works for us all.

May God help us as we discern.

- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight

Prayer for the Week

Lead us from death to life,
from falsehood to truth.
Lead us from despair to hope,
from fear to trust.
Let peace fill our hearts,
our world, our universe.
Let us dream together,
pray together,
work together,
to build one world
of peace and justice for all.