News: July 26, 2024
Dear Friends and Members,
It was wonderful to see many of you at last Sunday’s Special Called Membership Meeting, where we decided together to withdraw our contract on the 224 Fannin property. Thanks to everyone who lived out their principles by casting a vote. Our commitment to the use of individual conscience means that we will seldom (if ever) be of one mind. Yet it says much about our love and respect for one another that we were able to speak the truth in love, and engage in a calm and civil process of shared decision-making. I’m grateful to all of you.
I’m also incredibly grateful to Rev. Dan King and the church staff, who were able to take a bunch of lemons (extended internet outage, broken AC, COVID, the stranding of our senior minister by widespread flight cancellations, etc.) and make lemonade. Their dedication, while always evident, has been especially on display these last two weeks.
In the midst of all this excitement, I hope that you’ve still been able to use the summer to do something you love. For me, that’s always meant taking time to read for pleasure. As a child, with the unscheduled days of my Gen X summers stretched out in front of me, I’d devour Cheez-Itz crackers, iced tea, and stacks of books. Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie were particular favorites. My Cheez-Itz and Nancy Drew days are mostly behind me, sadly, but I still look forward to the dog days of summer as a chance to read books that might be too long or too involved for busier times of the year. This summer, as global conflicts and natural disasters rage, and we consider the fate of American democracy as we know it, I’ve turned to books that can help me put some historic perspective on the current state of things.
One of these books is Patrick Madden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. Keefe, a journalist, creates a page-turning account of “the Troubles,” the period of violent sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland that killed an estimated 3,600 people and injured more than 30,000. His starting point is the story of Jean McConville, a civilian who was murdered by the IRA in 1972, orphaning her 10 children and setting off decades of intergenerational trauma. Keefe weaves the McConville family’s story in with those of of IRA leaders like Gerry Adams, Dolours Price, and Brendan Hughes. His descriptions of life in 1970s Belfast sound too terrible to be true, even as I realize that the reality was certainly worse. While Keefe’s account makes clear that there was no “happy ending” to the Troubles, even after the 1998 Good Friday agreement, it also lays out the conditions by which seemingly intransigent conflicts can sometimes give way to a lasting peace. Keefe also describes the consequences of failing to reckon with the past, and the importance of truth and reconciliation.
Another book on my list is Eric Kline’s 1177 BC- The Year Civilization Collapsed. Kline, an archaeologist, describes the interconnected series of earthquakes, droughts and other disasters in the Mediterranean region that led to the collapse of Bronze Age empires like the Mycenaeans, the Hittites and the 20th Dynasty of Egypt’s New Kingdom. It’s difficult for me to imagine living through the resulting famines and violent conflicts. But Kline’s book also describes the ways in which some civilizations, like Egypt, were able to recover, and how the collapse of some ultimately gave rise to the Iron Age and the advent of classical Greek civilization. As he puts it, “…out of the ashes of the old world came the alphabet and other inventions” that helped eventually to bring about our own civilization.
I don’t read these books as a “misery voyeur,” who takes pleasure in knowing that I have it better than others. Rather, I take comfort in the realization that history is cyclical, that the situations we find ourselves in today will, for better or for worse, eventually change. As Kline writes, “It is a cycle that the world has seen time and time again… a repeated cadence of birth, growth and evolution, decay or destruction, and ultimately renewal in a new form.” Or, as the hymn puts it, “There is more love somewhere.”
This perspective also motivates me to act for justice, knowing that then actions of individuals sometimes have vast and unanticipated consequences, even when we feel that hope is lost. It’s with this renewed sense of purpose that I will be joining in our congregation’s work to preserve democracy and uphold justice this fall.
I wish all of you a safe, happy and book-filled summer.
With love,
Sheryl Abrahams
President
It was wonderful to see many of you at last Sunday’s Special Called Membership Meeting, where we decided together to withdraw our contract on the 224 Fannin property. Thanks to everyone who lived out their principles by casting a vote. Our commitment to the use of individual conscience means that we will seldom (if ever) be of one mind. Yet it says much about our love and respect for one another that we were able to speak the truth in love, and engage in a calm and civil process of shared decision-making. I’m grateful to all of you.
I’m also incredibly grateful to Rev. Dan King and the church staff, who were able to take a bunch of lemons (extended internet outage, broken AC, COVID, the stranding of our senior minister by widespread flight cancellations, etc.) and make lemonade. Their dedication, while always evident, has been especially on display these last two weeks.
In the midst of all this excitement, I hope that you’ve still been able to use the summer to do something you love. For me, that’s always meant taking time to read for pleasure. As a child, with the unscheduled days of my Gen X summers stretched out in front of me, I’d devour Cheez-Itz crackers, iced tea, and stacks of books. Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie were particular favorites. My Cheez-Itz and Nancy Drew days are mostly behind me, sadly, but I still look forward to the dog days of summer as a chance to read books that might be too long or too involved for busier times of the year. This summer, as global conflicts and natural disasters rage, and we consider the fate of American democracy as we know it, I’ve turned to books that can help me put some historic perspective on the current state of things.
One of these books is Patrick Madden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. Keefe, a journalist, creates a page-turning account of “the Troubles,” the period of violent sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland that killed an estimated 3,600 people and injured more than 30,000. His starting point is the story of Jean McConville, a civilian who was murdered by the IRA in 1972, orphaning her 10 children and setting off decades of intergenerational trauma. Keefe weaves the McConville family’s story in with those of of IRA leaders like Gerry Adams, Dolours Price, and Brendan Hughes. His descriptions of life in 1970s Belfast sound too terrible to be true, even as I realize that the reality was certainly worse. While Keefe’s account makes clear that there was no “happy ending” to the Troubles, even after the 1998 Good Friday agreement, it also lays out the conditions by which seemingly intransigent conflicts can sometimes give way to a lasting peace. Keefe also describes the consequences of failing to reckon with the past, and the importance of truth and reconciliation.
Another book on my list is Eric Kline’s 1177 BC- The Year Civilization Collapsed. Kline, an archaeologist, describes the interconnected series of earthquakes, droughts and other disasters in the Mediterranean region that led to the collapse of Bronze Age empires like the Mycenaeans, the Hittites and the 20th Dynasty of Egypt’s New Kingdom. It’s difficult for me to imagine living through the resulting famines and violent conflicts. But Kline’s book also describes the ways in which some civilizations, like Egypt, were able to recover, and how the collapse of some ultimately gave rise to the Iron Age and the advent of classical Greek civilization. As he puts it, “…out of the ashes of the old world came the alphabet and other inventions” that helped eventually to bring about our own civilization.
I don’t read these books as a “misery voyeur,” who takes pleasure in knowing that I have it better than others. Rather, I take comfort in the realization that history is cyclical, that the situations we find ourselves in today will, for better or for worse, eventually change. As Kline writes, “It is a cycle that the world has seen time and time again… a repeated cadence of birth, growth and evolution, decay or destruction, and ultimately renewal in a new form.” Or, as the hymn puts it, “There is more love somewhere.”
This perspective also motivates me to act for justice, knowing that then actions of individuals sometimes have vast and unanticipated consequences, even when we feel that hope is lost. It’s with this renewed sense of purpose that I will be joining in our congregation’s work to preserve democracy and uphold justice this fall.
I wish all of you a safe, happy and book-filled summer.
With love,
Sheryl Abrahams
President
