The board of the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans is horrified and heartsick at the massacre of nine blessed members of humanity who were gathered for prayers at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday June 17th. We call on Earth-centered and Pagan individuals to lift up the names of the slain in love and lamentation, and to respond to supremacist terrorism with reflection and action. We must take action in ways that make sense for each of us, and we must respond. We rise up in opposition to the systemic social sickness that tolerates the propaganda of racist hate groups and plays a critical part in creating this and other deadly attacks on Black lives from the murder of Tamir Rice in Cleveland to Rekia Boyd in Chicago, and so many more. To our Black siblings, we rage and mourn with you. To our White siblings, we call on you to boost the voices of people of color, to renew soul searching for the dimensions of your own white privilege, to find the ways you are called to interrupt the culture of racism, and to take action. We urge all siblings in the human family to return to the sacred sources that feed our deepest selves and remind us that we are beloved children of the divine, woven into one tapestry. Our world can be a better one. We must do the difficult work to make it so. #BlackLivesMatter
Some possible concrete actions:
- You can donate at the Emmanuel AME Charleston church website http://www.emanuelamechurch.org/
- You can connect with the group “Showing Up for Racial Justice” www.showingupforracialjustice.org
The names of the slain: Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Rev. Clementa Pinkney, Tywanza Sanders, Rev. Daniel Simmons, Myra Thompson and the injured and traumatized survivors and witnesses.
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