Sister Joan Chittister famously said, "We are each called to go through life reclaiming the planet an inch at a time until the Garden of Eden grows green again." Reflecting on that journey -- a blog at a time -- is the focus of this site.
On Impeachment Eve -- Tuesday night December 17th -- hundreds of rallies were held around the country in support of the impeachment of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. I was honored to be asked to speak at the rally being held here in Los Angeles ... but didn't make it back in time due to weather delayed travel home from Alabama. Here is what I would have said if I'd gotten back in time:
We stand together tonight and in solidarity with over 600
rallies happening around this great nation of ours -- in witness to the strength
and power of the aspirational goal which we call the American dream: the dream
of a nation where liberty and justice is not just a pledge we make but a
reality we live.
As a priest and pastor, I stand here tonight claiming the
promise my faith teaches me in the words of John 8:32 … and that promise is “the
truth will set you free.”
My brothers and sisters and gender fluid siblings, the truth
that will set us all free is the truth that nobody is above the law.
The truth that our House of Representatives will be voting
on tomorrow is the truth that that the oath to protect the Constitution against
all enemies -- foreign and domestic – does not come with an asterisk that reads
“*unless the enemy is the President.”
And the truth that we must continue to hold sacred is the
truth that our sister Margaret Mead spoke when she said “Never doubt that a small
group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing
that ever has.”
Over 200 years ago the founders of our nation were those
people as they imagined the great democratic experiment that is the American dream.
And we stand on their shoulders tonight as we rise to resist the shameful and systematic
efforts to dismantle that democracy before our eyes.
May the truth that sets us free sustain us in the struggle and give us the strength
and courage to continue to be the change we want to see as we commit to protect
our Constitution against all enemies – including the President.
If we manage to survive as a
human race long enough, a few hundred years from now scores of PhDs will be
earned as scholars analyze the combination of social, political, and economic
factors leading to the rise of the current resident of the White House and to the
concurrent orchestrated assault on our constitutional democracy. So, let me get
a head start.
I’m convinced biblical literalism is a prime cause of the mess we find
ourselves in as a nation.
Yes, there are a complex set of factors that lead to the rise of the populist,
nationalist, sexist, xenophobic, white supremacist, homo/transphobic toxins
that have contaminated our body politic and dominated our public discourse.
But incubating those factors
into this particular set of toxins requires a kind of cultural Petri dish which
will simultaneously provide the nutrients necessary to nourish the toxic
worldview while protecting it from contaminates like data, facts, diversity and
multi-cultural competency.
The biblical literalism foundational
to 21st century American Evangelicalism does precisely that.
It feeds, waters and
fertilizes exclusively male language for God -- marginalizing women and
non-binary people, perpetuating the patriarchy and fanning the fire of
unexamined privilege making a Putin-style oligarchy appear preferable to a
democracy where brown and black women have voice and power.
It creates a context where it
is a very short journey from “the Bible said it, I believe it, that settles it”
to “my country, love it or leave it” – with a direct connection to the rise of
nationalism, sexism, white supremacism and the rest of the litany of isms that
plague our nation and our world: the rise of the forces we struggle against
daily as we live out our baptismal promise to persevere in resisting evil.
And it is this fertile environment
that becomes a breeding ground for a population pre-programmed to believe fact-based
science is an enemy of faith. It quite literally lays down neuron tracks in the
brain set up to reject as “fake news” the very science that calls us to come
together to save what we can of this planet we have exploited and the very evidence
that proves our President is criminally abusing the power of his office for
personal and political gain.
To be clear: the beauty,
power and importance of the First Amendment is that it protects every last one
of us to freely exercise the religion of our choice – including the freedom to
exercise no religion at all. And including the freedom to reject science, fact
and data and to believe whatever one chooses about what God wills, blesses or condemns.
However – and it’s a big however – the First Amendment does not protect the
right to confuse the freedom to exercise religion with the license to impose religion.
And the job of defending the Constitution against all enemies – foreign and domestic
– requires each and every one of us to do our part.
If we are going to save our
nation from devolving into a kind of theocratic oligarchy, those who believe that
science and data are things – those who embrace the vision of a nation where liberty
and justice for all literally means all -- must provide an antidote to the
toxins of ignorance and “alternative facts” threatening our constitutional democracy
with polarization and division.
Otherwise we risk finding ourselves in the last scene of the last act of “Camelot”
-- looking for a boy to run and tell the story of what almost was: a nation conceived
in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people were created equal.
The stakes are too high, the challenges
are too great, and the struggle is too real to do anything less than to stand
up, to speak out and to resist the rise of the populist, nationalist, sexist, xenophobic,
white supremacist, homo/transphobic toxins contaminating our body politic and dominating
our public discourse.
Pick your thing and do it. Now. Together we can make a difference. Together we can overcome.
The news came in an email from Elizabeth just few minutes ago. She had been with Louie and Ernest yesterday and it was the news we were expecting and dreading and hoping not to get ... news that our beloved Louie had passed peacefully from this realm to the next surrounded by love and light and the prayers of those of us keeping vigil from afar.
There will be much to say. Much to remember. Much to mourn. And much to rejoice in. But right now all I can think to offer is this video we made to celebrate his legacy back in 2015 ... "Once upon a time there was a little boy named Louie ..."
Rest in peace and power, dear one. There is so much more love in the world because of you. May we be given the grace to be wise stewards of your legacy and ... as you would want it ... find "Joy Anyway."
This morning the Reverend Gwen Fry announced her resignation as President of Integrity in a letter posted here ... and the Board has given notice of a process to elect her successor. Asked for comment by the ENS reporter covering the story (which you can read here) I wrote the following:
Gwen has been a long time leader in the movement for the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in the work and witness of the Episcopal Church and her resignation today as Integrity President comes after a long period of discernment factoring her own health and the health of the organization – an organization that has been struggling to find its voice in a new paradigm of advocacy for LGTBQ Episcopalians.
Integrity has a forty-plus year history as a leading voice for full inclusion – beginning as a mimeographed newsletter started by Dr. Louie Crew Clay in 1974 and evolving into an organization with bylaws, chapters and a volunteer board.
During the height of what I’ve come to think of as The Inclusion Wars (2003-2009) Integrity had an Executive Director, support staff and a full time advocacy and legislative agenda. That was then. This is now.
As the times have changed, so has the role of Integrity. We are now a church where the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in all orders and aspects of ministry is not theoretical but canonical. And we are also a church where the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in all orders and aspects of ministry still varies widely depending on your zip code.
There is still much work for an organization like Integrity to do to support LGBTQ Episcopalians and continue to advocate for church-wide inclusion, but the institutional structure that served its work in the past is not designed to meet the challenges of either the present or the future. And so it’s time for new vision and new leadership.
My hope is that this will be a time for those with a commitment to the vision Integrity has led since 1974 – the vision Presiding Bishop Ed Browning of blessed memory shared of a church with no outcasts -- will come up around the current Board leadership as they work to reconfigure the organization to meet the needs and challenges of 2019 and beyond.
I forgot they were electing a new bishop today in the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. Between the intense news cycle of the Impeachment Hearing Week past and the clean up I've had on my plate from our own Diocesan Convention last weekend and trying to remember where I put the Thanksgiving decorations before it's too late to find them and put them up I was quite literally busy and distracted by my many tasks. And then my phone pinged with a text message from Jim White. "Did you hear about Missouri? They elected Deon Johnson. On the first ballot!" And all I could muster was OMG! OMG ... what a difference a decade (or two or three or four) makes. Booting up my laptop and catching up with the reports and videos and photos from Christ Church Cathedral in St. Louis I was gobsmacked by muscle memory of having been there ... in that very same very holy space ... in November 2002 for the first Claiming the Blessing (CTB) conference. It was the place we launched our initiative to "promote wholeness in human relationships, abolish prejudice and oppression, and heal the rift between sexuality and spirituality in the Church" -- and it marked the beginning of years of intentional collaborative work by organizations and individuals within the Episcopal Church advocating for full inclusion of all the baptized in all sacraments of the church. That was then: Members of the CTB leadership team making the case for blessing unions between same-sex couples in the Episcopal Church:
And this is now: The election on the first ballot of a married, gay man as the 11th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri.
Same church. Same chancel. Different day. OMG ... what a different day!
A week ago today I had the high honor of being the preacher at the 124th Convention Eucharist here in the Diocese of Los Angeles. One of the texts I preached from is what I've come to think of as the Gospel According to Margaret Mead ... and that text is "Never doubt that a small group of faithful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
The world is in desperate need of changing and the church is not yet done with its own struggle with the full inclusion of all God's beloved into the beloved community.
Nevertheless ... today is a day to pause and rejoice.
Today is a day to recognize how far we've come on the journey to where God is calling us to go.
Today is a day to say TBTG for the Diocese of Missouri and mazel tov to Bishop-elect Deon Johnson -- who will become the 11th Bishop of Missouri and the 5th LGBTQ Bishop in the Episcopal Church: words I could not even have imagined typing in 2002 when we launched the CTB initiative from the cathedral where he was elected.
And today is a day to give thanks for every single member of every single small group of faithful, committed people who have changed this church from where we were in 2002 to where we are in 2019. We may not be "there" yet ... but today is yet another incremental victory toward the audacious goal of Ed Browning's dream of church where there are no outcasts. Tomorrow we continue the struggle. But today we celebrate.
Proper 27C | November 10, 2019 | 7:30
a.m. A sermon preached at All Saints Church in Pasadena
None of us can really know what
happens after we die until we get there ... that’s part of the "mystery of
faith" we proclaim. But that doesn't
stop us from wondering.
In the Gospel this morning Jesus is
in Jerusalem teaching in the Temple.
Our All Saints mission statement includes
the phrase "following a revolutionary Jesus" and being a revolutionary -- running up against the protectors of the status quo -- is one of the hallmarks of Jesus' ministry. And in today's
Gospel he runs into the Sadducees.
The Sadducees were a Jewish that disagreed with their cousins the Pharisees about a lot of things -- but one thing they both agreed on was that neither one of them liked what this radical
rabbi from Nazareth was saying.
The Sadducees were a conservative,
politically powerful cohort of religious leaders, wealthy men who mostly hold
themselves to be superior to the common folk and were focused on the practices
at the Temple. And -- germane to our Gospel today -- they don’t believe in
resurrection at all.
So it’s no surprise that they show up
to question Jesus while he’s teaching. And it's no surprise that they’re out to
trip Jesus up.
And not for the first time we hear undertones
of impatience as Jesus continues to contend with those who keep missing the point
of what he's running out of time to teach them.
And the point is that Jesus is
offering them a different way of seeing things: of seeing things as a child of
the resurrection.
Last week we gathered for our parish
feast day: the Feast of All Saints -- remembering those who have left their
mortal bodies and our physical company, those whom we grieve and miss: opening
our hearts to admit our pain and loss for those we love and see no more -- even
while celebrating our hope and faith in the love of God that is greater than
death.
To hold both grief and hope at the same time is the central paradox and fulcrum
of the resurrection life we live as followers of the revolutionary Jesus.
And on this twenty-second Sunday
after Pentecost in this year of our Lord 2019 ... two days away from the start
of Impeachment Hearings on Capitol Hill and 360 days until the next
presidential election ... I also believe we are grieving a deep societal sense
of loss in our nation.The raised
tensions, the assaults on the rule of law and constitutional protections that
have arguably been aspirational yet served as the guard rails for our fragile
democracy, the veiled and not so veiled threats; the anger, polarization and
division ... well, I could go on and on.
It’s a whole different kind of death.
The German theologian Dorothee Soelle
wrote more than 30 years ago about how we can be living and dead all at the
same time. Soelle says “Death is what takes place with us when we look upon
others not as gift, blessing, or stimulus, but as threat, danger, competition.
It is the death that comes to all who try to live by bread alone.”It is not, she says “the final departure we
usually think of when we speak of death; it is that purposeless, empty
existence devoid of human relationships and filled with anxiety, silence, and
loneliness.”
We all know that sort of death. We
learn it in our earliest days and most of us – ironically – live with that sort
of death for all of our days.
What does it mean for us to choose
life in the face of that kind of death?Jesus tells the Sadducees that they just don’t get it. They are thinking
of life and death in wholly mortal terms. They are holding so literally to such
a small vision that they are missing not only the bigger picture but the
treasure of God’s love promised through the resurrection.
Jesus says that it’s really a whole
different thing. The resurrection life is not just getting some version of your
old life back. Nor is resurrection the same thing as immortality. This is not
just a question of what happens to your physical body after you die.
My favorite Easter card puts it this
way: "The great Easter truth is not
that we are going to live newly after death, but that we are to be new here and
now by the power of the resurrection."
We can’t know what happens after our
bodies die. We know that people live on in our hearts and our memories. We know
that they live on through their influences on us, in the ways that they have
shaped our lives -- and I think this morning inparticular of the influence of Rabbi Marv Gross ... whose influence
through his work at Union Station is a legacy that will continue to give life
long after his untimely death this week.
We hear that assurance of Jesus last line in this passage – God is the God of
the living – and to God all are living.
But what does it mean for us in this
moment to live as a child of the resurrection?How does the experience of Jesus, this example of Jesus-live on through you? And how do you bear
witness to the resurrection in your experience of others?
For us in this moment, in this time
and this place, to live as a child of the resurrection is not a matter of
physical life and physical death. It is to be transformed by the witness of
Jesus and to live anew in that spirit. It is to be transformed by the
Incarnational Jesus’ words and deeds.
It is a rejection of the
death-dealing of this world. It is moving from death into new life. It is the
realization that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God.
And because of that, because of the
constant presence of God and constant love of Godfor us as living children of the
resurrection, the constant challenge to us is to allow that love to flow
through us and out into the world.
Our practice of love in this world
must be modeled on God’s love for us and it is active and engaged and
ever-oriented toward justice and mercy for all God’s children and for this
beautiful earth.
We know that we are surrounded by
death. We are surrounded by polarization. We live enmeshed in a system that
devalues human life and destroys the earth. We are soaked in fear until it
seeps into our pores. We are taught to hate. We are robbed of our trust.
But through the love of God and the
example of Jesus, we can move from death to life as children of the
resurrection.
The lectionary passage leaves off the
concluding two verses of this episode. Those versus are 39-40 and they read:
Then some of the scribes answered, ‘Teacher, you have spoken well. For they no
longer dared to ask him another question.”
Some of these folks heard Jesus.
Sounds like some of them were transformed by his words and his witness. And the
others at least realized they’d come up against a force to be reckoned with.
My brothers, sister and gender fluid
siblings, living into the promise of resurrection will make you a force to be reckoned
with. Not in the conventional ways of the world of smack downs and verbal
violence. Not in the competitive market of unchecked consumption. But in
bearing the heart of God, the force of justice, the sacred sense of compassion,
and a deep vision for a better world right here and right now.
Our world needs that kind of
spiritual force. It needs it today. It needs it on Wednesday. It needs it on Thursday.
And it needs it each day going forward.
And the question before us this day
is are we prepared to live that way? And are we prepared to help each other
live that way?
Amen.
Portions of this sermon inspired by and adapted from "Child
of the Resurrection" by Jennifer Sanders: 11-6-2016
I had the privilege of being the preacher at the Eucharist for the 124th Annual Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in Riverside on November 16, 2019. Here's the video of the sermon ... text posted below:
Together Let Us Live Like Jesus
.
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be
aligned with your love O God, our strength, our courage and our freedom. Amen.
Go. Cross Boundaries. Listen Deeply. And live like Jesus.
Those are our marching orders as we prepare to gather around this table
to be fed by the holy food of new and unending life and then ask to be sent out
into the world to continue our lifelong journey along the way of love.
Go. Cross Boundaries. Listen Deeply. And live like Jesus.
These words bring to mind other words – words from the Gospel According
to Margaret Mead: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed
people can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Gathered today at this 124th
meeting of the annual convention of the Diocese of Los Angeles,we stand on the shoulders of many generations
of thoughtful, committed people who have gone before us in the lifelong way of
love … those who changed the world for the better in their lifetimes as we
strive to change it in ours – who said yes to the call to be people of justice
and joy; compassion and peace.
It was 1997 and I was a brand-new deacon
attending the Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Summit in Cincinnati,
Ohio -- and the preacher at the Eucharist concluding the conference was Dr.
Verna Dozier.
Biblical scholar, author, gifted educator and faithful
Episcopalian Verna was 80 years old and it was one of her last appearances
before the Parkinson's disease she battled took her out of public life.
After she was assisted into the makeshift pulpit in the conference center
assembly hall, she paused for a long moment to survey the gathered community
before she proclaimed "You are a peculiar people ... and by the grace of
God may you always remain so."
She then went on to challenge
us to live into that peculiarity -- into our particular charism and challenge
as American Anglicans with these words: "The Church has the possibility of
being the new thing that can haul the whole world into God's vision for God's
creation. Our choice is to be the ones who see the new way and to follow it, or
to be the ones the new creation leaves behind."
We, my brothers and sisters
and gender fluid siblings, are the Los Angeles branch of that peculiar people
-- and both the challenge and the choice before us in these waning days of 2019
is exactly the same as the one Dr. Dozier named for the Episcopal Church in the
waning days of the last millennium.
And the good news I bring
today is that we are a peculiar people with lots of practice at choosing the
new way and following it ... it is part of our DNA as both Anglicans and as
Angelenos.
I am a daughter of this diocese. I was born at
Good Samaritan Hospital and baptized at the Old Cathedral. I spent my earliest
church days following my Aunt Gretchen around while she did her altar guild
tasks at a time when hats were required for women and the priests were all men.
And when we reached the age where it was time for confirmation class the boys
went off to be acolytes ... and the girls went off to do nursery duty.
My first diocesan convention was 1987 and my
name badge read "Mrs. Anthony Russell" ... never mind that Mr.
Anthony Russell darkened the church door solely on Christmas and Easter. I
remember in 1992 when two women clergy literally flipped a coin to decide which
one of them would run for Deputy to General Convention -- because there was no
way the diocese would send TWO women priests.
Let me pause for just a moment and note how far we've come. Yesterday this diocese not only elected an awesome slate of young leaders to represent us at General Convention but all four clergy deputies are women, our first alternate is a woman and six out of the eight deputies and alternates are new deputies. So we are a diocese that is choosing the new way.
And in a story that lives on in the
Sisterhood of the Red Blazer, I remember being warned by women clergy mentors
to "lose the red blazer until after you're ordained" because it was
"too threatening."
I tell these stories because while we are most
certainly not yet done with the systemic sexism which continues to plague our
church, our nation and our world it is inarguable that we have come a far piece
from those days. And it is a deep joy to have over and over and over had the
high honor of being part of this work of the church in the world as we have
gathered convention after convention to discern together what new ways the Holy
Spirit is calling us to follow -- and then finding the courage to say yes when
Jesus says "Go!"
And that brings me to the
Gospel lesson for today. It starts with Jesus giving the disciples
yet-another-teachable-moment -- yet another reminder of what it is they are
supposed to do: to serve the least, the lost and the lonely ... and that
"whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant."
And then they encounter
Bartimaeus – the blind beggar who many tried to silence but Jesus would have
none of that. Modeling what he had just taught his disciples, he called the man
everyone wanted to silence and ignore to come to him … and then asked him “What
do you want me to do for you?” “How can I serve you?”
Crossing the boundary others
were not willing to cross, Jesus centered the man on the
margins.
Jesus listened deeply to what
the man needed … not assuming to know his needs but granting him agency to name
that for himself.
And then when he did … we are
told … immediately he regained his sight.
Our human family is in
desperate need of recovering its sight. It is suffering from an epidemic of
blindness … blindness to the divinity present in each and every human being.
That blindness fuels our divisions and feeds our polarities – and we are the
ones Jesus is calling to walk the way of love as agents of hope and healing.
Yes, the challenges before us
are great, the divisions are many and deep and there is much work to do.And yet we claim the legacy of those on whose
shoulders we stand … of those who have led the way through the struggles our
Big Fat Anglican Family has weathered in the past.
Of John Hines who taught that
justice was the corporate face of God’s love.
Of Ed Browning who proclaimed
that in this church there would be no outcasts.
Of Barbara Harris who
preached that there is no such thing as being half-assed baptized. And of our own Malcolm Boyd who challenged us
always to ask: “Are we running with you, Jesus?”
Just the tip of the iceberg
of those faithful, committed people who changed the world … sometimes an inch
at a time … because they were willing to:
Go. Cross Boundaries. Listen Deeply. And live like Jesus.
There is another gospel I
have on my heart today -- the Gospel According to Joan Chittister. Sister Joan
famously wrote: “We are each called to go through life reclaiming the planet an
inch at a time until the Garden of Eden grows green again.”
They are words that have inspired me ever since
I read them decades ago in her brilliant book “Wisdom Distilled From the Daily”
and yet -- if I’m honest -- there are moments when I’m so tired from thinking
about it all I’m ever so temptedto give
up on the inch much less the mile.
And when that temptation looms, I remember my
son Brian and his struggle in grade school as he tried to conquer the inch in
front of him: mastering the mystery of Long Division! I remember the night he
proudly announced at the dinner table that he'd finally figured it out.
"First you guess, then you multiply, then you subtract until you run out
of numbers!" And then, pausing for effect, he announced: "So now I understand math!"
And I remember his older
brother, quickly bursting that bubble with the sobering news of algebra,
geometry and calculus yet to come. "Oh no" exclaimed Brian in
disbelief and horror. "You mean there's MORE?????"
Yes, there's more -- for
Brian and for us. And just as my mother's heart ached for him that night at the
dinner table -- wanting him to celebrate the achievement, yet knowing how much
further he has to go -- how many lessons he has yet to learn -- I imagine God
who is mother and father to us all feeling much the same about us every time we
think we're finished: every time we're tempted to think the inch we've just
reclaimed is enough.
Over and over and over again
we face the challenge of refusing to settle for how far we've come and opening
ourselves up to where God is calling us to go.
To Cross Boundaries. To Listen Deeply. And to live like Jesus.
To live like Jesus is to literally be the change we wish to see in the
world -- and the blessing we gather to claim today is a church changed and
changing -- the challenge we face is an inch reclaimed and miles yet to go.
Hear these words from our
former Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori:
Until we can see the chasm
between what is and what ought to be, we don’t have any hope of changing.Indeed, it is the act of crossing that
boundary between what is and what ought to be that gets us across the fence
between fear and possibility, reconciling division, transforming injustice,
urging the lost onto the road home.
These words were preached
back in 2012 to a congregation of people who love their church and strive to
live out the Gospel while not always agreeing with each other about how to do
both of those things.
And she was challenging us –
and, I suspect, challenging herself (because we know all the best sermons are
actually the preacher preaching to the preacher) – to get ourselves together
and get over that fence between fear and possibility in order to bridge the gap
between what is and what ought to be in our church and in our world.
I don’t want to lose sight of
the fact that seven years ago the world was far from perfect and we faced a
whole list of challenges.
But I think it is fair to say that since then
the fence between fear and possibility has only gotten taller and harder to
climb and the chasm between what is and what ought to be has only gotten deeper
and more treacherous to cross.
It was Verna Dozier of blessed memory who said:
“Don’t tell me what you believe. Tell me what difference it makes that you
believe.”
Today we gather together as
the Diocese of Los Angeles to be fed by word and sacrament not just because we
believe – but because we believe we are called to make a difference.
Called to climb the fence
between fear and possibility.
Called to refuse to settle
for what “is” but to work together with God to create what “ought to be.”
One more quote from Verna:
“Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Fear is. Fear will not risk that even if I
am wrong I will trust that if I move by the light that is given me, knowing
that it is only finite and partial I will know more and different things
tomorrow than I know today, and I can be open to the new possibility I cannot
even imagine today.”
To say that we live in
challenging times is an understatement – and the onslaught of breaking news
makes it clear that there are even greater challenges ahead.
But we are a peculiar people.
And if we move together by the light we have – knowing it is only finite and
partial -- we will move forward together as co-creators of what ought to be;
agents of the change we want to see refusing to allow fear to keep us from
climbing that fence that stands between us and another world that is not only
possible ... she is on her way.
I close with these words of
Indian author Arundhati Roy as interpreted by Ana Hernandez:
Another world is not only possible. She is on her way. On a quiet day, you can hear her breathing. She is on her way.
Now …
Together let us Go.
Together let us climb that fence.
Together let us claim the future.
Together let us make the impossible possible
as we work to reconcile division, transform injustice
