Physically Distanced but Spiritually Connected
A Step or Two on the Long Arc
Dear Mayfield,
I was driving back into the city Monday after officiating at a Covid-19 era funeral for Homer E. Grady Jr. at Quiram Sycamore Chapel when I heard the news. In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court established protections against job discrimation for members of the LGBTQ+ community based on the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Across the nation, sexual orientation or transgender status can no longer be legally used as a reason to fire someone. It was a clear 6-3 vote with the decision written by Justice Neil Gorsuch. The clear vote and the author of the decision were cause for celebration as well as the decision itself.
I was driving back from Yorkville to Mayfield, after meeting a couple to file their marriage license in June of 2015, as NPR delivered the news into my car that the Supreme Court had just ruled in favor of marriage equality. It is interesting to me that I was on the road, in motion, when I learned about both Supreme Court actions which would result in significant movement in our nation.
I remember having a telephone conversation back in the 1990’s speaking with whoever was at the other end about how I expected the civil rights issue for my children’s generation was going to be focused on rights and protections for the LGBTQ+ community. That would be their work. I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take. And I didn’t know how much of that work I was going to be alive to see. Both in 2015 and again now in 2020, for me and others, there has been a sigh of relief and surprise in the timing of action finally taken.
Martin Luther King Jr. was right when he often paraphrased abolitionist Theodore Parker. In a semon in 1853 Parker said: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.” A century later, first in a 1958 article and often in speeches after that, including one during the 1965 march in Selma, King publicly echoed Parker’s words in a tightened version “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Right now that long bend has a sharp clarity for us as voices are heard and feet are moving in the current social upheaval sparked by the Memorial Day death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. On that long bend, multiple issues of justice collide with one another and shine light upon each other. We have much we need to do as a nation. We have much we can do as people of faith who would align with a moral universe.
Monday’s court decision was an important step along the way, on a justice journey whose endpoint is not in sight. I didn’t author this question but find it to be a provoking one now: “How do we find ground in groundless times?” Pandemic, economic distress, and social unrest around ongoing and too often deadly injustice for our black and brown neighbors, all these have upended the sense of firm ground beneath our feet. Indeed that sense of loss may reflect a privilege we have enjoyed. But as people of faith we seek with one another to know and to claim those inner capabilities that allow us to commit to specific, long-term justice actions for increasing the firm, safe, reliable ground there for all.
Monday’s court decision upholding protections against workplace discrimation for LGBTQ+ people is particularly appropriate in this pandemic year when June Pride marches and other festive events across the country have been cancelled.This is the 50th year since the first June 1970 march in New York City. It is time for the recognition of such protections as a civil right. I remember today UCC colleagues of mine in this liberal denomination who have had to make the decision in their ordination process whether to remain silent regarding their sexual orientation for the sake of their call to ministry or to speak out for just recognition of the fullness of who they are at the cost of not being authorized to live out that call. I also lift up each of us who can find our persistent and particular place as participants on the long arc bending toward justice. It has been decades since King lent that metaphor its power. It has been 147 years since Parker first offered the metaphor in the mid-19th century. It is time.
Peace as we bend, Martha