Peace and Healing During Advent from Presbyterian Peace Fellowship

Dear Friends, May this email find you in a place of courageous healing and wild dreaming, as Minneapolis author Junauda Petrus-Nasah wrote in this poem. 2020 has shown us that taking time to heal and dream is critical - and there is so much healing and dreaming to do. Your generosity this year has allowed us to listen, learn, and grow as an organization. In this season of Advent, we enter a new year and we hope you’ll consider funding this collective work of healing and dreaming together. Presbyterian Peace Fellowship is a majority and culturally white organization, so entering the place of true healing and dreaming can be a bit intimidating because it requires us to examine ourselves and make changes, and as a community committed to antiracism and nonviolence, we must do it! The ways in which white supremacy continues to oppress and dominate our communities, relationships, and selves has made us ill and weakened our imagination. Now is the time for transformation. This Advent season, PPF is studying apocalyptic scriptures, which is fitting for this pivotal moment in history. Apocalyptic scriptures are prophetic prayers meant to unveil or reveal. And as we study these texts together over the coming weeks, my prayer is that we ask ourselves: in this time of transformation, what is being revealed to us? The first of the apocalyptic texts we will study is Isaiah 64:1-9, a prayer for God to tear open the heavens and bring justice to the world. This passage both laments God’s absence and pleads for God to be revealed. The Hebrew people return to Judah after decades of exile and forced assimilation in Babylon, decades of not knowing whether they would ever again plant gardens in the land of their ancestors. Yet, even after they return to Judah, God’s absence is still very real to them. They beg to encounter God; they beg for an apocalypse, a revelation. We, too, are begging to encounter God. We, too, are asking questions during this time: Where is God when Black lives are not being held up as sacred? Where is God during a pandemic that has disproportionately affected communities of color? And what are we to do in the midst of all this suffering and uncertainty? After the killing of George Floyd, Black organizers asked for communities to act on the demand to defund the police as a system of oppression and violence, and to create a world in which all Black lives matter - a world in which all Black safety matters and all Black thriving matters. In August, the PPF’s Activist Council responded to this ask by committing to a six-month deep focus to explore the actions we will take in our communities and how we will adapt ourselves as an organization committed to antiracism work. In September, over 200 participants began reading and discussing Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist together in ten book clubs. We also organized five Action Circles - small groups dedicated to mutual education on the relationship between Christianity and anti-blackness in the United States, and to organizing our churches to commit to not calling the police. Over half of the participants in these groups are newcomers to PPF, making it clear that there is a hunger for spaces in the church where we can ask these difficult questions, repent of our complicity in injustice, and seek God’s revelation together. In this deep focus time, PPF is creating space for courageous healing and wild dreaming as we discern how to act for transformation. One thing that has been revealed is that we cannot do this work alone; we put our trust in the wild dreaming of Black organizers. In that spirit, PPF will be making a significant year-end contribution from our endowment to Black Visions Collective, a black-led organization dedicated to Black liberation with a long term vision in which ALL Black lives not only matter, but are able to thrive. Black Visions Collective centers itself in radical Black healing and transformative justice principles by investing in the development of powerful, strategic campaigns to expand Black power in Minnesota. They offer community-led safety training and share local transformative justice practices, and they were among the lead organizers that worked on pressuring the Minneapolis City Council to meet in June, where a veto-proof majority committed to dismantle the local police department. As we hope to encounter God in this season of Advent, I pray our healing will lead us to be more courageous and inclusive. I pray our healing will lead us to be faithful followers of Black leadership and visioning. I pray our dreaming is collaborative, expanding our understanding of what it means for us to support defunding the police. I pray our dreaming is so abundant that all find a place to participate. I pray you will join us. We need you in this work. Together we will help create a world with true justice, communal safety, and real peace. To do that, we need all of our energy, creativity, and care, and we need funds to be able to do this work well. Gifts of all sizes are valuable and appreciated. Thank you for your willingness to support this important work. You can donate online at presbypeacefellowship.org/donate or by mailing a check to: Presbyterian Peace Fellowship 17 Cricketown Rd Stony Point, NY 10980. We are so grateful for all the ways you continue to boldly engage with tenacity and courage. As we wait in hopeful expectation, let us heal courageously and dream wildly.   In gratitude, Rev. Ashley Bair PPF Defund the Police Organizer   To reach our budget for 2020, we must raise $70,000 through our Advent/Year End gifts. Gifts to the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship are tax-deductible. Please make your tax-deductible gift today online or by mailing a check to: Presbyterian Peace Fellowship 17 Cricketown Rd Stony Point, NY 10980. Are you taking a Required Minimum Distribution from a traditional IRA? See presbypeacefellowship.org/IRA. No goods or services were received in exchange for your gifts.