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| Kristen Leigh and Russ |
Our neighborhood Palestine solidarity group is meeting at
West-Park this afternoon. We used to
meet at Advent, but now that Pastor Elise has gone, we’ll need a new place at least
for awhile. The Palestine committee at one of our churches is having a difficult
time with a new pastor. There is controversy within the congregation. Question
as to whether the task force should keep
the name of the church, even though the church is the basis of this group.
Concerns about interfaith couples. Jewish neighbors. Need for a balanced view. We’ve been hearing this
more and more in the neighborhood as it becomes more and more difficult to have
public advocacy for Palestinians within the faith community.
The balanced view
was a view I held passionately…around 30 years ago. Over the years things have
gotten worse and the occupation has become all but irreversible. Despite our
national denomination’s policy statements and actions, especially regarding
divestment from three major companies profiting from the occupation: Hewlitt
Packard, Caterpillar and Motorola; local churches feel little influence of
those policies. There will be no Tree of
Life conference this year nor does it look like we can get Ilan Pappe to the
neighborhood. There is a feeling of
losing ground.
We will proceed with planning our next film series and see
where to go from there.
As the meeting is breaking up, I ask Russ to hang out a
little because our friend Kristen Leigh
was stopping through on her way back to North Carolina. She is a musician, artist,
theologian, scholar, friend. She has pretty well articulated the myth of New
York (northeastern) superiority, The attitude of privilege: social economic and
intellectual of northern liberals. She has discovered well the more nuanced but no less insidious
northern brand of racism. From her perspective, southern conversations about
race are more grass roots and less theoretical. In a word, more real.
She’s also called out the slow death spreading through our
old liberal and mainline churches like a hardening of the arteries.
As an artist, she objects
to any effort of the church to have arts serve as a handmaid to a
theological/ecclesiastical project. Likewise, social justice advocates
requesting what amounts to agitprop. What is called for is the freedom of the
artist to listen for the voice of God and respond accordingly. Always seeking
to report the truth. We're working on planning a meeting to explore these issues.
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| Travel well, Kristen Leigh |
She says, you don’t know how important it is for us that you are here,
doing what you’re doing. That there’s a place we can always come to and just
be, just listen and see what happens. And look what happens! I will miss her performances here, she’s had
several at West-Park. And I will miss
her.
