I Samuel 3:1-10
January 17, 2021
Samuel heard a voice—three times. A child assisting in the temple, he assumed the voice was the aging priest Eli asking for a cup of water. Finally, with Eli’s help, he realized he was being called to holy work. Hard work, for his first task was to bring a harsh truth to light. Behind the harsh truth, ultimately, was a message of hope.
***
Mira Donaldson heard a voice. Actually, she heard a community of voices. As a sophomore at Framingham High School, she had the idea to start a Black Student Union. Friends from other schools had started similar organizations, and it seemed like a cool thing to do.
A year later, when she led the first meeting, she felt a spark—realizing why this group was so important. She introduced a topic for conversation—ways the “N-word” was used in the school. The collective experience of students of color, gathered in a safe space for the first time, opened her eyes. She gained new perspective on her own experience as a person of color in a predominantly white school.
The voices she heard awakened her to the need for community. “We needed spaces to have these conversations,” she said. “If you don’t speak about it, you’re not able to heal. That goes for everything—in yourself and in community.”
When George Floyd was murdered this past June, Mira and her friends were finishing up their school year remotely. The pandemic heightened the impact of that horrific event for her; without other distractions, she felt traumatized by the videos. “I felt really bad, really sad,” she said. “They caused a lot of pain for us collectively,” she said. I remember the rally she organized on the Framingham Centre Common. Mira spoke with passion and eloquence; she had also arranged for teachers and public officials to speak. “Making the rally was part of the healing process as well,” she said. She is grateful that the first rally she organized was in a place that felt safe and supportive—Framingham.
That first meeting of the Black Student Union set Mira on a new path. “Founding the BSU helped me grow,” she said. “It helped me find my passion, and it led me to what I am doing now.” She has just completed her first semester at Spellman College—remotely. She is majoring in Political Science, with a minor in Communications. Even from a distance, she has felt the power of being part of a Historically Black College. “The people I’m going to school with push me to be my best self,” she said.
Their voices add to the BSU voices, urging her to claim her passion. This year of quarantine has help her hear a sacred voice within as well. “I hear God in my thoughts,” she said. She also hears God in the voice of her mother, who helps her process her thoughts.
Mira and I talked about Samuel, whose calling led him to proclaim both hard truth and good news. She agreed there is a hard truth to be proclaimed today. “In order to grow,” she said, “you have to address the stuff you don’t like about yourself. As America, we have to address the fact that we have an ugly past. We need some sort of unified communication about what happened and what’s going to happen to solve this.”
A few years ago, because of her work advocating for Indigenous People’s Day in Framingham, Mira won an award from the Black and Latino Caucus. She met Ayanna Pressley, who asked her if she would ever run for office. “Never,” was her response. Now she wonders. She is on what she describes as “a path that has been really unexpected.” Who knows where her calling to work for racial justice will lead her next?
***
Samuel heard a voice in the temple. Mira heard a community of voices in a Framingham classroom. Danielle Rousseau heard the voice of a mentor. As a graduate student in Forensic Psychology, Danielle interned at a federal prison. She witnessed first-hand the racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system. She found herself sitting with people who were incarcerated because of the color of their skin, because they didn’t have money for a proper attorney. “It was impossible to deny,” she said. “I would see it every single day.”
Her mentor, Lavita Nadkarni, director of the forensic psychology program at the University of Denver, recognized Danielle’s growing concern and encouraged her to “go into the systems,” Danielle said, “and be open to what I could see and what I could do.”
There was a much earlier voice that led her on this path as well. Danielle has been profoundly influenced by her grandfather, Albie Rousseau. Growing up, she witnessed how he ran his business and his philanthropic work. “He knew that community was a bigger circle than his own small circle,” she said. He formed relationships with people from a wide variety of groups in Framingham. He was a frequent visitor at the predominantly African-American congregation in Nobscot and always showed up for their picnics.
Inspired by these voices, Danielle focused her doctoral work around race and gender disparities in criminal justice, uncovering hard data that confirmed what she had witnessed first-hand. “I did a lot of empirical research that ties into the personal work,” she said. “Both tell the same clear and undeniable story. Hearing the perspective of both allows me to talk about it in a way we can’t dismiss.” Danielle is now a professor at BU, where she teaches criminal justice.
In this past year, Danielle has broadened her work to develop and co-lead a Mindful Anti-Racism class through Open Spirit. At the same time, she has moved more deeply into what she sees as a crucial component of this work: self-inquiry. “Who am I to be doing this work, and should I, as a white woman?… I need to be sure I am doing this work to be of service and not for any other reason.” Along with self-inquiry, she is committed to practicing and encouraging self-care. How can we do this work in a way that is sustainable?
In some ways, she has felt discouraged by the sense of urgency that has emerged this year. “The issues are not new,” she says. “They have been here for hundreds of years.” Through the mindful anti-racism program, she is seeking to transform that urgency into an opportunity.
Through self-inquiry and conversations with colleagues, she has clarified her focus: as white people, she suggests, “part of our role is to offer this work in a way that is safe enough for other people to start the work and start to make changes. Can we do this in a way that amplifies the voices of people of color and doesn’t put the burden on them to educate white people?” She sees her role as offering “a gateway that opens a door.”
I asked Danielle about hard truth and good news. Danielle finds herself conveying hard truths in her classes regularly. Many of her students are corrections officers, doing a difficult job in a complicated system. Danielle is teaching them about the disparities built into that system. “That is really hard for them to hear,” she says. “They are part of a system that is deeply prejudiced.”
Danielle has witnessed powerful transformations. New awareness has enabled her students to see potentially volatile situations in a new light and respond in a different way. That is good news.
***
A voice in the temple. Voices in a classroom. The voice of a mentor and a grandfather. For Dr. Bernard Reese, the voice that shaped his calling to work for racial justice came from a book.
Reese was 25 years old when he read God of the Oppressed and Liberation Theology , by James H. Cone, for a seminary course called Sociology of the Black Experience. “It changed my whole perception of religion,” he said. “It broadened my horizons and opened my eyes up to suffering.” Cone’s books introduced Reese to liberation theology, the conviction that God is on the side of the orphan, the widow and the dispossessed.
Shaw Divinity School has Baptist roots, much more liberal than the Pentecostal church where Reese had been baptized at 15 and called to ministry when he was 18. James Cone’s books, along with many, many others he has read, set him on a course of social justice.
Reese’s passion broadened in the early 1980’s when he was pastoring a church in North Carolina. A local high school principal, recognizing the need for role models, asked Reese to do some substitute teaching. Soon he was back in school for a degree in mathematics, followed by a masters’ program. As part of a course called School and Community, he did research on single sex schools for black males. “It became part of my purpose, and I had passion too.” After receiving his doctorate, he served in public school administration, focusing on ways our schools can create diverse, supportive communities that enable everyone to reach their potential. He still teaches education and mathematics at Worcester State University, and he consults on diversity in education.
I love Reese’s words about the goal of diversity training. “It’s not about cultural competency,” he says. “It’s about cultural humility. A Cultural Humility Paradigm is not that you think less ofyourself, but you think less about yourself and you think more about others! In short, you esteem others higher than yourself.” We can’t pretend to know someone else’s experience; with humility, we can listen with respect and appreciation.
Reese retired recently from his position as Assistant Principal at Doherty Memorial High School in Worcester, giving him more time to focus on pastoral work at Church of God in Christ in Framingham. In his partial retirement, he is working harder than ever to promote diversity and racial justice. He zooms in to the Character and Conduct in Framingham Public Schools working group and the Worcester Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board.
Occasionally his frustration breaks through. When he retired, there was only one other black male on the staff at his school. Now there are none. He asked Worcester’s School Superintendent, “Are you comfortable that there is not one black male at Doherty Memorial High School? It’s almost like being invisible.” In spite of the frustration, he continues to work within the system to make changes. “You can’t change anything outside the system, Debbie. You can get out and look in but you can’t change it. You can’t change anything you don’t face.”
Along with his many zooms, Reese has used this time of social distancing to move deeper into his faith. “I spend more quality time every morning with prayer and meditation,” he says. “It has transformed me to another level. I pray that God allows me to see me as He sees me. Also, to see others through the eyes of God, with love, mercy, and compassion. That’s why I don’t judge anybody, because I’m always learning more about myself.”
Dr. Reese often says, “Two of the most important days of your life is the day you were born, and the next important day of your life is the day you discover why! Your purpose and passion are intertwined. Your purpose gets you up in the morning, but passion allows you to jump through hoops with flame of fire, jump rope and chew gum at the same time. Passion enables you to finish what you started!”
His faith practices, along with his sense of purpose, keeps him positive in the face of the challenges we face. “I know my purpose in my life,” he said. “I have a calling to make this world better than the way I found it.”
***
This weekend we remember Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his calling to work for racial justice. This week, amidst anxiety and tension and too many barricades, we will witness the inauguration of our new President and Vice-President, honoring that Kamala Harris is the first woman and first woman of color to become Vice-President. I hope we will move past the tension to celebrate that as a nation. Today, I chose to shift from a national perspective to focus on the stories of three people right here in Framingham who are living their calling to work for racial justice. Their stories invite each of us to listen for our voices of inspiration and to respond to our calling.
Mira, Danielle, and Reese each found inspiration in different ways: from a gathered community, from deep within, from mentors and family and books. All three recognized an opportunity, in this pandemic time, to look inward to guide them in their work: spending time in meditation and prayer, in self-inquiry and self-care, in listening for the voice of God. How are you using this pandemic time to inquire more deeply into your own self, to slow down and listen, to care for yourself so you can sustain your work for justice?
Mira, Danielle, and Reese share a deep commitment to learning—in school and beyond school, through books and conversations and self-reflection. What does it mean for you to be continually learning, especially as it relates to racial justice?
All three found courage to name hard truths, knowing that facing these truths is the only way to get to the good news. What are the hard truths you are called to face? Can you trust there is good news behind them?
On this Martin Luther King weekend, we are acutely aware of how much more work still needs to be done to bring about racial justice. May we be as acutely aware of the people right here among us who are doing that work. May we be inspired to listen for our own voices of inspiration; may we each claim our particular calling; may we work together to create beloved community. Amen.