Lessons from the Importuning Widow

"And will not God grant justice to those who cry to him day and night?" 

Today’s gospel lesson features one of the many parables that Jesus used to teach his disciples. Parables are often engaging stories that contain few details but are ripe with meaning. Jesus presents everyday situations that are immediate, making them easy for his listeners to enter into.

But they inevitably have a twist that prompts the listener to think. A hated Samaritan does the will of G-d when the leaders of the faith tradition fail. A widow gives her last penny to the Temple even as the Pharisee stands on the corner engaged in self-righteous adulation. The father of a Prodigal Son refuses to hear the son’s self-deprecation and orders a feast.

What’s striking about Jesus’ parables is that he rarely tells his listeners how they are supposed to respond to them. The point is that they wrestle with the unpredicted aspects of the parable and then wrestle with their souls. Jesus is clear that he cannot simply tell his listeners what to think. Unless they have done the wrestling, as painful as such exercises often are, whatever understandings they come to will not be their own.

A Trusting Widow…

In today’s gospel Jesus relates the story of the importuning widow. The word importune means to be persistent, to repeatedly and insistently ask for something until it is granted, as exemplified by the widow who kept coming to the unjust judge with the plea for justice.

 

She did not come because she expected the judge to suddenly realize he needed to do the right thing. She knew better. The parable says the judge neither feared G-d nor had respect for people. But the widow knew that the G-d to whom she had entrusted her life was just. And so she importuned the unjust judge, continuing to come to him saying, `Grant me justice against my opponent.'  And eventually, the judge did so.

There are several aspects of this parable worth considering. The first is that the widow had been wronged. One doesn’t go to a judge seeking redress of injuries unless one has suffered some kind of harm. The parable doesn’t tell us what the wrong actually was. It could have been monetary compensation for injury or damages. It could be the result of a contract not lived into. It could have involved her right to occupy property. Whatever it was, the widow was clear that she had been wronged and that she did not have the luxury of simply walking away from that wrong. She needed justice.

 

…and a Power Intoxicated Judge

The second element of the story we must consider is that this judge was anything but just. Indeed, he comes across as arrogant, neither fearing G-d nor evidencing respect for the people within his judiciary power. This is a power holder in love with his power.

Neuroscientists today are telling us about the intoxicating aspects of power. They have found that access to power activates the brain's reward system, causing a dopamine rush which often creates an addictive "high." This intoxication can lead to negative behaviors such as lack of inhibition, poor judgment, aggression, unethical actions, narcissism, and a decrease in empathy and compassion. And like all addictions, it often leads to craving for ever more power and a painful withdrawal when that power is denied.

 

Sadly, this is a pattern that is commonly seen in our world today. Many holders of power from the nation’s capital to the statehouse in Tallahassee to those holding power within religious bodies evidence an obsession with power and status. They have proven willing to use power without respect to law, often by manipulating it, sometimes in contravention of it, but inevitably without consideration for the impacts of their actions on those subject to their decision making. Like the unjust judge, they evidence a lack of concern for the people within their jurisdiction as they pursue a love of power for power’s sake. The common good is simply not on their radars.

The third element in the parable that we must take very seriously is that while the widow knew that the judge did not care about justice, she was also clear that the G-d she trusted was just. There is a reason that Jesus uses her example as the means of teaching his disciples about their need to always pray and not to lose heart.  Jesus says, “[W]ill not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.”

The fourth and perhaps most important element in the parable is the widow’s importuning. Again, that means being persistent, repeatedly and insistently asking for one’s fair due until it is granted. While the judge in the story finally grants her justice because he has grown tired of hearing from her, the reason the widow gets her justice is because she refused to give up. Even when things looked doubtful for her cause, she persisted, trusting G-d that justice will be done.

 

“We Show Up…”

 

I believe this story has much to say to us this day. For those of us who care about justice for people of color, for the indigenous, for immigrants, for LBGTQ people, for the homeless and for the good Creation itself, this is a very dark time. Daily we see examples of the image of G-d being dishonored in our public square. And we see no small amount of willingness on the part of those who hold power to use it in ways evidence no concern for G-d and no respect for those within their power. Many of us find ourselves asking, “How did we ever get here?”

That concern is particularly felt here in our parish. Our rector has been involuntarily placed on administrative leave, two clergy members have departed in response and two more have been prohibited from serving our parish. We have been forbidden to replace our Senior Warden or hold our annual vestry elections this January. There is no small feeling among us that we are being treated unjustly, that those with power are willing to use it without concern for its impact on those subject to it. It has been a very difficult time in our lives together.

One of the ways this abuse of power has been rationalized is to describe St. Richards as a distressed parish. But what I observe is not a parish in distress. What I observe is an incredibly healthy parish whose members are stepping up to help in any way they can to continue the vibrant ministries St. Richards has developed under the leadership of our rector, Alison Harrity.

A few weeks ago in our Sacred Time contemplative prayer group, one of our members observed that what makes St. Richards different from so many other religious bodies is our parishioners’ devotion to the parish. I think her wisdom is worth hearing: “We show up,” she said. I observe that to be true.  And I believe it is that willingness to show up, to persist in the face of the injustice we perceive that will ultimately prove the means by which our parish survives. Much like the importuning widow. 

 

Lessons from the Widow

So what can we take away from this lesson today? First, the need to pray always and not lose heart. In this time of darkness we really don’t have the luxury of despair. Optimism may not be warranted. But hope is never a mere option. It is a necessity.   

Second, our hope is based in a willingness to trust that G-d is with us and that, like the widow, the G-d we worship is just. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He wrote those words during one of the darkest nights of the soul in our history as a nation. But King was the classic image of the one who importunes, refusing to give up, willing to pray always and to trust in G-d’s justice..  

Finally, our parable is telling us we must persist, even in the face of repeated disappointment. As our fellow parishioner put it, we must keep showing up. There is no guarantee that we will be successful in our pursuit of justice anytime soon. But a failure to persist, a willingness to walk away out of anger, frustration, grief or cynicism guarantees that we will fail. So let us pray, let us trust G_d, let us show up and let us importune together.  

 

Prayers from the Dark Side of the Moon….

 

I close with a brief story. In December of 1968, the astronauts of Apollo 8 circled the moon for the first time in human history which provided them with the now famous vision of Earthrise from the far side of the moon. That vision so inspired commander Frank Borman that he wrote this prayer and I think it has insights to offer us this day. So let us pray:

Give us, O God, the vision which can see Your love in the world in spite of human failure. Give us the faith to trust Your goodness in spite of our ignorance and weakness.
Give us the knowledge that we may continue to pray with understanding hearts.

And show us what each one of us can do to set forward the coming of the day of universal peace, a peace based in justice. AMEN.

A sermon preached October 19, 2025, St. Richard’s Parish, Winter Park, FL. You may listen to this sermon at the link provided below starting at 21:00.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBy6feOgxPc&t=1920s

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  frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

 

       © Harry Coverston, 2025

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The Wisdom Animals Offer Us

 

 

There is a beloved legend in the Little Flowers of St. Francis in which Francis preaches to the birds. According to the story, Francis was passing along the road headed home to Assisi when he saw amidst some trees by the wayside a great multitude of birds. Being much surprised, he said to his companions, “Wait for me here while I go and preach to my little sisters the birds.” Upon entering the field, he began to preach to the birds which were on the ground, and suddenly all those also on the trees came round him, and all listened while St Francis preached to them, and did not fly away until he had given them his blessing.

In his sermon he told them:

 “My little sisters the birds, you owe much to God, your Creator, and ought to sing his praise at all times and in all places, because he has given you liberty to fly about into all places; and though you neither spin nor sew, he has given you beautiful clothing for yourselves and for your offspring. He has given you fountains and rivers to quench your thirst, mountains and valleys in which to take refuge, and trees in which to build your nests. Clearly your Creator loves you very much, having thus favoured you with such bounties. Beware, my little sisters, of taking all this for granted, the sin of ingratitude. And always raise your voices to give praise to God.”

According to the legend, the birds responded by beginning to sing joyfully. Having finished his sermon, St Francis made the sign of the cross and gave them leave to fly away. Then all the birds rose up into the air, in the form of the cross which St Francis had just made, singing most sweetly.

 

The Little Ones Whose Wisdom We Overlook

 

Francis took seriously the Gospels which told the story of Jesus. In Matthew’s Gospel today Jesus thanks G-d for the untutored, the infants, the little ones, who carry a wisdom of their own worth hearing, lessons that have escaped the attention of the intelligent and the learned.

This morning we are surrounded by little ones whom G-d has created.  Like the birds, they are creatures whom G_d loves very much. But perhaps more importantly, they remind us that G_d loves us very much in giving these creatures to us. Their companionship, their love and devotion, are living evidence of a G-d who loves us. And in the moments when they try our patience, when they break our hearts as they age and die long before we are ready to let go of them, they remind us of how G_d sees us, imperfect creatures bearing the divine image infinitely loved. They are our teachers.

 

In the story, Francis preached to the birds and they responded by singing and flying off in the form of the cross. Clearly they had something to say to him and he was willing to hear it. As I thought about that story and the Gospel lesson today, I wonder if perhaps these little ones, these creatures we often see as dumb animals, might often  have more to say to us than we think possible. Indeed, perhaps they have things to tell us we badly need to hear.

Remember that we human beings are animals ourselves. Many of us who are owned by non-human animals have learned to read the signals our fur, fin, feathered and scaley companions communicate to us. We don’t generally need to be told when they are hungry or need to go out and if we are not paying attention, they have ways of letting us know we need to live into our part of the bargain of our lives together.

But maybe the animal kingdom is sending us broader, deeper and more urgent  signals than the immediate ones we get from our individual companions. Perhaps the patterns they are forming, patterns we are seeing across the good creation, are wake up calls we need to take seriously.

 

UNC Study: Our Pollinators are Vanishing

 

This past week a 20 year longitudinal study from the University of North Carolina reported that the prevalence of flying insects at a site in Colorado 11,500 feet above sea level had declined nearly 73% over the last 20 years. Now check your initial response: who cares about bugs? Most of us tend to think of flying insects as pests to be exterminated. But bear in mind that it is flying insects that along with birds who serve as nature’s pollinators, insuring that pollen moves from plant to plant thus producing fruits, vegetables and nuts. One out of every three bites of food we human animals eat are the result of the work of our pollinators, an unrecognized but essential part of the natural mechanisms a providential Creator has put into place.

The most disturbing aspect of the report was noting that at this subalpine level, the effects of chemicals and genetic manipulation that impacts agricultural products at lower elevations played no role in that decline. They aren’t dying because of pesticides or fertilizers. Our flying insects are disappearing because of warming temperatures caused by climate change. And these impacts even at such a high altitude removed from daily contact with human beings tell us there is no place on our planet untouched by anthropogenic – human caused – climate change.

Like Francis, Jesus often refenced the good Creation in his teachings. He spoke of a G-d who is providential, who supplies all that living beings need on this planet. He taught us to pray “Give us this day our daily bread” with an expectation we will be fed.  And, like Francis, he taught us to be grateful for the same and to share our bread with others. Indeed, in this eucharist in which we are about to remember Jesus, we recall that after he took the bread, he first gave thanks to G_d before breaking it, only then giving it to his disciples.

But while our planet has always had the capacity to meet human need, it has never had the ability to satisfy unrestrained human greed. The Global Footprint Network reports that if every human being consumed goods ranging from our clothing to our cars to our dinner tables at the rate that Americans do each day, it would require at least four Earths to supply those demands.

 

There is a word for such a pattern. It is called unsustainable. And there is a word for continued consumption in the face of an awareness of the damage that unsustainable pattern causes this fragile earth, our island home. It is called the sin of anthropocentrism.

 

The Appropriate Response is Gratitude

 

If Jesus and Francis are right, and I think that they are, the appropriate response to the generosity of our Creator is to demonstrate gratitude. One of the ways we can demonstrate such gratitude is by living in a way that is not destructive of the Creation we share with all other living beings. That requires examining our consumption patterns individually and questioning ways of living which promote destructive patterns of consumption.

 

This day, I join you in giving thanks for the animals that grace my life, from the dogs, cats and fish who live within my home as well as the birds, squirrels and possums who live in my Jungle. I am even begrudgingly grateful for the raccoons that periodically come and eat the goldfish in my backyard pond and the urban coyotes roaming our streets at night placing our feral cats in danger. And I give thanks for the human animals who make my life complete, who allow me to become fully human in my daily life. As Francis said, clearly our Creator must love us very much.

May we all demonstrate our gratitude in behaviors that are responsible to the larger Creation of which we are a part but only a part. May we learn to live in ways that are sustainable. And may we listen to the little ones, the unlearned, the ones we discount so readily, for the badly needed wisdom they are urgently offering us.

I close with a Prayer for Our Environment from Pope Francis’ encyclical on the Creation, Laudato Si’. Let us pray:

Creator God, you are present in the whole universe and in the smallest of your

creatures. You embrace with your tenderness all that exists. Pour out upon us the power of your love, that we may protect life and beauty. Fill us with peace, that we may live as brothers and sisters with all living beings, harming no one. Teach us to discover the worth of each living being, to be filled with awe and contemplation, and to recognize that we are profoundly united with every creature as we journey towards your infinite light. AMEN.

 Sermon for the Feast of St. Francis/Blessing of the Animals, St. Richard’s Episcopal Church, Winter Park, FL, October 5, 2025

 You can listen to the sermon as delivered at this link beginning at 27:00 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgxngqQHUcQ

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

 

  frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

 

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

 

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

 

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

 

       © Harry Coverston, 2025

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A New ABC: That We All May Be One….

 A New ABC: That We All May Be One…. 

I am delighted that the Church of England, the parent church from which my own Episcopal Church arose, has elected Sarah Mullally to be its new Archbishop of Canterbury. Mullally comes from an interesting background, the first ABC not to have come out of either Oxford or Cambridge for several centuries and, obviously, the first female to hold this position.

A former nurse in the British National Health Service, Mullally began her faith journey in an evangelical church but that journey has led her to a much broader perspective which makes space for the wide range of churchmanship which marks Anglicanism. Already challenged by those at both poles of that churchmanship, evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics, in her role as Bishop of London, Mullally issued this gracious recognition of differences in approach that sought to reassure her challengers:

“I am very respectful of those who, for theological reasons, cannot accept my role as a priest or a bishop. My belief is that Church diversity throughout London should flourish and grow; everybody should be able to find a spiritual home.”

Sounds like an Archbishop of Canterbury to me.

Badly Needed Balance

 

Women’s clerical leadership in the Episcopal Church was never a question for me. The ordination of women, along with the church’s involvement in resisting the Vietnam War, in the Civil Rights movement and its first steps toward embracing its LBGTQ members in the mid-1970s, were all reasons I left the Methodist Church to follow the Wesley brothers home to Anglicanism. I have never looked back.

I was clear that what I was observing was a church beginning to come to consciousness, intent upon having a spiritual presence in our country and in a world that badly needed it. I was also clear that women’s leadership would bring a whole new element of valuing and decision making to a then-all male power structure badly in need of change. Fifty years later, I am clear that my intuition was on target.

Not surprisingly, Mullally’s consecration has drawn predictable resistance from some Anglo-Catholic male priests. Some clergy of the Anglican Church in North America instantly announced their opinions about Mullally’s election on Facebook declaring that “the see is vacant.” Of course, ACNA is a schismatic body and not a part of the global Anglican Communion. Most English Anglo-Catholics have proven much more tentative in their responses, hopeful that there will be a place in a big tent church for them.

Prior to my beginning seminary, I would have described myself as an Anglo-Catholic. I loved the liturgy, had a devotion to the saints and was about to be professed as a Third Order Franciscan. Perhaps more important, I had bought into the notion that Anglo-Catholicism was the only alternative to what I saw as a rather mindless and frequently heartless charismatic religiosity which had captured the Diocese of Central Florida where I lived.

Like all false dichotomies, I quickly discovered in seminary that there were other options, my multi-culture parish in San Jose where the Gospel was read in up to five languages on a given Sunday being one of them.  I also quickly observed that the Anglo-Catholicism I encountered among fellow seminarians was marked by a decided misogyny and frequently by a homophobia sometimes articulated by closeted gay priests.

I wanted nothing to do with them or their limited visions.

In my entering class at CDSP which was predominately female, I quickly discovered that my intuition about women in Episcopal ministry was right on target. Women were not the cure for all of the church’s ills, but they brought a balance to its decision making that was badly needed.

Anthropomorphized Bibles, Common Social Prejudices

It was less surprising that the response from the evangelical end of the theological spectrum would be more aggressive and hostile. The Archbishop of Rwanda would assert that “the majority of the Anglican Communion still believes that the Bible requires a male-only episcopacy. Therefore, her appointment will make it impossible for the Archbishop of Canterbury to serve as a focus of unity within the Communion.” Whether he actually speaks for a majority of the Communion is questionable. But he clearly speaks for many of the GAFCON (Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans) dioceses found primarily in the southern hemisphere.

 

The Archbishop of Southeast Asia, an archdiocese which does not permit women leadership at any level even within its parishes, said nothing about Mullally’s sex, focusing instead on LBGTQ issues. Chung asserted that Mullally’s election emphasizes “a pre-existing barrier to Anglican unity given her progressive opinions about homosexuality” and her involvement in the Church of England’s limited embrace of same-sex blessings. Apparently Chung feels the only way Anglicans can be unified is if they all buy into a theology which confuses common social prejudices with revealed religion.

A Common Social Prejudice is Not an Article of Faith

That’s hardly surprising. Women and gays have been the scapegoats du jour of religious conservatives for the last several decades of culture wars, dividing denominations and causing the implosion of congregations around the world. Concerns about the place of LBGTQ Christians at the table have been the cutting edge for a toxic patriarchy obsessed with control, a patriarchy which has for too long controlled virtually every religious body on Earth.

Before we can even begin to talk about these issues, we need to recognize that at their most fundamental levels, sexism and its more sinister expression in misogyny as well as heterosexism and its more sinister expression in homophobia in all of its forms (including transphobia) are ultimately little more than common social prejudices albeit prejudices with long histories. There is a tendency in human reckoning to see understandings that have been held for long periods of time as somehow self-evidently true, a pattern that would legitimate itself under the rubric of “tradition.” That’s particularly true when, as in the case of sexual orientations, the pattern reflects the experience of a majority of the population. There is a sense that everyone thinks like us or ought to.

 

Of course, destructive, misanthropic patterns of thought become no more respectable or defensible simply by the passage of time. That we have thought and acted poorly for many years doesn’t mean that such thinking and action was ever reasonable or respectable and it certainly doesn’t make it either of those things now.

In the case of religious bodies, particularly those within the 2000 year Christian movement, there is a tendency to seek legitimacy for these prejudices in the words of scripture. That is reflected in the Archbishop of Rwanda’s assertion that “the Bible requires a male-only episcopacy,” an argument also used in condemning LBGTQ people. His argument suffers from three fatal flaws.

 

The first is the tendency to anthropomorphize scripture. Bibles are not people. Bibles don’t speak, teach, demand, or require anything. Those are human behaviors arising from relational patterns. Bibles are the repositories of human experience. And their words reflect the understandings of their human authors.

That points to the second fatal flaw. It fails to take into account the presence of the prejudices in the writers which inevitably become reflected in their writing. Given that sexism and homophobia are socially constructed prejudices with long pedigrees, why would the writers of scripture have been any more immune to them than people today?

It’s important not to see these authors in larger-than-life terms. They were imperfect human beings, capable of mistakes, just like us. And thus their words must be weighed with the same skepticism that any other human words would be weighed.

That, in turn, points to the third fatal flaw in this assertion. While Christians have always seen the scriptures as divinely inspired, that does not mean that they were divinely dictated. There is much in scripture that points toward something larger than ourselves, beyond our day-to-day experience, that we would call the divine. We call such writings wisdom literature, prophetic writings, parables. But there is much in scripture that reflects human imperfections as well, not the least of which is our common social prejudices.

 

Where that becomes problematic is when we project our prejudices into the mind of G-d. As writer Anne Lamott’s priest put it, “You can be assured you have created God in your image when he hates the same people you hate.” There is a jarring disjuncture from words which reflect the providential  deity Jesus spoke of who loved and cared for all living beings and words which are tribal in nature, dividing the world into us and them, providing human targets for the projection of our individual and collective Shadow.

Jesus was hardly a biblicist. And he certainly wasn’t a fundamentalist. The quotes attributed to him focus on aspects of his own Hebrew scripture which he saw as providing the basis for his Kingdom of G-d teachings. The Genesis creation accounts. The Wisdom literature. The Psalms. The prophets, particularly Isaiah. Jesus was able to wade through the many words and understandings of the Hebrew tradition to find a core that he illuminated in his teachings. We see that divine core in his Beatitudes and the Good Samaritan and Prodigal Son parables.

Jesus engaged in a thoughtful, values driven biblical criticism. I believe that we who follow him are called to do the same. For the same reasons.

That We All May Be One…

In the Prayers of the People of our Book of Common Prayer, we Episcopalians often pray the following: ”We pray for the holy Catholic Church…That we all may be one".  Catholic means universal. And to the degree that we are all part of this movement with its 2000 year pedigree, that means all of us who follow Jesus.

But the words of our prayer do not state “That we all may hold the same understandings.” The reality is, we don’t. We never have. A brief read of St. Paul’s writings reflects the fact that from the beginning, this Way of Jesus with its varied communities which ultimately merged into a Christian church has never shared the same understandings and often fought bitterly over their differences. At some level, there have always been as many Christianities as there have been Christians.

 

That makes sense at a basic level. People are drawn to expressions of religion which speak to their most essential needs as human beings. Anglo-Catholics are drawn to a formal expression of religion, highly aesthetic, deeply dogmatic, and hierarchical in structure. That’s what speaks to their souls. Evangelicals are drawn to an authoritarian deity from whom they must be rescued whose earthly representatives readily tell their flock what they must believe and police the boundaries of their tribe by projecting their Shadow onto those outside those circled wagons.

I understand that those are the needs of those believers. But they are not mine. And they are not those of many Anglicans.

When I repeat that prayer, I hear it recognizing that what draws one believer will not speak to the needs of those the beliefs exclude. I hear that prayer simultaneously saying that while we are all one human family, we seek a path to the Holy in the ways that make sense to us. And, like Sarah Mullally, “everybody should be able to find a spiritual home.”

So when we pray that we may all be one, I hear that prayer as calling us to recognize our common source in our Creator and to acknowledge that we are all one living family. In the end, honoring that is much more important than sharing the same set of beliefs.

Aquinas and Bonaventure taught us, “We come from G-d, we exist in G-d, we return to G_d.” St. Paul taught us we are all one in the G-d in whom we live and move and have our being. Ultimately, we are already one and find our very existence in the One.

In the Meantime….

In my elderhood, I find that I have less and less time, energy or inclination to argue about who can be included in the church and who must be excluded. In all honesty, those questions have never made much sense to me.  

If there are those among us who feel the need to circle their wagons, engage in the self-adulation of the tribe, exclude all other voices and project their collective Shadow onto those outside their circled wagons, I simply say, “Do what you need to do.” So I cannot waste my time and energy grieving over those who leave the Anglican Communion to pursue a vision in which common social prejudices are conflated with revealed religion. Life is too short. Go with my blessing and may you know the presence of the Holy One as you journey.

 

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

  frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

       © Harry Coverston, 2025

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Pilgrimage II, Postscript – Why It’s Important

 Not only was I uncertain why I felt called to take this pilgrimage, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I departed for it. I knew I would encounter very difficult accounts that would trouble heart and soul. And that did occur. But I also discovered reasons to hope, people who have endured atrocities and yet continue to fight for the soul of our world. I find them inspiring. And they have much to tell us that we need to hear.

The question I am left with is what to do with what I have learned. I am a pretty decent story teller and writer. I’m told I’m a pretty good preacher as well. There are places where I can bring to bear my education, my experiences and my talents to raise our consciousness regarding the way we see ourselves, each other and “this fragile earth, our island home.” (BCP) My primary concern now is identifying where that engagement should be.

In another week I will begin my third and final pilgrimage this summer, this one the most intense, beginning in Warsaw, Poland, and ending in Munich, Germany. I will be diving into the heart of the Holocaust (visiting three camps) and the destructiveness of WWII. No doubt, there will be much more to consider by the time of my return. As always, your prayers and positive vibes are shamelessly solicited.

 

Pilgrimage II, Postscript 1 – With Gratitude for Wise Teachers

I came to seminary on my own. My home diocese, Central Florida, then (and, sadly, to a large extent, still) was stuck in a common confusion of revealed religion and a common social prejudice. The commission on ministry here would never have sent a gay man to seminary, much less agreed to ordain me. But my calling would not go away. I knew I was called to become a priest.

And so it was up to me to go to Berkeley on my own, find the funding to attend (I would pay off the last of my student loans just before I retired) and find a parish and diocese to allow me to enter its ordination process. And in August 1991, I drove across the country and began study at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP) in Berkeley, CA.

In talking with classmates about where I could go to begin making the necessary connections to enter the ordination process, one of my classmates said, “Harry, I think the only parish in this area that will work with you is St. Philips, San Jose.” So, I began to drive the 56 miles south to San Jose to attend church there. Soon I was adopted as a parishioner and would eventually be sponsored for ordination.

Saint Philips, a parish which sadly no longer exists, was an intentionally multi-cultural parish where the Gospel was read in up to five languages on a given weekend reflecting the diversity of its membership. I learned very quickly there that there was no “common sense” to default to regarding theology, liturgy or human interactions. The learning curve was steep. But the rewards were enormous.

There was a distinct American Indian congregation at St. Philips which met with us for social gatherings. Some of their members came to weekly eucharist. It was from them that I learned the Beauty Way prayer (“In beauty may I walk…”) and the phrase “all my relations” which would come to shape my understanding of the Holy.

Sherri and Hank LeBeau were among the leaders of that community. They were devoted parishioners who later would be ordained themselves and gracious in their willingness to teach the rest of us the stories of their people and the history of their resilience in the face of unimaginable suffering. Indigenous people had always inhabited the Bay Area but many American Indians had been “relocated” to the Bay Area during the 1950s under the sometimes less than subtle pressure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The LeBeaus had come from the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. And it was those stories we learned from them.

Pine Ridge is near the site of Wounded Knee, a massacre of Lakota people who had engaged in a Ghost Dance ritual, frightening the US soldiers there who had no idea what they were doing. The result was a slaughter that would leave up to 300 Lakota men, women and children dead.

Sherri once wept as she related the story of Wounded Knee, speaking of the sound of babies’ heads popping as they were smashed on stones by the soldiers. That image has never left me. And I could feel it viscerally as we stood among the graves there at Wounded Knee last week.

It was at Wounded Knee that I and my travelling companion, Deidre Jordy, who had also known the LeBeaus, would take our stones we had brought to the cemetery to remember the deceased, say our prayers, and leave them atop the monument to the Wounded Knee dead. Those prayers would begin with our gratitude for our teachers whose wisdom had guided us to this place.

We left Wounded Knee for the nearby town of Pine Ridge where we would visit a Jesuit/Franciscan school, Maȟpíya Lúta, once named Red Cloud for the chief who survived Wounded Knee. As we spoke with the tour guide who told us the story of the school, we mentioned the LeBeaus. Suddenly she lit up, saying everyone in Pine Ridge knew them and they were widely loved and respected.

At the end of the tour, we ascended the hill where the cemetery on the campus was located. As we stood at the foot of the monument to Red Cloud, Deidre noticed the LeBeau name on a cross just across the path from us. It was their family plot. I felt chill bumps on my skin. We had come to pay our respects. And the LeBeaus had met us there.

Sherri was the teacher who taught the parish the sacred practice of smudging. It became a regular part of our eucharists and we were instructed on how to use our hands to bring the sacred smoke over and around us to purify ourselves before taking communion. At my diaconal ordination in 1994 at St. Philips, Sherri had given me an abalone shell and some local cedar for smudging. She had also given me sacred tobacco packets tied in swaths of colorful cloth. I still have those today.

At the end of the liturgy on the Overlook at Sand Creek, participants were given the opportunity to be smudged and anointed. I readily engaged both. But as I walked away from the smudging at Sand Creek, I found myself in tears. I realized as I it was the first time I’d been smudged in a liturgical setting since my days at St. Philips.

Sherri and Hank had been with us this whole week. And they had shown up to say goodbye as we left Sand Creek.

This day I am grateful for good teachers who so generously shared their wisdom, their culture, their history, their spirituality, their lives. May you rest in peace, Hank and Sherri. Your presence continues today among those of us to whom you so graciously gave yourselves.

All my relations.

  

Pilgrimage II, Postscript 2 – The Church Takes Notice

I am encouraged that the national church found it important enough for its newsletter to cover the gathering at Sand Creek. This is the beginning of a long process of dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery and its ongoing destructive impacts on vulnerable peoples and the Earth itself. As Sarah Augustine has taught us, telling the truth about ourselves and listening to the truth tellers is just the first step. But we are taking it.

TBTG.

https://episcopalnewsservice.org/2025/05/28/colorado-episcopalians-study-sand-creek-massacres-legacy-during-pilgrimage-to-historic-site/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKtpq9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFoWnZ0dW1Mak1zN2hkQkRzAR4cdw-mPkDUaghaGclrp7yXWuVS4gOL-IdMSzZOzkKT1Ss76C-s1pYOYt8dRw_aem_KGSm5l15u52lEm_FbezlTw

 

 

Pilgrimage II, Postscript 3 – Why It Matters – When a Virus Becomes a Plague

On our guided tour of Maȟpíya Lúta, the Jesuit/Franciscan school once named Red Cloud for the chief who survived Wounded Knee, our tour guide stopped by a small medicinal garden and adjacent greenhouse. There she told us the story of the COVID pandemic at Pine Ridge.

While Americans from coast to coast were effected by the pandemic, the impacts on Pine Ridge were far more severe than most of us knew or could even imagine. The death rate on the reservation was twice that of any other population group, the highest per capita mortality in the country. The lockdown, in turn, caused additional nutritional deficits in this food desert (the closest supermarket is a three hour trip) in the 46th lowest per capita income county in the country and exacerbated pre-existing health problems.

The Reservation lockdown happened overnight. This would help protect the residents from exposure from those outside the reservation in a state whose governor refused to close down public sites, shunned masks and criticized those fighting the pandemic at national health agencies. A motorcycle rally in Sturgis, SD, would draw thousands of unmasked riders to that town after which COVID cases statewide rose six-fold. Six celebrants would later die.

Pine Ridge residents would be heckled and jeered at when they finally began to depart from the reservation wearing their masks to buy badly needed supplies. And the lockdown itself had serious ramifications for the reservation which saw a jump in teenage suicide attempts and deaths.

But the greatest loss from COVID, according to our guide, was among elders who proved particularly vulnerable to the disease. “We were losing our stories of who we were, our wisdom, as they died,” our guide said. When the people began to appeal for help from the ancestors, they were told “you know what to do already.” That led to the creation of the medicine wheel herbal garden and a return to the health ways of the ancestors.

I lost four friends to the COVID pandemic. At a very basic level, the message from the privileged who held power was that this disease would only impact vulnerable peoples – elderly, those already suffering from compromised health conditions, and the poor. In other words, those who were disposable. Like my friends. And the elders of Pine Ridge.

That is why this pilgrimage matters.

 

 

Pilgrimage II, Postscript 5 – A Hymn to Peace

Both our Zoom preparatory gathering and the assembly the day before going to the Sand Creek site began with this sung prayer. It is quite beautiful. I will always remember this pilgrimage when I hear it. Have a listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw0gMW6gk0w&fbclid=IwY2xjawKtp2BleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFoWnZ0dW1Mak1zN2hkQkRzAR5yZoAg1zYK3KU-3nT3husdbth23eq5-zx2XqaIGc0Bd90d75yDlat3ma__qA_aem_36U5K9yArpPqBqRs4ouC0Q

 

Pilgrimage II, Postscript 4 – Why It Matters – Apache Stronghold

Within days of my return from this pilgrimage, a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court provides tangible evidence of the ongoing damage from the Doctrine of Discovery that continues to be inflicted on vulnerable peoples and the Creation itself. The SCOTUS refused to grant certiorari to hear the case brought by the Apache Stronghold to stop the destruction of a Native American sacred site.

As a recovering attorney, I find myself disappointed in the refusal of SCOTUS to hear the case though in this day of courts stacked with Federalist Society ideologues I don’t know why I would be. I do find it a bit amazing that I resonate with the dissent offered by Neil Gorsuch, with whom I rarely agree but who is spot on in his arguments here. But he was right.

The Court here and at the Appeals Court level is relying on a decision in which the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is being interpreted as applying to constraints on an individual’s beliefs alone. This is a very limited vision of religious freedom. Gorsuch hits this nail on the head when he notes the analogy of the Apache Flats religious site with the site to a cathedral where religious rites are conducted. How does one exercise religious freedom (ultimately a First Amendment right) when the very place where that exercise would occur has become a strip mining crater?

This vision of the Creation as simply a supply source of natural resources for an ever greedy capitalist machine is a death sentence, ultimately. It’s not just Native Americans, the de facto, perhaps last gasp, defenders of the Creation who are at risk, it is all of us. We need to reconsider many aspects of our lives, from our vision of a religion based solely in cognitive belief systems to the peoples who inhabit sites with natural resources in demand as mere obstacles to profit. Most of all we must reconsider notions of “progress” which feed into an addictive cycle of ever increasing demands of “this fragile earth, our island home,” a cycle that is increasingly pointing the lifeworld as we know it toward extinction.

As my teacher, Sarah Augustine puts it, “I am so hungry. Starving. Hungry for justice.” Justice for vulnerable people. Justice for those of us who care about them. And justice for the good Creation itself. May that hunger be sated.

[Image: Arizona Republic, May 14, 2024]

 

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

  frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

       © Harry Coverston, 2025

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