If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. ~ Lila Watson

Dear Members and Friends,

Liberation seemed at first to be an ironic and unlikely theme to be exploring in the month of April. So many of us have been sheltering in or in lockdown across the nation and world. So many are feeling anything but free. But liberation is our collective longing now–liberation from this pandemic, from the deaths and suffering, from the fear, from unemployment and economic struggles, from isolation. And along with the challenges the coronavirus has brought are the injustices and oppressions that were already imprisoning people. We see now, perhaps clearer than ever, that “your liberation is bound up with mine.”

So this month, I invite you to join in reflection and conversation about what liberation means to us in this time. How have our understandings of freedom been evolving? What would it mean to live every day knowing that “my liberation is bound up with yours”? What if liberation means letting go–letting go of what we think is “normal,” of bad habits, of consumer culture, of our over-insistence on individualism?

As the month of April unfolds and the natural world continues to bless us with its splendor, I wonder, in what ways are we learning to liberate ourselves and each other. I look forward to reflecting on these questions in community.

Yours in faith, love, and hope,

Rev. Dr. Sandra Fees