Good Afternoon and Blessings
February is Black History Month – Let us remember!
Keep safe, Keep connected.
Blessings and the strength of Love be with you.
Rev. Mary,
revmjwhite@hotmail.ca
Reading Black History Month • The United Church of Canada
“History is written by the victors” goes the old adage. Though there is some truth to the statement, it isn’t entirely accurate. The Hebrew exodus and the resurrection of Jesus are stories from the margins. As a church, we observe Black History Month every February because we remember that the gospel that has shaped our identity is a message from the margins; it is history written by the oppressed.
During Black History Month, the population is given the opportunity to hear about Black Canadians like Anderson Ruffin Abbott, the first Black Canadian to be licensed as a physician. Abbott had petitioned US President Abraham Lincoln to allow him to join the Union Army during the American Civil War and developed a relationship with Lincoln. He was later honoured to receive the plaid shawl Lincoln wore at his 1861 inauguration as an expression of gratitude from Mary Todd Lincoln, after her husband’s assassination.
During Black History Month, we remember the stories of women like Marie-Joseph Angélique, who was accused of starting a fire that destroyed all of, what is now, Old Montreal on April 10, 1734 (before the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833). There is no consensus on whether Angélique started the fire or was accused of it due to her social conditions.
During Black History Month, we remember the struggles, contributions, and achievements of Black Canadians, knowing that the more these stories are shared, the more we will come to know one another.
A Prayer by the Moderator, Rev. Richard Bott
Holy One,
In your image You have created humankind, in great diversity. We give thanks for the differences—of cultures and ethnicities, of histories and life-stories, of skin colour and language and hearts that love the world. We watch in horror as Power desecrates Black and Brown bodies; walks on their sacredness, kills and subjugates, in thousands of ways, hidden and overt. We must not stop at watching — held back from right action by our horror or seeming powerlessness.
Grant us hearts that listen and learn; egos that are willing to accept when our own racism is called out.
Grant us courage, to disassemble the systems, the stories, the mythos, that privilege whiteness over all others. Give us your Holy Spirit’s wind to call out racism in all its forms—inside our hearts, inside the church, and in your world, give us the strength, the wisdom, and the will to root out White Fragility, and White Supremacy, so that they would never again do harm, never again take away, never again kill. Help us to be anti-racist, in all that we say, in all that we do, in all that we are.
It is time. It is well past time. God of all creation bless us all with what we need, to march on. To live this work of anti-racism. Today. Every day. Always.
In Jesus’ name.
May it be.