A Powerful Day…For Remembering and Love
Donate now and help us make more love, everywhere
This is a powerful day for remembering family.
On December 5, 1955, the Montgomery Boycott began. Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional.
Sixty-five years later, on December 5, 2020, a six-alarm fire destroyed the sacred site of Middle Collegiate Church. I close my eyes, and I can see the flames; I can smell the smoke; we remember the punch-to-the-stomach sorrow.
I am also remembering the incredible tenacity of our community. While the fire was still burning, Claudia Slacik, Susan Davis, Yusuf George and Katrina Monzon were taking our evacuated and displaced neighbors from the Women’s Prison Association next door shopping for clothing and supplies. While we were grieving, our Middle family also set up food and coffee for our neighbors who were wandering by, shuddering at the loss of their community gathering space.
And...We. Are. Still. Here.
Still serving our communities with hundreds of Butterfly lunches and care each month; still caring for the vulnerable in our new New Yorkers program for immigrant families; still standing up for voting rights with our Voters Reform Group in these wild election times. We are still working to make reparations to Indigenous and African American people; still celebrating our Trans and Queer families; still committed to an antiracist more just society in which Black lives matter and everyone has enough.
The fire destroyed our site but not our love. You have been helping us raise the additional money needed outside of insurance funds to rebuild our physical home. The exciting news is that we are moving quickly toward completion of Phase I and expect to be back in our own space by Easter 2025! We're just 10% away from our fundraising campaign goal and have just over $2 million dollars left to raise to finish this three-year campaign.
Would you help us cross the finish line home with a year-end donation today?
Like those foot soldiers in Montgomery bent the moral arc of the universe toward justice, you, family, make it happen. You make our Freedom Summer School and Village Chorus for Children and Youth teach young revolutionaries how to heal the world with love. You have offered 18 justice conferences, with the 19th—The Fierce Urgency of Now—coming this April 4-6, 2025.
Our activism is fueled by our faith, and our faith is expressing in our artistic worship that inspires us as we rehearse the realm of God on earth. Do you remember this beautiful piece our artists put together right after the fire? Breath of Heaven makes me weep every time I see it.
You—my congregation and all of you who are part of this movement—power activism care, justice, and artistic worship with your generosity. Stay on this journey with us!
Love,
Jacqui