Dear Foothills friends and members,
While the blatant hatred and racism displayed in Charlottesville on Saturday left me feeling helpless and despairing, our time together yesterday morning engaging the questions of becoming a sanctuary congregation brought me to gratitude, and resolve. It is a privilege to serve a community that is engaging in such important and compassionate work.
If you missed the service yesterday, you can catch the sermon from the Rev. Mike Morran on this video. It was a powerful exploration and charge for us to get real and serious about this very real opportunity before us. As I shared on Sunday, our partners at the American Friends Service Committee have already approached us about a potential guest for our congregation, a woman seeking sanctuary with us.
She has six children, age 3 to 17, all US citizens, and she also cares for her niece. She has been in the US for over 20 years after immigrating from Guatemala, and other than minor traffic violation in 2005 that brought her into deportation hearings, she has never committed a crime. Without sanctuary from a faith community, her deportation will occur within the next month.
This process reminds me so much of my process of adopting my children – who were adopted through foster care. As with then, there’s the timeline you have in mind, and then there’s the reality of receiving a call. We did not anticipate having this possibility looming as we were reaching these two weeks of discernment, but also, this is how it sometimes works when you begin to be in relationship with those doing the on-the-ground-work of immigration justice.
Our work now is to decide if a) we feel it is our congregation’s mission to be a sanctuary congregation and accept someone into sanctuary; and if yes b) to get the space, people, systems and finances ready to go to be able to do this.
A lot of the initial groundwork was laid in yesterday’s service and workshop after the service. If you missed the workshop, please plan to attend the workshop on August 23rd at 6:00. You can sign up here. If you can’t make that but want more information, or if you want to start reading up on our process and plans, check out this Q&A, this summary of our application process, and this resource describing our partners in this work.
Most of all, we hope you will join us on the 27th for the vote at 11:30. Please see this letter from the Board describing the details of our vote, the percentage required for a “yes,” and other information on the meeting.
Thank you for taking up this important conversation, and for continuing to travel this path of justice and compassion together.
In partnership,
Rev. Gretchen