This morning I attended a Lutheran church around the corner where I have been only sporadically over the past year. As in the past in so many settings I unfortunately encountered someone who made an insensitive comment that " Jewish people have all the money you know" then didn't know what to say to me when I informed her that my Grandmom had been separated from her parents years ago in Russia never to see them again arriving here in the States penniless and an orphan at age 14.
I had attended this church every week while in my younger years (1968-1974), had my church wedding ceremony there in 1986 (date of consumation was 1985 so I count that as our true anniversary in God's eyes). My mother's funeral was held in the same Chapel in 1974 but I began attending a Mennonite Church with my Dad and stepmother that fall as Dad had remarried and Mom Dorcas wanted to attend the oldest Menno church in the country (1683 was when it started). From 1974 until 1986 I was officially a member of the Germantown Mennonite Church but when I found that in this mostly white congregation my husband was unwelcome, we stopped attending. We tried a Methodist Church down the street which worked for a couple years until the Minister told a sermon one day that offended my husband--it was portrayed a tall black male named "Mr. Fruit" as homeless and then ended with an apology to any gay men in the audience who might be offended. My husband tried to explain to the Minister that it was also a stereotype and profiling of black men as bums but the Minister outright told him that he "shouldn't be offended" and was being "too sensitive" so you can guess we never attended there again. That was 1988. I persuaded my husband to return to the Lutheran church of my youth and we attended there for 3 more years until the Pastor left due to a growing pressure from blacks in the congregation to make it an all black church with a black Pastor. Again, my family was seen as "odd" and we stopped attending.
Our next stop was a "mixed" congregation in the Northeast section of the city which we attended between 1992 and 1995 until the O.J. verdict caused a lot of tension between black and white and the same dynamic arose between congregation members which resulted in our being too uncomfortable to attend. So from 1995 until 2007 we attended no where holding church services in our home. That went a lot better with family services being useful and inspiring as the children began growing in their spirituality under these new arrangements. We maintained contact with a Mennonite family with whom we continued to homeschool in a coop arrangement. When my husband lost his sight and left town for a year in 2007 for blindness mobility training my youngest daughter who was still living at home agreed to return once again to the Lutheran church as we had moved back to that section of town after losing our 3 story home to foreclosure. We were now living in an apartment with 4 rooms on the third floor of an historic house with slopped ceilings. It was a good year spiritually for us as the Pastor, an African-American woman committed to true diversity encouraged integration and cooperation.
When my husband returned to town in March of 2008 he actually agreed to begin attending this church once in a while despite a lingering anger at GOD for his loss of eyesight. When Pastor Keys retired that fall we were met with a new Pastor who preached very pro-black, anti-white sermons and once again were forced to retreat to our home church. By the fall of 2009 I discovered the ULC. As I was about 5 years into running a small informal ministry helping overseas and local churches and religious schools obtain supplies and literature the door opened to discuss this type of fellowship with my husband who liked this informal but intriguing dialogue for spiritual stimulus and SO, here we are ! THIS BLOG is being posted to thank all whose honest and open sharing has made us feel WELCOME and to thank the ULC leadership for encouraging inclusion and true diversity through carefully evolving new systems aimed at creating comfort levels for everyone here. That is no small task for sure. We welcome your responses to our experiences and would like to know if others have had similar experiences to our own and how they managed to resolve them in some way that increased their comfort level.
PEACE TO ALL,
MOTHER NANHI