Mother Emanuel, Four Years Later

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It has been four years since the shootings at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC.  It has been four years but it feels like yesterday.

The shock

The rage

The grief

The emotions

So many images.

Part of it comes this week every year, a part of the most emotional 10 days of my life.  So much was happening personally, pastorally.  And then this.

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I am sure that some of my emotions this week have come from reading Jennifer Berry Hawes incredible book, Grace Will Lead Us Home.  Jennifer is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who covered those horrible days, and her book will take you inside the horror, behind the scenes, through the aftermath.  (Suggestion, read it with tissue close at hand.)

I have been thinking of how the events of that week have shaped my life.  I don’t think it is a stretch to say that was the beginning of our transition to Canada.  The ripples of that event…

As I was doing some research this week I came across the sermon i preached the Sunday following.  I thought I would share it as remembrance, as a way of our asking how things have changed, how we might have changed.

Apples and the Necessity of Diversity--but not just apples

Passport, Please