As a faith community, we believe that migration and the need to seek asylum are sacred acts of faith.  As people of faith we believe that God is with the migrant, the refugee,  and we are called to welcome them. 
 
We are living in a season when the threats to unity are many. Talks of walls that mark refugees as threats, overt racial bias that normalizes fear and hatred, a pandemic of abuse to women, and to LGBTQ people have made it harder and harder to recognize our faith. It is one thing to read about their experiences. It is another to meet someone who’s lived through it. 
 
This Sunday, March 10th, the first Sunday in Lent, we are pleased to welcome  Charlotte to our service, a courageous trans woman who fled  Honduras because of  fears from death threats.  She sought asylum in the US. She was held in a detention center for months, under horrible conditions. Join us to hear Charlotte’s story, meet her lawyer, and learn more how we can provide support as people of faith. 

Charlotte and her legal assistant, Elaina Vermeulen,  will be presenting her story as part of worship. In addition, we will be gathering after worship for an extended conversation about the plight of refugees from Central America, the current conditions in detention centers, especially for trans people, and what we can do to advocate for them.  

Elaina Vermeulen the Transgender Detention Release Specialist for the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, where she organizes advocacy groups, service providers and community members nationally to create networks of support and sponsorship for transgender asylum seekers detained in Cibola County Correctional Center and South Texas Detention Facility. Within this role, Elaina was responsible for directing on-the-ground legal accompaniment and services for the LGBTQIA+ exodus in November 2018.

Elaina also works the Post Release Accompaniment Project Coordinator at Centro Legal de la Raza. Within this role, she works with detained immigrants seeking asylum and other forms of relief from deportation before the Immigration Courts and U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services. She co-coordinates the Post Release Accompaniment Project to secure the release of eligible, detained immigrants on bond and parole from Mesa Verde Detention Facility in Bakersfield, CA.

The Skyline Justice and Witness Team invites you to volunteer to support these groups and organizations.  

 

A Su Lado/ By Your Side is a one-day volunteer opportunity to accompany immigrants in need of community support at their immigration court hearings in San Francisco. Email Hugo at hlopez@im4humanintegrity.org to sign up.

 

Become a Sponsor for an Immigrant in a Detention Center

Interested in helping release an immigrant from ICE detention that has recently arrived with a caravan? Please consider being a sponsor. Contact Samantha Vazquez for more information: svazquez@im4humanintegrity.org.

 

LGBTQ+ Sponsors:  There’s a great need for sponsorship of LGBTQ+ individuals currently in ICE detention. Email Elaina Vermeulen, Transgender Detention Release Specialist for more information: elainavermeulen@gmail.com.

 

Friends Afuera (Outside)

Join our Friends Afuera letter-writing program to write to those in detention at ICE facilities and donate to their commissary account once a month. Email us at: friendsafuera@im4humanintegrity.org

 

Compassion has no Walls Interfaith Immigration Vigils: Join our monthly vigils every 2nd Friday at ICE building, 630 Sansome Street, San Francisco from 11:30 am – 12:30 pm.  Sponsored by Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.

We close Black History month by focusing upon the most challenging form of love: loving one’s enemies. We recall the arresting words of Jesus, “You have heard it said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies”.

These are profound words. Is it possible to live out these words? Some would say that Jesus was an impractical idealist. But I would argue that especially now, Jesus was a practical realist and his words shine out with new urgency. This command is vital for our survival as a civilization. Love will save our world, love even for enemies. 

So how do we begin? We begin with ourselves. 

Loving one’s enemies begins by confronting the hate response in the soul of oneself. In the words, of Dr King, Hate destroys both the one hated and “distorts the personality of the hater.” King also noted, “This is true in our international struggle” as well. Love, on the other hand, “has within it a redemptive power,” the power of the cross.”He who loves is a participant in the being of God”

Here’s a link to the audio from Children’s Time on Jan 20, 2019.

Mental health conditions are common everywhere, including in our churches.  People are dealing with a variety of mental health and substance use challenges every day.  Due to stigma, many people may be reluctant to either seek help professionally or to speak about it with their pastor or other members of their church.    But we want to create a place of belonging, where truly everyone…including those with mental health challenges…is welcome, no matter where they are on life’s journey.

Congregations are invited to explore becoming WISE: Welcoming, Inclusive, Supportive, and Engaged for Mental Health by attending a conference on March 2 at City of Refuge in Oakland, offered by the UCC Mental Health Network.  

This conference is an opportunity for clergy, church members and leaders to:

• learn about mental health
• explore how our faith communities can support those among us with health challenges
• attend workshops
• begin the steps to become a WISE Congregation for Mental Health, following the UCC resolution passed at General Synod in 2015.

The conference brochure is attached, or can be seen on the Mental Health Network website, mhn-ucc.org.  All are welcome and encouraged to attend.   Questions? Contact Robin Kempster, member of the UCC Mental Health Network, at rkempster@fccb.org.

UCC WISE Conference (Oakland, CA 3_2_19) for more information about break out sessions, speakers, and schedule.

This week we explore the meaning of the Greek word, agape.  Every time you hear the word “love” in the passages like the First Letter of John, and 1st Corinthians 13,  it was agape in the original Greek.  “God is agape, and everyone who abides in agape abides in God and God abides in them.”

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. contributed his own experience to the traditional interpretation of agape.  King saw this kind of love from the perspective of someone whose church had been bombed, killing four young black girls.  King knew the power of agape as someone who struggled with the temptation to hate and fight violence with violence, to get revenge and oppress those who had oppressed his people.  King spoke about the power of agape as someone who had seen it work miracles, not only in enabling his own heart to transcend its hate but also overcoming a vast systemic evil that no one thought could ever be overcome.  King saw firsthand that the love a person wields when they become zero is the most powerful force in the universe.

We need that power now for the overwhelming challenge ahead of us, bringing about a revolution of values in human civilization within a very short period of time.  We need King’s wisdom about it.

He called us in his book, Stride Toward Freedom, to project the ethic of agape love to the center of our lives.  He said, “Agape…. is the love of God operating in the human heart….  It is a love in which the individual seeks not his own good, but the good of his neighbor…. Agape is not a weak, passive love.  It is love in action.  Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community…. The Holy Spirit is the continuing community creating reality that moves through history.  He who works against community is working against the whole of creation…. In the final analysis, agape means a recognition of the fact that all life is interrelated…. Whether we call it an unconscious process, an impersonal Brahman, or a Personal Being of matchless power and infinite love, there is a creative force in this universe that works to bring the disconnected aspects of reality into a harmonious whole.”