Connecting the Past of our Parishes to the Liberating and Redemptive Work of God for our Future
What do our sacred spaces say about who we are and who we are becoming? In this moving conversation, the Rev. Molly Bosscher and the Rev. Dr. Derek Quinn join Director of Communications Rachel Rose-Ravellette to explore the holy and often difficult work of confronting our histories, reimagining our spaces, and telling the full truth in love. From Confederate iconography in Richmond, Virginia to an environmental legacy in Elk Rapids, their stories offer honest reflection, deep hope, and a compelling invitation to every parish to examine our pasts with courage, and to step boldly into God’s redemptive, liberating future.
Transcript
Rachel Rose-Ravellette,
Director of Communications:
Hi Diocese of the Great Lakes! I’m Rachel Rose Ravellette, your Director of Communications. And I’m joined today by the Reverend Molly Bosscher who is the rector at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids and president of our standing committee, and the Reverend Derek Quinn, who is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Elk Rapids, and the Assistant Priest for Outreach at Grace, Traverse City.
We’re here today to have a conversation about our sacred spaces. So our sacred spaces are designed with intention. So you’ll notice that a lot of our churches embody older styles of architecture that go back years, even centuries, and connect us to Christian tradition across time and space. When you walk into a church worship space, it tells you something about how we understand ourselves in relationship to each other, to the different roles and acts of worship that we participate in together,and how we relate to God. And those are really holy spaces for us. But today, we’re going to be talking about something that may, may be a little difficult for some of us. And that is what happens when those spaces no longer align with who we understand ourselves to be, and understand ourselves to be being called to be by God.
What do we do when our spaces are not fully inclusive and welcoming and celebratory of all God’s people? And what can we do to make sure that the places where we worship, the places where we gather together, are a reflection of the love of God? So, we’re going to start with you. Reverend Molly, if you could tell us a little bit about your story.
The Rev. Molly Bosscher
Rector, St. Andrew’s, Grand Rapids & President, Standing Committee:
Before I served St. Andrews in Grand Rapids, I served a church in Richmond, Virginia, St. Paul’s, And it is it’s a beautiful church, and it’s right across the street from the Virginia State House, which, of course, Thomas Jefferson designed – the first, the first beautiful state house that was designed in, in, in this country. And, St. Paul’s had a very interesting, and I might argue, contentious and difficult history.
And so in some ways, my story is kind of a story that is on the “oh-my-gosh-you’ve-got-to-do-something-immediately” side of, of of church images instead of this is something that, we can wait to think about in a later or until it comes up. But I’m going to say something that we often said about St. Paul’s: if St. Paul’s in Richmond can do this work, anyone can do this work. And I, and I promise you that is absolutely true. I promise you that is absolutely true. So I was called to St. Paul’s in Richmond [in] the spring of 2015. And I don’t know what you know about Richmond, and I don’t know if you remember what was happening in 2015, but here are some of the things about Richmond: It has some of the best food of any city I’ve ever lived in. I loved it. The art in Richmond is absolutely stupendous. It’s a wonderful place to go for vacation because, like, a lot of free things, a lot of great food. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts – the VMFA – is there. Which is free except for the extra exhibit.
It’s amazing. It is a beautiful city. It is a beautiful city. I loved living there. My neighborhood was fantastic. I think I lived within a mile of maybe four of the best restaurants in the city. Again. Can you hear that? I am a foodie. I love. And it’s just a really, really, really pretty city with a lot of monuments, a lot of, a lot of history there because Richmond was the, the capital of the Confederacy. And, that is a very particular thing. Being the capital of the Confederacy. And I don’t know how many of you all have been to Richmond, but everywhere you go, you kind of see it. Whether you go to the cemeteries, whether you go in my neighborhood, you could walk.
One of my favorite walks was this overlook. And right there was the, the the the monument for the Confederate soldiers and sailors. And it was beautiful. Like, it was just so pretty, like it was pretty. Right. And I think that is one of the reasons that we might not always see the images in our own sanctuaries as being what they are, because they’re pretty.
And. Okay, so I started, my first day of work was June 17th, 2015, and I remember that for two reasons. I remember that because it was my parents’ anniversary. June 17th is my parent’s anniversary. That’s how I remember it. But it was also the day of the Charleston massacre. You know, where that, where that that young man walked into Mother Emanuel church, and killed the worshipers, during a Bible study and, that was a moment, right? Because all of the sudden, there is this realization that what we now can name is white Christian nationalism was kind of like seeping up through the cracks of our culture. And I will tell you, St. Paul’s, Richmond, the church that I served, had five Confederate battle flags in the sanctuary. And they were in these beautiful – again, like beautiful. Do you hear me? Beautiful. – they were in these beautiful plaques on the walls that were like cement, weighing like hundreds of pounds. And, that was, that was only part of it. The other part that St. Paul’s had was four different, beautiful windows, dedicated to Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis. And you kind of look at me and you think, how could that possibly be?
And I will say of any church should have had a monument to Jefferson Davis and Robert E Lee, it was St Paul’s. Both Lee and Davis were members of Saint Paul’s during the war, and one of the former rectors of of St. Paul’s was the one who baptized Jefferson Davis, visited him during and after the war when he was in prison. And I will also say this: I don’t know if you all are familiar with what, the the movement that is called the Lost Cause. But the Lost Cause is a narrative about the Civil War that says that the reason that, the reason that the South lost was, was mainly because, because they weren’t Christian enough, because they were drinking too much, because they were carousing too much.
And it wasn’t actually, that the union was right. It was a way of kind of glorifying these heroes of the Confederacy. And, anyhow, at that, I started reading books, but I will, I will talk about one thing that was said in a book that I read about The Lost Cause and about that logic is it said Saint Paul’s in Richmond has the best iconography of the lost cause of any church in this country.
And, and I want to talk about just for a minute about religious imagination. Right? I mean, we use religious imagination all the time. We use it for good. We, I mean, you know, just think about like one example of religious imagination is how enslaved people in the Deep South, called Harriet Tubman “Moses.” Right? Because she was drawing them out of the, of of being enslaved. And she was bringing them to freedom across the Red Sea, right? The religious imagination in St Paul’s was not that way. It was, it was on it was the opposite of that. Right. And so, I mean, honestly, when somebody looks at these images week after week after week after week, they just don’t see them, right? They’re like, “Oh, it doesn’t matter to us.”Even our African-American parishioners were like, “It doesn’t matter to us. You know, we know like the truth of this church,” because this was a church that was known for its social action. It was known for being liberal. It was known for like, loving LGBTQ folks. It was like it was kind of like this, you know, this nexus of social justice in the city. Right?
So all of that was also true. And, and it had those Confederate battle flags on these monuments. And so, this church, our church, St. Paul’s in Richmond, did this really slow process where we spent a bunch of time figuring out and telling our story and, you know, that sounds like you’re like, when I say a really slow process, you’re probably thinking, “Oh, it took six months.” No, y’all, it’s like six years, you know, because actually figuring out what your story really is is more complicated than what you think it is. Because there’s some, there’s some, there’s some things that kind of clog you. Maybe that’s the way I would say it, clog it. And one of the things that clogs you is often somebody has written this history of your parish that’s maybe between 20 and 60 years old. And you’re like, “See? See, look, this is the good stuff of our parish.” But the reality is, is that after, and when we are telling the histories of our parishes, when we’re telling our own histories, we leave out some of the things that don’t make us look very good. And we forget the people that maybe we should remember, and we remember the people that maybe we should forget.
And that is, that’s a complicated part of human history. I mean, we talk about this right? In a, you know, that line: “History is told by the victors,” right? And so how do you tell a history that, that isn’t so pretty? And how do you figure out your history? Well, thanks be to God. Honestly. Right when I started, there was a, a young historian who had just gotten his PhD at UNC Greensboro in southern religious history, and he really helped us with this project.So one of the things that he did is he made this long timeline of the things that were happening in the world, so that we could put the things that were happening in our church on this timeline. Okay. So one of the things, in St. Paul’s Richmond is there were no stained glass windows until the 1890s.
All right. Okay. Because, you know, Virginia, they used to call it “Snake Belly Low.” Right? In terms of our, in terms of the way that we worship. And they wouldn’t allow candles on the altar, you know, that sort of thing. Even at St. Paul’s Richmond. That was true. It was very, it was very formal, but very low church. And so, in the 1890s is when they started putting these memorialization, and in our windows, although there were already plaques on the walls, at that point in time- and these and the plaques were the ones that were often, you know, dedicated to the dead because, you know, that’s one of the things we do in the Christian church. We memorialize and remember our dead. And, and that’s an important piece, too. I want to, I want to say that’s important. So, the other thing that was happening in the 1890s, though, is that Monument Avenue in Richmond was being created and Monument Avenue, in my, in my more cynical times, was an, an avenue of idols. Alright? And I’m just going to call it that. So it was these monuments again, beautiful, gorgeous, amazing, dedicated to Confederate heroes. So they were on, they were on pedestals. And I don’t know if anybody’s driven down there or what. What you could do is you could just say, hey, look, show me Monument Avenue and you will see these absolutely beautiful images. But they were all dedicated to these Confederate war heroes. So that was happening at the same time as we were putting in our windows. And it’s also kind of right around the, right around the 50th anniversary of the Civil War, kind of the end of the Civil War. So this is one of the times when we put up a bunch of the windows and a bunch of the monuments to these, these Confederate war heroes.
And the other thing the other time that there were a bunch of monuments put up was the 100th anniversary of the Civil War, which was, of course, in the 1950s, 60s. But that is also just think about what was happening in our world at that time: It was like Brown v. The Board of Education. It was all of these like desegregation things were starting to come up. Okay. So that’s one of the things that Chris did. Our, our historian did. The other thing that they did is they looked through and read, if you can imagine this, every single vestry minute from the last, you know, from the from the beginning of the church until the very end of the church.
Wow. Yeah, I know, and so they did this, like, slow work of history telling and storytelling. But, let’s see here. Well, how could I sum that all up? In the end, it was kind of summed up. There was a book that was written about it, kind of talking about the history of this church and, and, and it would seem like the things that kind of clogged St. Paul’s, Richmond up, would have been the fact that every single person who was over the age of 18 had enslaved people, but that actually wasn’t it.
The real thing that kind of clogged them up is that again and again and again, they did not choose for the greater good. So in the 1920s, Jim Crow laws, etc., it was people from my parish, from that parish that, that figured out the dividing lines, by race, of which neighborhoods would be black and which neighborhoods would be white, things like that.
It was and, and I guess, like all I would say is this, is that the people from that church were doing their best, but their best was not good enough, you know, and looking back is, we say, you know, hindsight is 20/20, right? But I think in the time they thought they were doing their best and, and that wasn’t right.
I guess the other piece that I would say about this whole history telling is that it was very hard. It was very painful. It was, it felt like it was never going to actually produce anything because it’s so slow at first. And, it just took a long time. And, yeah. So they took out, you know, at St. Paul’s, they took out all of the references to the CSA, the Confederate States of America. They took out all of the Confederate battle flags that were in the sanctuary, and they also rededicated their windows. That’s kind of what they’ve done, but they’ve also, they’ve also done this work of trying to figure out how they can practice reconciliation in small and in invisible ways, both in their, in the city and in the state of Virginia itself.
So that’s a little bit about that work that happened at St. Paul’s.
Rachel:
Thank you, Molly. Wow. I can tell that the story, like, became a part of you. The way you’re able to tell it, and I love. Yeah, go ahead.
Molly:
Can I say one other thing?And this is about Spirit, you know, because I think Spirit is always part of this work, too. And some of the time where things seemed to be really, really, really hard, I had this weird experience and we’ll just kind of, we’ll just kind of name it as a weird experience. So we were leaving for a mission trip the next morning, and all of the floors in that church were made out of concrete, and I’m like, let’s go and sleep in the sanctuary.
So we took like the horsehair pillows down and we, we slept in the sanctuary. And I had this experience, and it was an experience that I’m not sure whether I was asleep or awake when it happened, but I had this sense that all of the people who had died out of that church were now wanting us to do this work of reconciliation.
Like, that’s one of the things, like when we go to heaven, right? We are perfected, at least I hope, right. And so I want to say, like I had after that moment, like that moment is really important for me and kind of the continuation of this work, because I guess I didn’t say this, but a lot. I mean, I could talk about this for hours.
Obviously, it, it took up a lot of my emotional space. But, but, you know, a lot of the, the parishioners at St. Paul’s were children and grandchildren and great grandchildren of the Confederate heroes. So every you know, it was, it wasn’t, it wasn’t always clean. But after that experience, I would say to you that those people in that church, even those Confederate heroes, are my ancestors.
I want to claim them, and I want to claim them because I am sure there are ways for me that I am not living up to my baptismal vows either. And if they are part of the land of light and life, then maybe I can be as well.
Rachel:
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I heard you say all the way through. “Then we added these windows.” “Then we had these things and that identification with, all, all, of all of humanity, but specifically these ancestors.” I found really hopeful and really beautiful because I think a lot of times when we hear stories of “we need, we need to make some course corrections here,” there can be feelings of we’re just hating on the past, instead of bringing, bringing love forth into a space. So thank you so much for sharing that. And yeah, I just an incredible story. So, Derek, I’d like to turn to you now. You are the rector of another St. Paul’s, St. Paul’s in Elk Rapids. And, you’ve been there for how many? How many years? A little over three years. So you started as Priest in Charge, and now you’re the rector there. And, in terms of the story of that St. Paul’s, you’ve been doing some work. So can you tell us a little bit about that?
The Rev. Dr. Derek Quinn,
rector, St. Paul’s, Elk Rapids & Assistant Priest for Outreach, Grace, Traverse City:
Absolutely. You know, and I do believe that everything ultimately works together for good. And the things that we don’t necessarily think are going to be related end up being related. The story actually starts with my work at Grace, Traverse City, where I get the pleasure of coordinating the outreach ministries. And one of our outreach ministries is Jubilee House Traverse City – it’s [the] only day shelter for those experiencing homelessness. That ministry has grown exponentially over the last couple of years, and we’ve needed funding sources outside of what the church can provide in and of itself. And so one of our many funding partners actually is the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, who, through them owning a casino, have to give 2% of their earnings back to various community organizations as part of what, a part of the Michigan law that says that they have to be a good citizen of the community.
Well, we receive some of those funds. And it made me start to wonder, “Okay, great. They’ve been a neighbor to us in that way. How have we historically been neighbors to the Native American population of this area?” Because we know that we haven’t necessarily – as a culture, all of the European descendants – been good neighbors to our Native American neighbors.
So that got me wondering. So that was one of the first things that made me start looking into the history of St. Paul’s and wondering, “Where did this land come from? Who was living here, what was going on when this place was founded?” And the other thing that got me interested is in our back window on the opposite side of the, where the altar is, there are three names that are encoded in the bottom of the stained glass window, all from the Noble family, and they’re all generally feminine names.
So I wondered, “You know, who are these women and were they part of the founding of the church? Why were they preserved in this window?” Which led me to come to the realization that the Dexter and Noble families were the first colonists of the Elk Rapids area who ultimately have European ancestry, and they ended up being the families that not only gave the money, but also the land that St. Paul’s Episcopal Church is built on.
And so, you know, not that they’re the only ones, but we can count them as our founding families so that then to know more about who they are. So I started, you know, using the internet. I didn’t really have any other good places to start. So I just, what does Google have to say, was the, was the place to begin and found that there were people who had done some of this work to describe who these families are, and the Noble family made some really great choices.
They recognized that there were no people actually living in Elk Rapids. They lived in nearby Yuba. And so they chose to settle on this land because they wouldn’t be disturbing the Native American population and could be neighbors with them. I think that’s amazing that they didn’t just steal land or do any of the, you know, awful things that could have been done.
So we celebrate that, that we have that in our history. But we also have to acknowledge that when they got here, they decided that the way that they were going to make money was by logging, and they didn’t really have good environmental stewardship. In fact, they logged this area so heavily, that it’s said that there was only one tree left of the original forest that can still be found. They truly did a clear cut – the whole place – and it gave them a lot of money. They became quite rich on it, again. That’s where the money came to found this church. We also understand that there was great need for that lumber. The Chicago Fire of 1871, the Great Chicago Fire, when they had to rebuild Chicago after that. A lot of that is the trees from this area. And so that’s the kind of need that there was for the lumber of this place. We also know that the Noble and Dexter families ultimately ended up founding the iron processing facility that was here that really put Elk Rapids on the map and made it a, a industrial destination for many ships going up and down Lake Michigan.
So again, they did some great things, but they maybe did some things that we wouldn’t necessarily hold up as things we’d like to repeat. And I think that’s been the interesting thing about doing this research. I have discovered thus far these were human beings that lived and loved and did great things and terrible things, and their story is both amazing and awful in some ways.
And I think it’s great to be able to tell that, that story, that they were real people. And so we can be too, even though we know we are trying our best and we always hope that we’re doing it right, we know that we’re not always getting it right, and we have to have the courage to tell the story, both the good and the bad.
And so the research is ongoing, there are other names in other places in this church that no one who’s currently here knows those people, or remembers those families. And yet the connections do seem to pop up in ways that, again, we don’t expect. I will be actually doing a funeral in about two weeks for a lovely young woman who, I say young, but she was in her 80s. But she, come to find out, she is a descendant of the Noble family, like, twice removed. And you’d never know it because, of course, she married and changed her last name. And, but I told some of this story in a recent homily, and somebody who was visiting came up and said, “I’d like you to do this funeral for my wife.” And she’s among the founding families. And we didn’t realize we had a connection till I was here and heard you preach on it.” And so, again, the connections that are created by doing this history work are really, really worth having and worth doing and preserving. And so I’m glad I’m doing it. I’m glad that now that the community is starting to hear about it, I’ve got parishioners who are interested in helping with it, who would love to go to the Elk Rapids Historical Society and see if there’s more records that can be dug through there.
And people are starting to get really excited about finding out more about how we came to be as a church.
Rachel:
Thank you for sharing that. I love the common thread of connections. Of course, that’s a common thread, through both of your stories, but not only connections to the past, connections to people still living, connections to broader history. What’s going on outside of the history of that particular parish? Also connections to the environment. Right? It’s hard a lot of times when we’re in staff meetings or we’re budgeting, we’re like, “Okay, here’s creation care and here’s dismantling racism and here’s basic needs,” but it’s all it’s all woven into, into God’s created tapestry.
And so I really appreciate you all, making those connections. So I’m thinking, as I’m listening to you about an experience I had in, in my parish, before my family moved to Michigan in Lafayette, Indiana, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette, where, you know, the the lore is that either the parish or the rectory somehow was a stop on the Underground Railroad.
And, and we come to that. Right, like, “Oh, okay, there’s our identity for that time in history.” But when we really started questioning, we were like, “Okay, actually what else was going on?” And we, we looked at the spaces that we saw every week. And Molly, you mentioned that sometimes you just don’t see something when you see it all the time.
And we’re like, oh, every Jesus in the window, every child in the little cherubic window, every saint, every single person is white. Our one saving graces are like, “Okay, the one place that the devil is depicted, he’s also white.” So it’s a, a little bit of a saving grace there. But, but so we really started to have, we really started to question “What does our space say?”
And what does it say about us when we cling to “We were part of this work of, of Harriet Tubman, of what she did to rescue people,” and we don’t see how we’re not including people? So sometimes it really is, it does, I love that you both kind of indicated it starts with a question: questioning what you see around you. It starts with curiosity. And I know that sometimes that can feel scary, because, “Oh, my God, what are we going to dig up?” So I wonder what you all would say to somebody who’s listening to this and is wondering, “Okay, what about my parish? Maybe I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t really want to know? This seems like a lot of work. What if we make people upset? What if we lose pledgers?” What what would you say to that?
Derek:
So I’ll start. I would say, you know, it’s worth doing the digging because you do not have to embrace the history as your future. What you do need is to know how you got to here so that you can know how you’re going to move forward. I’m mentioning again the threads and connections, knowing that our history has some of those, I’d say less-than-savory care of the environment points in our history. That’s really interesting because that’s a thing we care a lot about. You know, we’ve partnered with Michigan State University to put in a native plant garden in our lawn as a demonstration of how we can be better stewards of our environment and put native plants that don’t need a whole lot of maintenance around our properties.
It’s something we care about. We’re currently investigating whether or not we’d be a good place for solar panels to be put on our roof. These are things we care about and knowing that we have that history, not that we can make up for the damage that was done,but we can say we acknowledge that and we’re going in a different direction, and we can take pride in that.
We have made a better choice, and been truly repentant in that way. Molly?
Molly:
I would say you actually are touching on a thing that many people worry about, right? And I think that there’s a reason that people worry about that, especially say, like in a church like St. Paul’s in Richmond, where there’s so many descendants and the stories that you’re trying to tell are very different than the stories that maybe have been passed down in their families.
And, and that’s really challenging. And I don’t, I don’t want to, I don’t want to make this seem like it’s going to be great if you do it, because it will be hard. There’s going to be times where you’re like, “Oh my gosh! Why did we even get into this? Like, why did we, why did we begin this work?” Because it is so enormous. Because it’s so overwhelming, because, I mean, especially older churches, because I think, I mean, like the church that I currently serve was started in the 50s. But we’re pretty clear that the church, part of the reason that this location was chosen was because it wasn’t in the Black neighborhood, you know, and all of our churches have these stories. We all do. Okay. And at the same time, this is really what I believe: that the truth will set you free.
You know, and I like, I don’t mean that in some kind of pithy, “Let me just say this. And you should do the work.” Well, you should do the work. I really believe that. But the truth is, is that as you continue to unravel those narratives, the things that you have, you have told about yourself, about your parish,
I think there is more place for the light of God to shine in. I mean, you know, like one of the things that we talk about now and I am of a certain age. I recognize I’m Gen-X. I’m, I’m a little older than you two cuties here. I’m just joking. Sorry. That’s really, I really was just, you know. But my point is, is, as a Gen-X person, I’m not a Boomer, but one of the reasons that I continue to go to therapy is so I continue to figure out these stories about myself that move me in ways that I don’t always understand. And the more that I know, the more that I can uncover about the person that I grew up to be, the more I can become the person that God is calling me to be.
And I would say that same truth is true in, in this work as well. You might lose parishioners, right? You might lose parishioners and you are also going to gain people who think this good work of being healthy with your system, this good work of telling the truth, is, is very attractive, especially to people my age and younger.
You know, but, and I will also say this: Like, you know, one of the things that you see is when you are, when you are opening what it seems to be like a Pandora’s box, right? You’re like, “Wow, this is so overwhelming.” It, that’s the hard part, part. But then at some point in time that the light of Christ shines in on it and you are overwhelmed with the beauty.
Rachel:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and what a great testament to the redemptive work of God, right? When you can, when you can see a parish that you know, metaphorically, you could even say literally baptized the Confederacy, is now and the church published a book – right? – about their process and what they’ve learned. And they’ve, they’ve done this with the families of the descendants.
And then, Reverend Derek, you know, talking about these people came in and they were neighbors and, and not usurpers, but they weren’t great neighbors because: clear cut. And now your church is actively looking at ways to be connected with your neighbors and with your neighboring creation in a way that’s restorative. And that, that’s a really, really stunning – both of those stunning – examples of the redemptive work of Jesus.
And, and the other thing that what you all said reminded me of is that quote from Maya Angelou. Right? “Do the best you can until you know better. And when you know better, do better.” And isn’t it, isn’t that what we’re called to be, is just ourselves? And as we learn more about who God is calling us to be and where God is calling us to grow, and how God is calling us to grow, we, we’re faithful when we respond.
Is there anything else either of you would like to share? To people who maybe have never even considered doing work like this or are in the midst of it themselves?
Molly:
You can do it. You really can do it. It is possible. And it is. It becomes more and more possible as more and more people get involved in this work. You know, it is not something that any one of us does alone. I mean, you know, I was, I was kind of, you know, one of the people who led this work, but I could not have done it without that cohort of like 20 or 30 faithful parishioners who really were doing – like, really on the ground – doing that work.
And I, yeah, we do… We are all in this together. We’re all in this together and, and all of our churches, all of our churches are inculcated in this in some way, shape and form. Maybe my parish didn’t clear cut, but again, like there are these, there are kind of you, kind of here are the stories and you kind of you’re like, “Oh yeah, there’s something more there.”
The church is the church; it’s not perfect, right? And as we continue to, to do this work, we do restore something. And it’s something that needs to be restored.
Derek:
Yes and I would say, don’t be afraid to ask questions, no matter how ridiculous you think they might be. Right? It’s, it’s fine to ask, “Why was this chosen?” You know, “Why did we put in this window? Why did we put this piece of art in this place?” And just ask your fellow parishioners and find out I, even if I don’t get an answer to the question I think I’ve asked, the number of stories that I’ve heard that are now part of the history that now lives in my head, and it’s becoming a part of my ongoing documentation, and has been fantastic because I have learned about things that may not be quite distant past, but I’ve learned about just the last couple of decades in a way that really does predate me. And so really, don’t be afraid to ask the questions of the community around you. People are always willing to tell you their stories.
Molly:
And, I agree.
Rachel:
That’s wonderful. What a hopeful, hopeful note to end on. I’m so thankful for both of you for taking the time, for sharing your stories. And I do hope that those of you who are watching us or reading about this conversation will consider ways that you can connect with the past of your parish, and be part of the redeeming and liberating work of God there.
So thank you both so much. And thank you all for watching.