Ebb and Flow Reversing Falls Sanctuary Newsletter June 2020 P.O. Box 265 Blue Hill, Me 04614

The Mission of Reversing Falls Sanctuary is to: ❖ Build Strong Community Bonds ❖ Support local Artists and Musicians ❖ Care for Our Earth ❖ Welcome People on Diverse Spiritual Paths

This newsletter, while the building remains closed and programming remains suspended, will include a financial report from 2019 and a current financial report. Carol Gregor sends a report from the tent project. Most of the newsletter will consist of a photographic essay of the Day of Mourning observance Monday, June 1 with photos by Pat Wheeler and Dick Kane. As I was shredding old tax records, I found this invitation: Rape Response Services request the honor of your absence at our Annual Stay-at-Home Ball. This was for April 1, 2006! The leadership teams are going to be thinking about how Reversing Falls Sanctuary may need to change as we embrace a new and as yet unseen future. Please submit your thoughts for our consideration.

Treasurer’s Report as of June 1, 2020 SUMMARY Current Year

Starting Balance Jan. 1, 2020 $28,881.51 Total Deposits (Jan. 1 to present) + 12,301.08 Total Withdrawals (Jan. 1 to present) - 15,300.68 Current Checking Acct. Balance = $25,881.91

Past Year Starting Balance January 1, 2019 $20,676.11 Total Deposits (Jan. 1, 2019 to Dec. 31, 2019) + 43,170.21 Total Withdrawals (Jan. 1, 2019 to Dec. 31, 2019) - 34,964.81 Ending Balance December, 2019 $28, 881.51 Submitted by Ralph Chapman, Treasurer

Tent Project

Carol Gregor sends word that the Tent Project donated 70 cabbages to The Tree of Life Pantry. She expresses her thanks to all their volunteers. Photo by Carol Gregor

I Can’t Breathe!

The voice quoted in Sojourners Verse and Voice a few days ago was that of Franz Fanon: “When we revolt it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.”

A Day of Mourning in Brooksville June 1 Ritual of Lamentation

Richard Kane Photo

Rob Shetterly read the call to a Day of Mourning from the Sojourners community in DC, from 100 multi-faith leaders, from 1400 mayors of U.S. cities, and from some state governors. Then the ritual began with tolling of the bell in the steeple of the Brooksville United Methodist Church. The bell was tolled 100 times for the 100,000 dead from the COVID-19 pandemic and for the black lives taken by police violence in these last few months. Meg Wolfe, pictured her, was one of the bell ringers. The rolling of the bell was followed by five minutes of silence. Pat Wheeler Photo

The first readings were from the Jewish tradition. Melody Lewis-Kane read Rachel’s lament for the deaths of her children from the Book of Isaiah, and Richard Kane read a Jewish Prayer of Remembrance. Rachel’s lament speaks not just to the Babylonian invasion of Israel and the subsequent years of exile but to the slaughter of the innocents down through centuries of pogroms, genocides, and lynchings. The Prayer of Remembrance includes these words: “When we are lost and sick at heart: We remember them.” The prayer evokes those lost in the Holocaust, to be sure, and so many more. Photo by Pat Wheeler

Readings from the African American Christian tradition began with Elaine Hewes reading the words of poet James Weldon Johnson in the hymn, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” The tune changes to a throbbing drum beat with these words in the second verse: “We have come over a way that with tears has been watered; we have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered . . .” Photo by Richard Kane

Debra Bomba Burnham sang Martin Luther King, Jr.’s favorite hymn, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” Those facing death, those who continually face the threat of death, as African American men and Native American women do daily, and those deeply grieving the death of a loved one, best appreciate this hymn. It was written in 1932 by Thomas A. Dorsey, a black gospel singer, who was performing at a gig in St. Louis while back home in Chicago, his wife and their baby died in childbirth. After losing and then regaining his faith, Dorsey wrote:

“Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand, I am tired, I am weak, I am worn; through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light: Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home. When my way grows drear, precious Lord, linger near, when my life is almost gone, hear my cry, hear my call, hold my hand lest I fall: Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.” Photo by Pat Wheeler

Representing the Native American spiritual tradition was a poem by Kaitlin Curtice read by Anne Ferrara. Curtice, an enrolled member of the Potowatami Nation, wrote this poem in response to the death of George Floyd. In it she acknowledges the legacy of violence that all Americans have inherited from our past. Curtice herself is of mixed race, and she does not reject that part of herself that she has inherited from those ancestors who oppressed her people. She has recently published a book, Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God, exploring what that history means for her own identity and for the identity of Native Americans with special attention to the tangled roots of indigenous spirituality and Christianity. In the poem Anne read, among other lines, she wrote: “We are spiraling in despair. We are looking to the ancestors Who teach us how to pray And we are calling out the ancestors Who handed down their violence to us. . . . We cannot go on this way, With broken bones and unhealed wounds And people screaming in the streets. . . . Photo by Pat Wheeler

Help us name and honor those who are killed in our streets. Help us name our white supremacy. Help us hold one another in Real Love. Help us deny systems of whiteness. Help us de-center hate. Help us find the wounds. Help us heal the wounds. Help us. No words speak more eloquently to the national moment we grieved in our ritual of lamentation than does this photograph of two boys. Photo by Richard Kane

Sheila Moir, from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, then offered profound reflections on the compassion which was born in every one of us and which we are called to manifest in this time. She then led us in a Buddhist chant of compassion. In this photo Sheila is not chanting but is showing us the scarf that Fin

Drury gave her when Sheila was diagnosed with cancer. In this time when death is so much with us, I miss the unique voices and wisdom of Fin and of Barbara Larson, the compassionate and forgiving nature of Avis Poole, and the gracious presence of so many others. I also feel some gratitude that they have not lived to see this time in our history. Photo by Pat Wheeler

From the Ciampa’s field we processed down to the boat launch at Betsy’s Cove where we formed another circle and shared thoughts and feelings about the pandemic and the slaying of African Americans in our streets and in their homes. The somber tone of our conversation was leavened with the voices of the children playing on the pier and on the granite stones that line the harbor. Had there been a prize for best signs, it would have gone to this family group. Here they are standing with their backs to the harbor. Photo by Richard Kane

Our observance of a Day of Mourning ended with violinist Jackie Pike playing “Ashokan Farewell.” For me, “Ashokan Farewell” plumbs our national grief North and South, Black, White and Red, soldier and civilian, men, women and children, over the horror of the Civil War and for all the wounds of that war that linger still – wounds which are so manifest right now in the anger and sorrow of those who march in the streets with Confederate flags and those who march with Black Lives Matter signs. It is our hope that rituals of lamentation may unite us in our common grief and in our common humanity. For as Jim Wallis wrote in his call to the Day of Mourning, grieving must precede healing. Photo by Pat Wheeler

Three of us then went to Reversing Falls Sanctuary to drape a post on the steps with black cloth and to put up signs.

Pat Wheeler took this photo and the next of the two masked bandits who participated in adorning the RFS building. Pat is not in this photo because she drove the get-away-car. There were about 45 folks in attendance at the ritual, and we are so grateful to every one of them for their presence. From the photo gallery some more can be seen below:

Claire’s photo is by Richard Kane Doug, Lola, Debra and Rob are in photos by Pat Wheeler

May a time come when we can sing with renewed confidence these words of James Weldon Johnson: “. . . facing the rising sun of our new day begun, let us march on till victory is won.” Photo by Pat Wheeler Reversing Falls Sanctuary 818 Bagaduce Rd., Brooksville P.O. Box 265, Blue Hill 04614 Information: www.reversingfalls.org