This Sunday.

Oh, how good and pleasant it is,
when brethren live together in unity! 
Psalm 133:1

Today is the feast day of Jonathan Myrick Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian who was martyred in 1965 while working for Civil Rights in the Black Belt in Alabama. Jonathan was 26 years old when he was killed while protecting 17-year-old Ruby Sales. He had traveled to Selma with his fellow student, Judy Upham (22 years old) to work in and with the local community. Jonathan and Judy took leave from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge to work in Alabama. They continued their studies by extension. Jonathan wrote a paper reflecting on his faith and time in the Black Belt:

As Judy and I said the daily offices day by day, we became more and more aware of the living reality of the invisible “communion of saints” — of the beloved community in Cambridge who were saying the offices… of the one gathered around a near-distant throne in Heaven — who blend with theirs our faltering songs of prayer and praise. With them, with black men and white men, with all of life, in Him Whose Name is above all the names the races and nations shout, whose Name is Itself the Song Which fulfills and “ends” all songs, we are indelibly, unspeakably one.

Due to COVID-19, the annual Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage will be a virtual event. The Very Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, Dean of Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary, will be the keynote speaker. You can watch the virtual event here.

Join us on Sunday night at 6 pm on Zoom (Download Bulletin), as we hear a final story from the saga of Joseph. What can the story of Joseph’s reconciliation with his brothers teach us today? What can we learn from Joseph and Jonathan about living in the reality that “we are indelibly, unspeakably one”?

– Kelley