Mission Yearbook: Fourth of July - Vision

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provided by The Rev. Dennis Hysom

“Without vision, the people perish.”

The term “road to war” often refers to the lengthy and complicated process in which various factors, actions and decisions lead to a decisive outcome. This concept can be applied to the events leading to our nation’s decision to fight for independence. Along this “road to war,” two competing visions of rights, freedom, governance, control and status emerged: the American vision and the British vision. It wasn't until 1783, nearly eight years after the pivotal events of 1775 at Lexington and Concord, that a peace treaty was finally signed in Paris.

The future during those eight years was often uncertain. It required strong leadership and perseverance to navigate the long, dark years of conflict. The struggle for freedom from British rule came at a significant cost, with an estimated 49,000 individuals on both sides of the conflict losing their lives to combat and disease. As these differing visions clashed, homes were lost, communities became divided, neighbors turned against one another, and the loss of loved ones forever altered families on both sides. Without a clear vision, the dream of freedom could have easily perished.

Dwight D. Eisenhower once stated, “Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of people, and so it must be daily earned and refreshed — else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.”

Today, the church is called upon to share the uplifting message of hope and foster genuine freedom in all its forms — religious, physical, emotional and mental. Its mission is to uphold human dignity and spread compassion, reaching those who need God’s love, empathy and acceptance. While this journey is often demanding, it is also deeply rewarding, requiring strong leadership, resilience and perseverance.

On July Fourth, please take a moment to give thanks to those who have traveled these long roads, both now and throughout our nation’s history, as well as for the sacrifices made along the way. Celebrate independence and freedom with a prayerful spirit of gratitude for those whose vision helped to create a better future.

The Rev. Dennis Hysom, the executive director of Presbyterian Federal Chaplaincies and a retired Army chaplain

Let us join in prayer for:

Jashalund Royston, Research Analyst II, Research Services, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Carol Rusciano, FDN Trust Officer, Presbyterian Foundation 

Let us pray:

Lord, as our Savior loved us enough to sacrifice his life for us, may we love others enough to sacrifice for them. We pray for all in the church who seek to bring God’s word of hope and love to a world seeking meaning. We lift to you our Veterans Affairs, Federal Bureau of Prisons, and Department of Defense chaplains serving far and wide, asking you to guide them in their daily service to you. Amen. 

Mission Yearbook: PDA grants help people affected by earthquake in Myanmar

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance has issued grants to Community World Service Asia and the Presbyterian Church of Myanmar to help people in earthquake-stricken Myanmar, where at least 3,600 people have lost their lives since disaster struck in late March. 

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An earthquake-damaged building in Mandalay, one of the affected communities (Photo by Feiza via Wikimedia Commons, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Community World Service Asia, a PDA partner and member of ACT Alliance, will use the grant to address acute needs, including food, first-aid supplies and hygiene kits, in the area, which was rocked by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake on March 28 and a subsequent 6.6 magnitude-tremor.

“For decades, the peace-loving people of Myanmar have been suffering from natural disasters, poverty and conflict,” said Marvin Parvez, regional director of Community World Service Asia, in a statement to PDA. “The recent powerful earthquake took away what little they had to survive on the margins. Infrastructure is destroyed and fields have been devastated; this will cause food security challenges for years to come. Thousands of families are still sleeping in the open, without clean drinking water, food and shelter.”

The disaster was felt nationwide and in other areas, such as Bangkok, where a skyscraper collapsed. In addition to the fatalities, almost 5,000 people have been injured and more than 140 remain missing, according to an April 14 report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“During this current emergency, Community World Service Asia is assessing the needs and urgently sending emergency staff to provide support,” Program Coordinator Hina Gul Roy said in correspondence with PDA. “Our intervention is focused on lifesaving actions, ensuring that immediate help is provided to the affected communities to help them recover from the devastating effects of the earthquake.”

Emergency assistance from Community World Service Asia includes the distribution of necessities including tents, tarpaulins, sleeping bags and blankets, as well as nonperishable food items and ready-to-eat meals.

Other needs to be addressed by the group include hygiene kits, bottled water and water purification tablets, and psycho-social and community support.

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(Image showing the March 28 earthquake intensity is courtesy of the United States Geological Survey)

“As the harsh summer season approaches, extended displacement stands to heighten health hazards for communities already facing vulnerability,” the program coordinator said. “The impoverished conditions, coupled with restricted availability of essential food items and clean water, are likely to result in a surge in both the frequency and gravity of infectious diseases. Affected people are in dire need of immediate humanitarian and emergency assistance in the aftermath of the earthquake and continuing aftershocks.”

To help, PDA also is partnering with the Presbyterian Church of Myanmar, which is working alongside local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and volunteers to assist internally displaced people. PCM’s efforts include providing housing, offering psychosocial support to those affected, delivering water and sanitation services, and supplying food and other essential necessities.

“We are planning to focus on two high-urgency categories such as providing lifesaving aids to earthquake-affected people in the remote villages through partner NGOs and reinforcing earthquake weakened structures of PCM’s Centre in Mandalay to be used as shelter for displaced people,” the Rev. Pek Muan Cuang, PCM’s general secretary, stated to PDA.

Humanitarian efforts are complicated by fighting in the region that has continued despite temporary ceasefires, making it difficult to reach some severely impacted communities, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner.

“I urge a halt to all military operations, and for the focus to be on assisting those impacted by the quake, as well as ensuring unhindered access to humanitarian organizations that are ready to support,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said recently. “I hope this terrible tragedy can be a turning point for the country towards an inclusive political solution.”

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is one of the Compassion, Peace & Justice ministries of the Interim Unified Agency of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). To assist with recovery efforts in Myanmar, you can make a donation here, using code DR000198.

Darla Carter, Communications Strategist, Interim Unified Agency, PC(USA) (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Dalma Rodriguez, Kitchen Assistant, Stony Point Center, Interim Unified Agency (term)
Jermaine Ross-Allam, Director, Center for Repair of Historical Harms Visioning, Rebuilding, and Innovation, Interim Unified Agency 

Let us pray:

Protect us, O God, and give us compassion to help one another when life becomes overwhelming. Inspire us to always look to you for grace, hope and love, and may we always share these gifts with those around us. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: PC(USA), Indonesian church celebrate new Covenant Agreement and commit to shared global ministry

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The Rev. Jihyun Oh and the Rev. Hein Arina sign the Covenant Agreement Monday in the Chapel at the Presbyterian Center. (Photo by Alex Simon)

During a recent half-hour worship service and signing ceremony at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville, officials with Christian Evangelical Church in Minahasa, known as the Gereja Masehi Injili di Minahasa (GMIM) in Indonesia, and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) signed a Covenant Agreement recognizing “God’s call to a fresh expression of ministry and mission that requires us to work together as partners in God’s mission,” work that “is always larger than any individual church.”

The Rev. Hein Arina, president of GMIM, which has nearly 1 million members in Indonesia and has ties to worshiping communities in U.S. communities including Columbus, Ohio, and Avenel, New Jersey, joined with the Rev. Jihyun Oh, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the PC(USA) and Executive Director of the Interim Unified Agency, to sign the Covenant Agreement.

“As churches we have our own unique identities forged by our distinct histories and traditions, reflected in our different constitutions and ways of working, but seek to journey together in ministry, being authentic to who we are and enriched by what each of us brings to this partnership,” the agreement states. Recognizing those existing relationships in Ohio and New Jersey, “we seek to build on these expressions of shared ministry and witness.”

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Members of the GMIM delegation present a hymn during Monday's service. (Photo by Alex Simon)

The agreement calls for the PC(USA) to commit to:

• Connecting GMIM communities with mid councils to find ways offering space and hospitality
• Supporting mid councils as they engage in shared ministry with GMIM
• Extending our common witness with this community as we enter into shared ministry together, as PC(USA) and GMIM, each bringing what we can and receiving what we need to extend God’s mission.

GMIM commits to providing pastors to nurture and support these GMIM communities worshiping and witnessing in their own language in these places. “Together we will create resources and support both GMIM and PC(USA) communities as they seek to live into this relationship of shard ministry,” the agreement states. It also commits both faith communities to “keeping each other informed of developments and resolving any issues that may arise in our shared witness.” The two agree to meet within three years “to review progress and what we are learning from our shared witness and ministries.”

Two members of the GMIM delegation, Visca Robot and the Rev. Joshua Umboh, read from Psalm 84 and Acts 2:43–47. The GMIM delegation then united to sing a Christian hymn to the tune of “Danny Boy.”

“What a joyous occasion!” said the Rev. Mienda Uriarte, director of Global Ecumenical Partnerships in the IUA. Conversations over the coming together began in 2016, she noted, and continued when GMIM youth attended Presbyterian Youth Triennium at Purdue University in 2019.

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The Rev. Mienda Uriarte offers up a timeline on how the Covenant Agreement came to be. (Photo by Alex Simon)

“We want to highlight the commitment of presbyteries and congregations” that have been “an integral part” of the process, Uriarte said. General Assembly concurrence began with a commissioner’s resolution and was then followed by the approval of the Global Covenant Agreement Response, ECU-06, by commissioners to the 226th General Assembly (2024). That item of business allows for a more flexible process “where we can develop and grow into a relationship of shared ministry with global partner denominations with organized fellowships and congregations” in the United States. It also called for “regular dialogues” with GMIM and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana.

“The Spirit of God is moving, and it is truly with deeply grateful hearts that we celebrate the marking of this significant moment as we pause to sign our Covenant Agreement,” Uriarte said.

“It’s good to be reminded of the long way we have come together. It is an honor and a privilege to participate in celebrating and signing today,” Oh said.

“The conversations that you all started are forming the basis for covenant agreements from throughout the communion of Christian churches,” Oh told the GMIM delegation. “We are grateful you said you would be the first to be in this relationship. God is doing a new thing, that we might be able to speak to God’s oneness.”

“I look forward to years of partnership,” Oh said, “where we can continue to share the good news of what God is doing.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Keenan Rodgers, Church Consultant, Board of Pensions
Lauren Rogers, Assoc. Director for Funds Development, A (Corp) 

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, give us strength to follow your call to provide for the needs of people. Help us to remember that man does not live on bread alone, but on the Word of God. Take us to places unfamiliar and to the people whom you know and love. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: New hymn supports free expression

As part of National Library Week April 6–12, Presbyterian pastor and hymn writer the Rev. Carolyn Winfrey Gillette published the hymn “What a Joy! We Love Our Reading” to the tune of “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”

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Photo by Guzel Maksutova via Unsplash

In notes on her new hymn, Winfrey Gillette says that during the 1980s, it was forbidden in some places in Central America to read Mary’s Magnificat in public “because the powerful people feared that the people who were poor might actually believe Mary’s words.”

“Libraries are not just buildings filled with books — they are vibrant centers of life,” Winfrey Gillette wrote. “They serve as social hubs educational lifelines and safe havens.”

She quoted Jane L. Rosen’s essay “Why Libraries are So Important — and Life-Changing” in the book “The Library Made Me Do It: Writers Reflect on Their First Love”: “Walk into any library on any given day, and you’ll see it: life happening. Children gathered for story time, job seekers refining their résumés, teens collaborating on school projects, seniors learning new technology skills. Libraries provide free internet access, educational programs, and, perhaps most importantly, a place to simply be — without the expectation of spending money.”

What a Joy!  We Love Our Reading

NETTLETON 8.7.8.7 D (“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”)
What a joy! We love our reading — books on health and history.
We love novels, science fiction and great works of poetry.
We read prayers and meditations; we read books for work and play.
God, we’re grateful for the reading we’re invited to each day.

On the Sabbath, Jesus worshiped, and he read there, from the scroll:
Your own Spirit was upon him to make wounded people whole.
Reading scripture from Isaiah, Jesus made his mission clear.
May we read your word, discerning what your call is for us here.

There are powers that would stop it: “Take those books right off the shelves!”
“Stop the power of education!” — stop our thinking for ourselves.
Yet the poor will keep on reading; they’ll find hope in Mary’s song:
“God will cast down all the mighty, and will lift the poor up, strong!”

Bless the writers and the dreamers and the people who can see:
There is truth out there for reading, and the truth will set us free.
Bless the teachers sharing stories; bless the bookstore workers, too.
Bless librarians and their vision as they share books, old and new.

Jesus taught us how to love you — using heart, soul, strength and mind.
May our reading be a blessing that we never leave behind.
May we let ourselves be challenged, may we read to understand,
may our reading be transforming for ourselves, our church, our land.

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The Rev. Carolyn Winfrey Gillette reads to her grandchildren. (Contributed photo)

 

Biblical References: Luke 4:16–21; 1:46–55; John 8:32; Matthew 22:37–40

Tune: John Wyeth’s “Repository of Sacred Music,” 1813

Text: Copyright © 2025 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved.

Carolyn Winfrey Gillette is a pastor in rural New York state and author of more than 500 hymns that are sung widely throughout the United States and overseas. Her hymns are in more than two dozen books and thousands of websites, including her website that has all of her hymn texts.

Feature stories about her work on faith and life have been in The New Yorker, NPR, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer and other news outlets. She met her husband in a seminary library, lives one block from her community’s public library and loves to read to her grandchildren.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Lawrence Robertson, Administrative Assistant, Compassion, Peace & Justice, Interim Unified Agency
Monique Robinson, Manager, Central Receiving & Purchasing, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) 

Let us pray:

Lord, teach us to break bread with our newest neighbors. Teach us to share with and receive from our neighbors. Teach us to be open to differences, to tolerate new behaviors and to meet you in the people you give to us. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Speaker Dr. Angela Carpenter’s webinar explores gun violence and Christian ethics

During the Office of Public Witness’ new series on gun violence and Christian ethics, which recently launched via a webinar, Dr. Angela Carpenter of Hope College in Holland, Michigan, began her presentation by helping the more than 75 people in attendance think about their fears.

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Dr. Angela Carpenter

Specifically, she looked at Luke’s account of Jesus being tested in the wilderness. “I learned this story as a child, and I was always a little confused by it,” Carpenter said. “As a child, I thought, why would it be a sin for Jesus to use his power to get something to eat? Worshiping Satan was not something he would want to do. And casting himself off the temple to summon the angels? It made no sense to me.”

Years later, “I have come to think of this as having profound insight for who we are as human beings,” she said. “The commonality is Jesus is tempted to refuse authentic humanity.”

Carpenter called fear “a paradigmatic sin.” Some of us “erase human vulnerability” by turning to such things as firearms as a means of personal protection. “I do not want to suggest that gun owners are particularly prone to the sin of fear,” she said. Gun ownership is instead “a manifestation of behavior patterns much broader than that.”

In the United States, 40% of adults live in a house with a gun. There are about 378 million guns in circulation, more than one for every adult and child living in this country. Two-thirds of gun owners cite “personal protection” as their reason for owning a gun. Polling from several years ago showed most people owned guns for hunting or for sport, Carpenter said.

Among Christians, 36% of white evangelicals and 35% of white mainline Protestants own a gun, compared to 25% of the general population. Thirty-seven percent of evangelicals favor stricter gun laws, while 48% of mainline Protestants, 64% of Catholics and 76% of Black Protestants favor such laws.

Carpenter then turned her attention to guns, fear and Christian nationalism. She called Christian nationalism “a response to fear,” and cited factors including changing culture, the role of men in society, the number and status of white people, crime that’s real or perceived, and the shortage of resources, including housing and jobs.

Many proponents of Christian nationalism are also strong supporters of the Second Amendment and gun ownership, Carpenter noted. “The notion is that Jesus wants Christians to have cultural, political and violent power,” according to Carpenter, and the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol is a memorable example, “with all sorts of Christian symbols.”

But gun owners and Christian nationalists “do not have a monopoly on fear,” she said. Fear dominates our culture. Social media algorithms heighten people’s fear, she said, and fear is further weaponized by those who seek more political power.

Jesus’ life “displays authentically human love, vulnerable love,” Carpenter said. During his temptation in the wilderness, “he is rejecting the back-up plans that might be available to him. He enters into the full vulnerability of being human.”

Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane — to “remove this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done” — is the “final rejection of a back-up option,” Carpenter said, quoting this from theologian Herbert McCabe: “When we encounter Jesus, in whatever way we encounter him, he strikes a chord in us; we resonate to him because he shows the humanity that lies more hidden in us — the humanity of which we are afraid. He is the human being that we dare not be. He takes the risks of love which we recognize as risks and so for the most part do not take.”

In addition to our activism in issues including gun violence, “we can try to show what it looks like to love in the midst of fear, to love without back-up plans,” Carpenter said.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Kelly Riley, Executive Vice President, Plan Operations, Board of Pensions
Leslie Rizzo, Production Clerk, Hubbard Press, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) 

Let us pray:

Almighty God, we pray for those who are picking up the pieces of their lives. We pray that out of chaos hope will rise, and we offer ourselves humbly in service. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Rabbi Julia Watts Belser, author of ‘Loving Our Own Bones,’ helps others

Julia Watts Belser, a rabbi and faculty member at Georgetown University, recently delivered a lyrical and deeply thoughtful Grawemeyer Religion Award address at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Watch her presentation here.

Belser’s books include “Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole.”

“I want to lift up a core commitment I see at the heart of disability culture: a fierce and unabashed commitment to insist on worthiness, brilliance and the value of disabled people’s lives in a world that so often treats us like trash,” Belser said. “I name that work as sacred, that conviction we can help each other to spit out poison … that conviction that we deserve a world that welcomes us.”

She said her aim during the address was to “to show how disability wisdom can transform the way we read the Bible and other sacred texts. … I think disability wisdom can shiver something vital and new into the ways we name and know God.”

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Rabbi Julia Watts Belser

Belser defined disability expansively, including neurodivergence, depression, chronic pain and fatigue, and long Covid.

“We live in a world that is set up to accommodate certain kinds of bodies and minds. That’s what I mean when I talk about ableism,” Belser said.

In the Talmud, the rabbis talk about the “world’s most wicked city, Sodom,” and how it was destroyed alongside Gomorrah as recorded in Genesis 19. But Sodom was destroyed for reasons other than sexual activity, the rabbis pointed out: it was, as Ezekiel 16:49 explains, that Sodom and her daughters “had pride, excess of food and prosperous ease but did not aid the poor and needy.”

“The sin of Sodom is a failure of hospitality,” Belser said. “It’s a practice of cruelty, violence, brutality and greed.”

In the Talmud, the rabbis teach that Sodom had one bed “on which they laid each and every guest,” Belser noted. “If a person was too tall, they cut off his feet.” Short people were stretched until they fit the guest bed.

“I find this a powerful story for thinking about ableism, where we force everyone into the same too-tight box,” Belser said.

Another truth — one that’s not spoken of frequently, she said — is “ableism hurts all of us. Ableism isn’t good for any body or any mind.”

“One way ableism works is it makes a fetish out of productivity,” Belser said. “It tries to sell us a lie, that our fundamental worth is tied to our work. That lie hits hardest against people with disabilities.” Some can’t work, “and some of us need accommodations that all too often get refused. Ableism is that fear that gnaws us in the night.”

Belser next turned to the example of Moses, “no confident speaker, even though he speaks directly to God.” She called Moses “a disabled prophet whose disability is recognized and affirmed by God.”

Moses asks God to “please send someone else” to speak to pharaoh. “I take Moses’ hesitation as a witness to the way internalized ableism creeps into our hearts,” Belser said.

God assures Moses, “I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.” The Hebrew verb at the start of that verse is “part of the way God names God’s self when God first speaks to Moses at the burning bush,” Belser said, where God says, “I will be who I will be.” God’s presence in the mouth of Moses “is in the very place where Moses might have imagined God to be absent.”

“This verse has become something of a touchstone for me when I am frustrated with my own disabled bones,” Belser said. Some days, she lays a hand on her knee or hip or thigh “where I feel my disability acutely, and I whisper those words to myself — a balm, that promise of presence.”

In short, God meets Moses’ access needs. God tells Moses to take Aaron, his brother, “in a moment we might call the first reasonable accommodation in the Bible,” Belser said. “It is for me a powerful reminder that disabled people deserve a world of abundant access, a world that offers kinship and support.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Meg Rift, Executive Assistant, Stated Clerk’s Office, Interim Unified Agency  
Kathy Riley, Associate for Emotion, Spiritual Care, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Interim Unified Agency 

Let us pray:

God of wholeness, may the world you intend be the one we seek. May the way you love be the way we love, so that even broken hearts pulse with your grace. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: How land acknowledgements can be incorporated into worship

The “Along the Road” podcast recently offered a glimpse into the deeper meaning and history behind what has become an increasingly common practice in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): land acknowledgements.

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Photo by Asso Myron via Unsplash

The episode titled “Nourish: Acknowledging the Original Habitants of the Land” featured a conversation with the Rev. Lauren Sanders, who is an ordained PC(USA) minister and an Indigenous person who serves as Indigenous care chaplain for an organization called First United in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Sanders also serves on the General Assembly Committee on Representation. She was interviewed by host Martha Miller, who is a ruling elder and certified Christian educator and is the manager for ministry education and support in the Interim Unified Agency.

A land acknowledgement is a formal statement offered at the beginning of a gathering that recognizes the Indigenous peoples who originally inhabited the land where an event or gathering is taking place.

In 2018, the 223rd General Assembly of the PC(USA) voted to include land acknowledgements at the beginning of all official meetings and events. Virtual PC(USA) gatherings have often invited participants to do land acknowledgements of their own, recognizing the Indigenous inhabits of the lands from which they are calling in.

In keeping with this PC(USA) practice, Miller included a land acknowledgement at the beginning of a Leader Formation webinar she facilitated for ruling elders and deacons on March 6. After recognizing the Anishinaabe people and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian tribe who historically resided on the land where she was, Miller invited participants to type in the chat space and recognize the Indigenous inhabitants of the land where they were joining from.

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The webinar was part of the reason Miller wanted to have Sanders featured on an episode of “Along the Road.” The episode was part of the podcast’s “Nourish” series, which — like the Leader Formation webinar — are particularly aimed at ruling elders and deacons. Miller wanted her conversation with Sanders to provide some background and depth of meaning around the practice of land acknowledgement.

“I think there’s a danger, particularly when there’s something that has passed through the General Assembly, that it could become a box to check, rather than something that comes from the heart,” Miller said in the episode. Indeed, authentically heartfelt intention is a key part of making a land acknowledgement, Sanders explained.

“How and when you give your land acknowledgement, how that looks, where that is, and how we all engage with it, does need to come from our heart,” she said. She went on to explain that there are no formal parameters about how one might include a land acknowledgement in a worship service, for example — it could be an opening, a prayer, a confession, a response to the sermon, a benediction or something else. The important part, she said, is truly recognizing that the land you’re on was once inhabited and tenderly cared for by Indigenous peoples and that those people were forcibly moved and the land was stolen from them.

At the outset of the episode, Sanders offered her own greeting in Potowatomi, which is the Indigenous nation she belongs to. While she is Indigenous herself, Sanders lives and serves on lands that were historically inhabited by other Indigenous nations who she acknowledged in her greeting, referring to those nations with the names they use to refer to themselves.

As the conversation unfolded, Sanders clarified that a land acknowledgement is part of a larger ritual.

“My Indigenous community … and the Indigenous communities that I am familiar with have a ceremony that is called a welcome. A welcome is a two-part ceremony, where one half is the welcome of the host nations — the peoples’ lands that we’re on. And the land acknowledgement is the second part. It’s acknowledgement that we are all guests on that land.”

Layton Williams Berkes, Communications Strategist, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Rick Purdy, Manager, Human Resources, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Jim Quiggins, Strategic Communications Manager, Unification Management Office

Let us pray:

Gracious Lord, you affirmed the worth of every human being. Help us do the same. You loved the unloved and the unlovable. Help us do the same. You set the captive free and consoled the sorrowful. Help us do the same. Amen.