Welcoming Rev. Derrick McQueen to Lab/Shul’s Days of Awe Ritual Team
Two priests and two rabbis walked into a park in Harlem yesterday, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, masked but not muted. We came to raise our voices for justice.
Yesterday marked the end of one important journey as the next one starts today.
Friends, colleagues, and spiritual leaders in upper Manhattan joined me in Morningside Park yesterday – Rev. Derrick McQueen, Rev. Eugene Palmore, and Rabbi Mira Rivera. While we were casting a circle on a large rock, joined by friends from our communities, more of us were with us on Zoom, as Shira Kline, Naomi Less, and our team helped broadcast our “Rise from Rubble” ritual. We came to rise from the rubble of our bloody histories and baffling realities, to raise up our voices and hopes, standing in solidarity, together.
One hour and many tears later, we left behind an altar of our rocks and rubble, each stone and shell representing our specific sorrows; each one a cornerstone for the future of the home of equity and dignity we are committed to build.
Today, the building begins, again. Today we take another step on this journey of repair, our personal and public reckoning, recommitted to consoling each other’s pain and raising each other up.
The Sabbath that begins tonight is known as Shabbat Nachamu – the Sabbath of Consolation. Named for the first lines from the prophecy of Isaiah chanted this shabbat, we are reminded to come out of the grief with hope – to console each other, to be each other’s source of strength.
“Comfort, comfort, my people” pleads the prophet, urging us to rise up to the most divine in our nature and rise above the fear of others, to offer kindness, to hold hands, as we move from mourning our past towards manifesting our future.
It’s been the Lab/Shul tradition to begin our season of High and Holy Days of Awe on this day of marking our destroyed temples and traumatic memories. We build up from the broken, committed to living our personal and public lives as sacred shrines of our best selves.
This year, mid pandemic, mid national uprising, we begin this annual pilgrimage, different than any we had taken before.
We are so honored to welcome Rev. Derrick McQueen, Ph.D, a mentor and friend to so many of us, pastor of the oldest African American Presbyterian Church in Harlem, to our ritual team for this entire season of atonement. Rev. Derrick will join us in leading worship, preaching, teaching and co-creating this season of reflection and renewal.
Please watch this short video that Rev. Derrick and I filmed following our ritual in the park yesterday.
Rev. Derrick will be joined by more artists and activists, teachers and healers, helping us all make sense of this time, as we rise to the critical challenges ahead of us.
Our theme for this year is SHUVU – the Hebrew word proclaimed by our prophets, calling on us to wake up and to reckon, to change our ways and to rise up for good.
More on our plans, guest leaders, theme and tracks coming up in the weeks ahead. We just wanted you to have a glimpse into the upcoming season, and a taste of prophetic consolation.
For one more taste – if you have not yet, please watch President Obama’s Eulogy for John Lewis, held yesterday in Atlanta, honoring the prophetic legacy of this “founding father of a fuller, fairer, better America.”
Our journey up the steps to the Days of Awe, with reckoning, with resilience and with truth – begins today, from the rubble. May we rise gently above all challenges and meet each day with the spirit of courage, compassion and resolve.
Sabbath wishes of healing, consolation, safety and serenity for all,
Amichai Lau-Lavie
