Sacred Ground blog archive
Sacred Ground in the New Year
By Lallie Lloyd In this season of Epiphany, when the church celebrates Jesus’ birth and the revelation of God’s love to the wider world, it’s appropriate for us to reflect on how to continue to increase the impact of Sacred Ground, The Episcopal Church’s film-based dialogue series on the histories and legacies of racism in…
Sacred Ground: The Spirit Will Mess with You
By Michelle Dayton My story about Sacred Ground will read like those pharmaceutical ads: exclaiming how wonderful it is, followed by a warning: Spirit shows up, and she messes with you. The story that I told myself before Sacred Ground was that I couldn’t be racist because I engaged in cultural competency and implicit bias…
On Sacred Ground: Becoming Beloved Community Across Different Kinds of Difference
By Lallie Lloyd In an August webinar for facilitators, the Rev. Nora Boerner, the Rev. Canon Meg Wagner, and the Rev. David Ware joined a conversation about Sacred Ground as a place where people are meeting across different kinds of difference and learning skills for brave conversations in their wider communities. Boerner and Wagner both…
Sacred Ground and Pilgrimage
By Barbara Van Cleve By most people’s standards I had a very good education, but it took only one session of Sacred Ground for me to recognize that my excellent high school and college teachers had misrepresented American racial history. Over the following nine weeks, through our readings and videos, I registered growing annoyance—even anger—at…
Sacred Ground inspires coalition for all
By the Rev. Margot Critchfield It was Michael Brown’s death in August 2014, and the subsequent Ferguson uprising, that changed my life. Like many other progressive and privileged White women, I’d been outraged and horrified by the murders of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, but not enough to change. The circumstances around Michael Brown’s death…
Sacred Ground Action Group
By Julia Wight People were shocked and devastated by what was happening in this country: men and women of color murdered by police, members of a synagogue shot indiscriminately, attacks on Asians, Muslims, LGBTQ+ community members, and mass shootings, including of our most vulnerable children. It was in this environment, culminating in the murder of…
Finding Full Communion on Sacred Ground
By the Rev. Maria Tjeltveit I feel twice blessed by a Full Communion Sacred Ground program on Zoom. Every other Monday, seven of us serve as facilitators for an afternoon group (with three dialogue circles) and an evening group (with four circles) with about 50 participants. We are Episcopalians, Moravians, Lutherans, and other clergy and…
Nebraska proves fertile soil for Sacred Ground
By Noelle Ptomey and Lesley Dean Known by some as a flyover state, Nebraska is worth a look to see how to imbed Sacred Ground in a conservative-leaning culture. Located in the middle of the country, we are a small, predominantly rural diocese made up of 51 congregations spread out over 77,000 square miles, with…
Sacred Ground: Transformation on the Journey
By Mark Edwards and Avril Barker The website for St. John’s Episcopal Church, Norwood Parish, Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Maryland, proclaims, “Everything we do at St. John’s is done through the lens of building community—helping people to connect to people. Whether we worship, learn, grow, or serve, everything is meant to help us grow into deeper community…
