All Souls Unitarian ChurchTulsa, Oklahoma

January/February 2016Volume 15, Issue 4

Truth, Unity & DiversitySimpleGifts

`̀ The time is always right to do what is right.̀ ` —Martin Luther King, Jr.

March With UsMLK, Jr. Parade 2016

Reparationsfor the 1921 Race Riots

Voting is PowerCivil Rights Violations and the Tulsa Sheriff’s Office

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

I Cannot Afford Not to Go to My Church

I was very grateful to see two articles side by side in the December issue of Simple Gifts, one by Mia Wright titled Gratitude, Hold the Peanuts and the other titled I Cannot Afford Your Church, by Marianne Evans-Lombe. The fact that we are engaging in a larger conversation about the economic differences within our family at All Souls is won-derful. I think it is courageous and truly in keeping with our goals and principles.

I started coming to All Souls with my daughter four years ago. As a newly single parent, mourning the loss of one of my closest family members and also that of a dear child-hood friend, as well as finally carrying out a plan to leave a decade old abusive relationship, I was at the time in an extremely dark valley in my life.

I mentioned to a friend that I knew I needed, and would continue to need, some sort of community to help me raise my child. I was alone and afraid and knew that I had a lot of internal work to do in order to be a good parent, which I also needed help with. My friend suggested All Souls and we came the following Sunday. Soon after I attended my first Wednesday Connection class, a grief workshop, which was offered free along with free childcare for the evening. That workshop helped me start the journey toward getting on my feet. It was invaluable. I can’t convey the help, both spiritually and practically, that it provided. But there was no way I could have attended had it not been free.

Since then, I continue on the journey of getting on my feet, and many times I feel guilty for not being able to give back to my church as much as I feel it deserves. This community has provided so much support for my little family; a lot of weeks it gives me the inspiration, hope, and strength I need to carry on. I have made amazing friendships and my daughter is growing up in a community I couldn’t have imagined. I think my attitudes and choices in life would have been very different had I been raised with a love beyond belief, as opposed to the strict Catholic catechism and church that told me I was wrong to begin with.

Many parents in Unitarian Universalists Parents (UUPs) have graciously offered to watch my daughter at various

times when school was out and I had to work. And there was a time when, literally, my lights were kept on because of the grace of our church.

Currently I am happily working part-time in the childcare at All Souls, which has been a blessing in many ways…one, financially, because I can request the meals on Wednesday be deducted from my check. I, like Mia, am always strug-gling in the area of buying groceries and this guarantees us a meal one night a week for which I am especially grateful during those “lean weeks” she talked about.

The job has also allowed me to become closer to many other church members, those who also work and volunteer in childcare and the families of the children I care for there. I love it. I do feel loved and accepted in this family but I am always conscious of being “different” from many other members. I volunteer when and where I can, and on the few occasions when I have any money I put it toward the church operational fund. But I haven’t made a pledge for next year, because I don’t want to make promises I won’t be able to keep; that’s what happened last year.

There have been times I haven’t come to a church service or function because I couldn’t afford the gas to get here, or couldn’t provide a dish or a gift. There have been times other parents have asked for someone to watch their chil-dren and, when I can go to them, I usually offer if I’m avail-able. But after being to several members’ lovely homes in nice neighborhoods, I cringe at the thought of seeing their faces when they drop their children off in the public hous-ing project where I live.

It is a constant balancing act. Between giving help and receiving it. Between being grateful and feeling guilty. Between being part of the community and also separate. Between fitting in and being left out, and “passing” as much as possible.

But All Souls is indispensable in my book. It is and has been a life saver – literally and in more ways than one. I hope to be able to give and to do and to be more to the church someday. And I cannot afford not to come.

—Kayla Williams

*Please note that not all submissions received will be published.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

I Cannot Afford Not to Go to My Church 3

COVER STORY

What is Love Beyond Belief 4

JOURNEYS

Interview with Daniel Smolen 6

Reckoning, Reparations, Reconciliation, Racial Justice 12

Boomtown: An American Journey 16

REVIEWS

An Invitation to Read 18

FAMILY

Picture Perfect 20

TRANSITIONS 22

AT A GLANCE

Sing for Our Schools 23

Published monthly by:

All Souls Unitarian Church2952 S. Peoria Ave.Tulsa, OK 74114

allsoulschurch.org

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Exec. Dir. of MinistryRev. Barbara Prose

Design & LayoutSheba Sanders

Copy EditorsEmily Hecker Judy Jarvis

Editorial Team

On the cover

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Additional ContributorsRev. Marlin Lavanhar Charlie & Martha CantrellDoug FishbackDr. Ronni GreenwoodRuss KirkpatrickMichelle LambKayla Williams

U.S. soldier Pfc. Janelle Zalkovsky provides security while other soldiers survey a newly constructed road in Ibriam Jaffes, Iraq in 2005. (Handout/Reuters)

READY TO BARE YOUR SOUL? Share your expertise, participate in a rational debate, or shed light on your favorite cause by writing us with

story pitches, or better yet, show off your literary skills and pen an article for Simple Gifts! Contact us at communications@allsoulschurch.org

A MESSAGE TO OUR READERS

Dear Readers,

Welcome to our second combined issue! You can look forward to more combined issues in the new year, as we develop and expand our church bulletin. Simple Gifts was created years ago to explore our monthly themes, celebrate our history and keep our community connected. As our on-line viewing audience grows, and the ties that bind us to our friends and supporters in the larger community deepen, we are beginning to shift our focus to explore how our core values at All Souls are relevant to the challenges and opportunities of today. Part of the shift includes the launch of an All Souls blog with interactive articles, comment sections, photos, videos and more. Please expect an email this month, with a link to our new blog, Beyond Belief. When you take a look, please consider posting a comment or two! We imagine a day not too far in the future when our All Souls journal, with its new name, Beyond Belief, will be in yoga studios, doctors’ offices, lobbies of local non-profits, seminary libraries across the country, partner churches around the world, and more. We welcome your feedback, article suggestions, and Letters to the Editor at: communications@allsoulschurch.org.

With Love Beyond Belief,

Rev. Barbara Prose

Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, Senior Minister serves the wider Tulsa community as a member of the Downtown Clergy Association, a board member of the John Hope Franklin Museum for Reconciliation, and the Mayor’s Police and Community Coalition.

Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams and with abolitionists and social reformers in the fields of public education, mental health care, medicine, women’s rights, and civil rights. It is also the home of great writers and thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, and Beatrix Potter. It is the commitments to free inquiry and service to the common good that bring people from all walks of life, who hold many theological perspectives, together in one community. Even though the tradi-tion began in Europe during the Protestant Reformation in the era of John Calvin and Martin Luther, it exists today as a very modern church.

As the world becomes smaller and people are more and more in relationships with people of different faiths and as people learn about different faiths and cultures through the internet, there is an exodus from churches that espouse exclusive claims to the truth. Still, many people are looking for a community that takes ethical and moral issues seriously and gives people the freedom to think, learn, and discover outside the confines of dogma. We encourage our members of all ages to explore the truths of science and other religions and philosophies, to draw on their own direct experiences, and on the arts – to know and connect with what is ultimate in life.

For people who are looking for a church whose religious leaders have all the answers to life’s mysteries…we are not that kind of community. People who are filled with questions that they want to explore in an environment where such questioning is welcome and supported and people who want to work for justice and the transformation of society with others in an intergenerational, interracial, interreligious community, these are the kinds of people who are attracted to our church. The most common phrase I hear from newcomers: “I had no idea there was a church like this.”

All Souls is the largest Unitarian Universalist church in the country and has a national and international following online. We frequently host groups from around the United States who come to learn about how we sustain such a diverse and free community. People are often surprised to find such an inclu-sive and progressive religious community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has always been my contention that in a city with so many conservative and fundamen-talist churches, All Souls is an oasis of progressive thinking that offers the kind of rational, relevant, and engaged spirituality that many are looking to find.

All over our church you will see the words “Love Beyond Belief.” At All Souls love is at the center of our church and we feel strongly that people do not have to believe alike to love alike. The only test of faith one will encounter at All Souls is, “Do your beliefs lead you to love others?” We are very interested in what you do and less concerned about what you say you believe.

COVER STORY

What isLoveBeyondBelief ?By Rev. Marlin Lavanhar

When you have a church that is bound together by a promise rather than a belief sys-tem, you free people to be honest about what they believe and don’t believe. At All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, more than 2,000 members are united by a covenant of love and service. This means that we have Christians, Jews, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, and peo-ple who draw from a mixture of faiths and philosophies, all together in one community.

One member said recently, “After listening to the sermons for two years, I realized it isn’t Jesus that I don’t like; it is the version of Jesus that my mother-in-law used to shove down my throat that I can’t stand.” Another person said, “I don’t believe in God, but I never knew there was a community where there are oth-ers like me...that accepts people who base their values on a human, scientific, and natu-ralistic worldview.” A woman, who years before had suffered a brutal attack and was left blind and with scar tissue covering her face, came to me one morning after church and said, “Pastor, I’ve been sitting in the back of your church for a year now and I want you to know that you have given me back my rela-tionship with God. After I was assaulted, many people told me that ‘it was God’s will,’ that ‘God has a purpose for everything,’ so I stopped believing in God. What kind of God would do this to me or let it happen? Your church has taught me that God did not do this to me, that another human being did it, and that God loves me, because God is love.”

Unitarianism is associated with the Revolutionary War era and Americans like

Originally published in This Land: Summer 2015.

“The different religious traditions of mankind are like the almost infinite number of colors that appear once the divine or simply white light of reality falls on the prism of human experience.” —Raimundo Panikkar

SimpleGifts6 7January/February 2016

addressed. When you’re spending $700,000 on vacations in a year

but don’t have enough money to hire a medical professional to

supervise medical, or you don’t have enough money to hire staff

to keep the staffing levels appropriate, then bad things happen. It

snowballs and ends up costing people their lives, and costing

money, and it’s so unnecessary.

Whoever becomes sheriff needs to look at the contracts that have

been entered into and see if they’re in the best interests of the

county, such as the ICE1 [U.S. Immigration and Customs

Enforcement] contract for housing inmates on ICE1 holds that

increase the jail population way above what it should probably be,

but only because there’s profit to the Sheriff’s Office in having that

contract.

In property foreclosure situations, there’s misapplication of the

appraising rules happening, for people’s benefit. That affects

everybody. That is taking advantage of the poor, taking advantage

of someone who came on bad times because their house was in

foreclosure, only to benefit people who have money. It’s wrong.

And it slows your community from developing. People complain

about the roads, but I’m looking at the millions of dollars that are

being wasted [through abuses]. 2

SG: Is anyone addressing these problems?

DS: What’s disappointing is that right now, we’ve seen a void in

any kind of leadership from the County to come in and make a

decision and ask, “How do we fix the problem?” A lot of the prob-

lems aren’t that hard to fix. How do we get the victims compen-

sated? How do we end the litigation? How do we end the cost and

end the bad exposure that’s going on, and actually recognize the

system has had some serious flaws? What they’ve done for years is

just run from it, and it’s snowballed.

The way the Board of County Commissioners interacts with the

functions of the County – like the Sheriff’s Office – needs to be

revamped. There needs to be some sort of review system in place

to make sure the county commissioners are doing what they’re

statutorily responsible to do. They actually do have a job, and it’s

statutorily mandated that certain things happen, and I don’t

believe those are happening.

SG: You’re a civil litigator. Can you push policy change through

your cases?

DS: One aspect of our work is that we are trying to get compensa-

tion for victims of civil rights violations – loss of a loved one. The

other aspect of it is that I live in Tulsa County; I love Tulsa as a city,

and I hate to see the good old boy cronyism system in place,

because I think it slows the community down as a whole. If you’re

a human being and you’re seeing the things we’re seeing – the

deaths that are occurring – you should have a higher purpose than

just winning cases. I’m seeing things that are very troubling as a

person who lives in the City of Tulsa.

SG: What role do church communities have in effecting the kind

of reform you’re talking about?

DS: These are community issues that are appropriate for any

church to discuss. These are not issues that should divide based

on religious beliefs or backgrounds. As a whole, the community

should not want people dying in the jail. As a whole, people should

want the deputies in the streets trained, and not to be there

because of their financial donations. People in the community as

a whole – rich, poor, black, or white – should want to make sure

the county government is running as efficiently as possible so

those resources can be available to help out where they are needed

to help the community. Everyone has an interest in that. This stuff

is very basic.

SG: What are your thoughts on the We the People petition and

grand jury process?

DS: I was very happy with the process, because it had a lot of com-

munity involvement from the beginning. It was nice to see the

community react and become educated. Tulsa’s had that voice

repressed for so long that it will be great to have it, and I think it

needs to be still stronger. I think Marq Lewis has done a great job

with that, and, again, to have community involvement is really

rewarding for me. Because sometimes it feels like I’m banging my

head against the wall, and no one’s listening, and why do people

not see how wrong this is, or how bad the system is right now?

To have someone in the community get other members of the

community engaged and educated about it is important. We can’t

do it all through litigation. The media plays an important role in it.

Community leaders play an important role in it. Activists,

churches… it has to be something that everyone recognizes.

Attorney Daniel Smolen is a founding partner of Smolen, Smolen &

Roytman (ssrok.com), a Tulsa civil litigation firm founded in 2004.

Smolen represents the family of Eric Harris, the Tulsan shot and

killed by then-reserve deputy Robert Bates during an undercover

sting operation on April 2, 2015. The Harris filing is one of a num-

ber that Smolen has brought or plans to bring against Tulsa County

on claims that include civil rights violations and medical malprac-

tice at the Tulsa County Jail.

The Harris fallout included a citizen petition effort led by Tulsan

Marq Lewis and We the People Oklahoma with the help of attorney

Laurie Phillips (not of SSROK). The highly contested effort led to a

grand jury investigation that handed down misdemeanor charges

against Sheriff Stanley Glanz, who resigned on September 30.

Simple Gifts recently sat down with Smolen at his office to talk

about the Harris case, the importance of citizen engagement, and

some of the continuing challenges facing county government.

SG: Your firm has some legal history with the Tulsa County

Sheriff ’s Office. Now that Stanley Glanz has resigned, do you feel

a sense of accomplishment?

DS: We had been litigating with them for almost a decade. And

some of the very same issues that became interesting to the com-

munity all of a sudden had been going on for years, but no one

knew they were going on.

It certainly wasn’t our goal to get Glanz specifically out of office,

but it was our goal to remedy a system that we felt was killing peo-

ple unnecessarily. If that’s what had to happen for people to wake

up and see there was a real problem, and if it had to be as startling

and undeniable as the Harris shooting, then that’s what had to

happen, and Glanz had to go from office.

But it really isn’t just one person. The whole system is broken. It’s

a multitude of factors and people in decision-making positions

who could easily alter their thinking, recognize the past problems,

and come up with pretty simple ways to solve the problems. And

ultimately, it would save the taxpayer a lot of money.

SG: What still needs to be fixed?

DS: Jail operations and jail medical services absolutely have to be

JOURNEYS

Interview with

DANIEL SMOLENBy Doug Fishback

1. The mention of ICE refers to contracts that the Sheriff’s Office has arranged with the federal government to house immigration detainees at the jail. These contracts provide revenue, historically at a daily rate greater than that paid for municipal and federal inmates, but their role in burden-ing jail operations has been questioned.

2. Shortly after this interview, the Frontier and NewsOn6 jointly reported irregularities with the handling of asset seizures conducted by the Sheriff’s Office. The outlets reported that a number of cases had not been randomly assigned to judges per district court policy, but had been routed to District Judge James Caputo, who had formerly worked as a Sheriff’s deputy and whose daughter is a civilian employee of the Sheriff’s Office.

JOURNEYS

ONE RACE:THE HUMAN RACE M A R T I N L U T H E R K I N G , J R . P A R A D E 2 0 1 6

MARCH WITH US.Monday, January 18

Let’s show our unity in diversity. Wear clothes that represent who you are culturally, professionally, religiously: police officer, veteran, Muslim, Jew, Unitarian, Christian, Native American, African American, Republican, OSU Fan.

Look for the All Souls van and float near John Hope Franklin and MLK Blvds. Parade begins at 11:00 a.m.

BLACK LIVES MATTER | VOTING IS POWER

JAMES BROWN MARVIN GAYE MICHAEL JACKSON WHITNEY HOUSTON LENNY KRAVITZ KANYE WEST

SCOTT JOPLIN BLIND LEMON JEFFERSON THOMAS DORSEY ROSETTA THARPE SAM COOKE ETTE JAMES

JOURNEYSOULFULFEBRUARY 28

The history of black music in America

IN HONOR OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH

ALL SOULS PRESENTS

Soulful Journey began as a way to share the unparalleled and often overlooked story of how Africans and African Americans have created music in America for over 400 years as a means of survival, communication, and social change, profoundly shaping our nation’s history, religion, politics, and society. Inspired by Dr. Teresa Reed’s book, The Holy Profane, and co-written by Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, Dr. Teresa Reed, and David B. Smith, All Souls is proud to present Soulful Journey to honor, uplift, and participate in this rich musical heritage.

SimpleGifts12 13January/February 2016

R E P A R A T I O N S

How do people make sense of and respond to his-torical injustice and come to support reparations for the immoral actions of their ancestors? These are the questions that motivated my research into the ways in which White Tulsans make sense of and respond to the 1921 Tulsa Race “Riot” and the debate about reparations that emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As I argue below, the answers to these questions have to do with our ambitions for our future collective selves, and have rele-vance for our continued pursuit of racial justice.

Several years ago, I conducted a research study in which I interviewed White Tulsans about their beliefs about the riot and reparations. Reparations for the Tulsa Race Riot were, and are, deeply unpopular among most White Tulsans, but there was a supportive, strong, vocal group composed of members of the All Souls congregation, Tulsa Metropolitan Ministries, and others. These folks mobilized community

action to set a moral example and make good on the repara-tive actions recommended by the Tulsa Race Riot Commis-sion. How can we make sense of these different responses – support for, and opposition to – the Commission’s findings and recommendations for reparations? I’ve drawn on some key principles and concepts from social psychology to help me make sense of these differences.

Social psychologists have explained how who we are to-day is shaped not only by who we were, but also by who we want “us” to become. Our desired and feared future collec-tive selves drive the choices we make today, including the ways in which we make sense of events from our shared pasts. Our collective selves, those parts of our self-concept anchored in our group memberships, include not only our past collective selves, but also our desired and feared future collective selves. Because our collective selves are strongly connected to the past, evidence that our ingroup members

perpetrated historical injustice is painful. It casts a power-ful negative light on the ingroup image; it implies guilt by association. People do not like to feel guilty, and so when it’s possible to deny collective responsibility for historical injustice, people will. Typically they will minimize the harm done, distance themselves from the perpetrating group, or blame the victim by claiming the victimized group deserved it or brought the violence onto themselves. By doing so, they can excise their ingroup’s immoral actions from their collec-tive narrative, protect the ingroup image, maintain a pos-itive connection to the past, and consequently, a positive collective identity. In the research I did on White people’s responses to evidence uncovered in the Tulsa Riot Commis-sion’s investigation into the events of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, this is precisely what I found. Here is an example:

Most of the people alive, in fact all of the people alive today, had no relationship to the riot and that [monetary repara-

tions] in effect penalizes people for something they didn’t do and rewards people who didn’t really suffer. There’s no way to go back and pay the people who suffered at the time....A few, most of the survivors today are so old that, well they were just kids. Some of them were two or three years old and their knowledge of that riot is hearsay. They were too young. I think there may be three or four that are still alive today who were old enough to know what was going on, but by and large, most of them were not.

But not all interviewees distanced the present from the past in this way, and not all of them denied responsibility for re-parative actions. Indeed, many interviewees talked about present-day White Tulsa’s prosperity as intimately tied to the destruction of 1921. For example:

Tulsa developed in a lot of ways since the 1920s. All of which I have benefited from....Even though I moved here, I benefit

by Ronni Greenwood

JOURNEYS

Reckoning, Reconciliation, Racial Justice,

Making Sense of the Tulsa Race “Riot”

In A Promised Land (2015) by Shawn Michael Warren, DeVos Place, ArtPrize

SimpleGifts14

from. Those folks who got their homes...burned down, never repaired, the insurance companies didn’t pay them back, they had to start over from scratch without any of the benefit of that....But the rest of Tulsa...got to continue and never had to come up with money or effort to actually rebuild...If you could imagine that the City had said ‘this was wrong and we’ll pay for it’, that would have been done and those things would have moved forward. Instead, the monies that might have been used [to rebuild] were put back into the infrastruc-ture of the rest of Tulsa, which I benefit from. I’m benefiting...from the choice not to repair that district.

So, in my interviews, I heard two variations of stories about yesterday and today. Some people created distance and disconnections, while others incorporated the riot and its aftermath into their narratives of who we are. These differ-ences seemed intimately connected to interviewees’ own desired and feared future collective selves. People who de-nied responsibility by association feared a future collective self in which the riot and reparations would stigmatize – bring shame onto – Tulsa’s image. In contrast, those whose narratives tied present to past talked about reparations as an opportunity to redeem an already stained ingroup im-age. Who we want to become, and who we fear becoming, drives the ways in which we make sense of the past and the types of actions we take to either change or maintain the status quo. For example, one person said:

So I think, you know, Oklahomans are very sensitive – es-pecially the ones who have been here a long time – are very sensitive about their history and they’re very sensitive about any sort of negative image. I think a lot of that has to do with the Depression and the Grapes of Wrath image...that’s been one of the arguments for instance about the memorial, why would you want a memorial to a riot like that when it’s just going to bring people in and get them mad all over again?

In contrast, White Tulsans who drew strong connections from past to present were the same folks who were dissat-isfied with Tulsa’s and Oklahoma’s current-day reputation. These folks saw reparations as an identity opportunity: an opportunity to redeem a stained ingroup image, and an opportunity to achieve a desired future collective self. For example, in response to being asked how learning about the riot made her feel, one woman said:

It made me feel like I’d lived in a bed of racism and hate, and what the nation thinks of us, you know, just the stereotypes....that we’re a bunch of backward bigots you know, and that whole barefoot, overalls wearin’, shotgun wieldin’, moon-shine drinkin’, hittin’ people over the back of the head with a shovel- type. Sometimes...people...ask me if buffalos still roam the prairie, do we still have tepees? People don’t really

know much about Oklahoma. If that’s what they’re learning about us, then it’s important that we deal with it. It’s not just for image, it’s about who we are. Like I said, the overall issue that no one seems to get, is that this is our community and we need to take care of it.

Among those of us who are dissatisfied with the status quo of intergroup relations between Black and White Tulsans, reparations were an opportunity for social change.

“We [had] the opportunity to … show the rest of the world what you do now you’ve got this hidden piece of history that becomes known and acknowledged. We had an opportunity to set an example for the rest of the cities around the coun-try...We could have created here in Tulsa, taken that race riot and created something really positive that would have shown, yeah, you know what? That’s part of who we are and we’re going to do something to make it right.”

We can debate the success of the movement for reparations for the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot in achieving its goals, but this movement did lay a firm foundation for today’s and tomor-row’s collective action for racial justice and reconciliation in our individual lives, in the life of the All Souls Congregation, and beyond. Although it hasn’t been easy, and sometimes it’s been uncomfortable, in the years since the movement for reparations, All Souls has set an example of racial in-tegration and cooperation for Tulsa and beyond. And yet, there is much work to do. The intersection of race with class has produced unprecedented inequalities of wealth and poverty. Mass incarceration and police brutality are urgent, urgent racial justice matters. #Blacklivesmatter and #Say-hername remind us that while we may be (imperfectly) working toward racial equality, there is much more work to be done beyond our own four walls. Who do you want “us” to become? What is your desired and feared future collective identity for All Souls? For Tulsa? For Oklahoma? As one in-terviewee said, “You have to ask yourself, what do I do as an ongoing reparation?” What part will you play in the ongoing struggle for racial justice? How will our children’s children make sense of our actions, and what will we leave them to shape their own collective narratives and their own feared and desired future collective selves?

JOURNEYS

Dr. Ronni Greenwood grew up in Skiatook, Oklahoma. She received her PhD in Social/Personality Psychology at the City University of New York. Dr Greenwood lives in Ireland and is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Limerick.

All Souls is preparing to hold a house meeting campaign in February to listen to the stories of our congregation’s families and the challenges that we are all facing. This action will help All Souls better understand the needs of our members, so we can become more responsive and identify larger issues that are impacting our families and neighborhoods.

This campaign is part of the work All Souls is doing together with over a dozen local congregations and non-profit organizations as part of the Tulsa Sponsoring Committee, a new chapter of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), which uses strategic organizing to advocate for change in Tulsa and OK. The IAF is the nation’s largest network of local faith and community-based organizations focused on developing citizen leadership, building relationships across traditional boundaries, and achieving lasting change.

All Souls is taking advantage of this unique opportunity to work together with an interfaith coalition to put our values and traditions of social justice into action through public policy that better meets the needs of Tulsa’s families. Our house meeting campaign will help us identify the issues facing All Souls families as well as families across the wider community. We will review these stories within our congregation and with the other institutions of the IAF/Tulsa Sponsoring Committee, and then we will use the results to create a mission agenda for ongoing action.

The IAF/Tulsa Sponsoring Committee provides us with a proven model, leadership training and development to move beyond direct service and take strategic action with civic leaders and public officials to address the underlying causes of injustice and scarcity in our community.

Listening Begins at ChurchJoin our house meetings in February to share your story. We need YOU to sign-up to attend, so we can hear your experiences.

Look for more information and sign-ups in late January. For more information or to get involved, email IAF@allsoulschurch.org.

Help us transform Tulsa into a community of compassion and justice.

• Transforming Tulsa through trusting relationships between institutions and people of diverse backgrounds• Bridging Barriers that Divide by fostering honest conversations about real experiences and forming action teams to bring about change related to shared needs• A Proven Model of Civic Engagement thriving in numerous cities around the country with success over many decades

DEMOCRACY • RELATIONSHIPS • LEADERSHIP • SOCIAL IMPACT

industrialareasfoundation.org

Personal Stories. Public Action.

17January/February 2016

Boomtown Birth As 2013 was fading quickly, at a quaint cabin community east of Tulsa, the first, tiny shimmers of movie magic started to take shape for what would become Boomtown: An American Journey.

Michelle Place, the brain trust for the local historical organization, was there, toasting in 2014, in style. Michelle and Andy Kinslow had connected years before over mutual admiration of their beloved alma mater, the University of Arkansas, and their passionate pursuit of preserving Tulsa’s architectural gems.

That introduction, champagne toasts, noisemakers, and cigars, led Michelle and me to lay out plans for making a short promotional film, pro-filing the educational work at Tulsa Historical Society and Museum.

Film ProductionPreproduction started a couple of months later, and principal filming was set for July 2014. Interviews were scheduled with Tulsa luminaries; dozens of extras were called to the historic Council Oak Tree, and other filming locations, and despite rain and heat, the camera rolled July 10th.

Once the interviews began, it didn’t take long to see that the scope of this short project could probably become something more – much more. Maybe we were entranced with Clifton Taulbert’s account of Greenwood, or was it Sharon King Davis reminding us of our Native American history? I think it was all of those things and a lot more.

The shorter film was made, then another full production schedule of more interviewees and filming was planned. The eight minute Voices of History still has life, showcasing the educational work at Tulsa Historical Society. Without the Voices footprint, Boomtown would have had no path. The path that emerged is one of violence and riches, booms and busts, and the inde-fatigable spirit of those who have gone before us.

Critical Review and ReceptionTulsa World says Boomtown “takes head-on the issues, good and bad, of Tulsa’s history.” And, it “...needs to be seen by all Tulsans, even those who have lived here all their lives. It ought to be shown in all schools.”

Boomtown premiered to a capacity crowd at Tulsa’s famed Circle Cinema with thousands more buying tickets – selling out the theater night after night for nearly two months. With an audience of more than a million viewers, RSU Television, Tulsa’s public TV station, also showcased Boomtown.

Boomtown is an official selection at the Trail Dance Film Festival, where it will be screened in January. It is also being presented to judges who will decide Emmy nominations.

Russ Kirkpatrick is Executive Producer/Producer of Boomtown: An American Journey. Russ is a 20-year veteran TV/radio journal-ist. He also has a background in financial services. Russ moved to Tulsa in 2008 to run a large investment/insurance company office. Russ and Andy Kinslow started Kirkpatrick & Kinslow Productions in 2013.

Film CrewBoomtown was produced, written, directed, filmed, and scored by independent filmmak-ers in Tulsa and elsewhere in Oklahoma. The film’s music is from composer Aaron Fulkerson. Fulkerson directed the Tulsa Signature Symphony at Tulsa Community College for the orchestral score and per-formed other music for Boomtown: An American Journey.

Screening at All Souls Wednesday Connections Kickoff on

January 13, 2015

JOURNEYS

SimpleGifts18

tem of stints and bypasses: “The great idol of this reality is our faith not in America, for we have essentially lost our sense of what it should mean to be American…Our great idol is our faith in capitalism as an economic system but also a social and ethical system.”

As citizens of Nature, White maintains we fail ourselves in numerous ways. We call upon the rhetoric and logic of technical, scientific, and bureaucratic systems even though we suspect they might have caused the problem in the first place. Finally, we walk into voting booths to choose between our interests and our beliefs. And in America, beliefs win.

White approaches the idea of a God – but not the kind that expects us to be faithful or rewards us for abandoning our intelligence to believe the unbelievable. Instead, his God lies within the very notion that creations, human or other-wise, are splendid – an aesthetic indulgence that might just lead us toward the next American sublime…because we are at our root spiritual and creative animals. White warns if contemporary environmentalism doesn’t break out of its technocratic trance, inevitable fates will befall us.

White leaves us with a bit of advice for our journey ahead. He points to the value of redefining work into vocations, of reconsidering what we principally consider to be Holy and beautiful, and of directing our large brains toward expand-ing the project of Being rather than the GDP. And for a model of such wisdom in our world? White finds none.

…White believes the purpose of thought is not to locate Truth but rather to make it ever less convenient to lie to ourselves… White doesn’t spoon-feed us remedies for the same reason you can’t feed breakfast to a sleeping person. You must first wake them up.

Review by Ozzie Zehner, from the University of California – Berkeley reviews Curtis White’s book, “The Barbaric Heart: Faith, Money, and the Crisis of Nature.”

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Nobody is going to mistake Ta-Nehisi Coates for an opti-mist, but his latest book, Between the World and Me, might not be as utterly bleak as some critics see it. Depending on where you draw the line between pessimism and realism, you might be able to appreciate the book as a bravely grounded assessment of the state of the Black struggle in America. Coates, whose equal-opportunity literary influ-ences include Dre and Nas, speaks from the tradition of keeping it real.

And real it should be; Between is a book on a mission. At a trim but fertile 176 pages, it is a soaringly written open letter from Coates to his teenage son. Handing down family his-tory, Coates recounts his own journey from the dicey Baltimore streets of his childhood to his awakening at Howard University, and then to a successful career as a cor-respondent for The Atlantic and, finally, the wonders and terrors of Black fatherhood.

But far more than biography, Between is a steely, unblinking meditation on the ever-present dangers that come with liv-ing in a Black body in the United States. Shadowing every page is the threat of racism – not the abstract racism of col-lege classrooms or the slimy racism of employment dis-crimination, but the brute racism that “dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle...”

Coates’ focus on the visceral is timely testimony against an America in the midst of a killing spree: Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Sandra Bland, and so many others – including, here in Tulsa, Eric Harris.

The perception of Coates’ book as hopeless must stem from the fact that he does not offer us any sweeping reassurances. Raised in a secular home, he did not develop faith in an almighty God who would bear you up and, one day, cast down the enemy. Nor does Coates subscribe to the romanti-cized idea that the black struggle is a long march toward inevitable justice: “The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine.”

Coates’ world is not, however, devoid of affirmation. We just have to take it where we can, in measured sips – in the integ-rity of a struggle uncompromisingly fought, in the quiet joys of family, and in the unexpected connections that we share with others – as during a pivotal trip to Paris late in the book. Coates’ struggle is not a matter of spiritual destiny, but of material necessity. It is waged not across eras, but in moments. It is unlikely to lead us to any mountaintop, but it is one that we can, at least, meet with meaningful resolve.

Review by Doug Fishback

February 2016

The Barbaric Heart: Faith, Money and the Crisis of Nature by Curtis White

In The Barbaric Heart, White takes our hands and guides us through the haunted house of human history to search for the origin of our environmental ills. White draws his flash-light across a mechanical beating heart of magnificent pro-portions. He interrogates how greater humanity has kept the Barbaric Heart beating by maintaining an elusive sys-

Between the World and Me Review by Michiko Kakutani 7-9-2015 From New York Times, Books of the Times

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book, Between the World and Me, delivers a searing dispatch to his son; on what it means to be black in America today.

Mr. Coates’s expressionistic book is a sequel of sorts and a bookend to The Beautiful Struggle, his evocative 2008 memoir of growing up in Baltimore, the son of a Vietnam vet and former Black Panther, provides a showcase for Mr. Coates’s emotional reach as a writer and his both lyric and gritty prose.

Between the World and Me (which takes its title from a Richard Wright poem) offers an abbreviated portrait of the author’s life at home, focusing mainly on the fear he felt growing up. Fear of the police... And fear of the streets… The “need to be always on guard” was exhausting, “the slow siphoning of essence,” Mr. Coates writes.

Mr. Coates — a national correspondent for The Atlantic — contrasts this world of the streets with the “other world” of suburbia. He associates this clichéd suburban idyll with what he calls “the Dream” —an exclusionary White dream

REVIEWS

An Invitation to ReadJanuary 2016

Love Music? Movies? Theater?Books?

Tell us why your cultural passion reflects All Souls values and expresses your spiritual self with a

review for Simple Gifts!

Send us your thoughts atcommunications@allsoulschurch.org

rooted in a history of subjugation and privilege.

Sometimes Mr. Coates can sound as though he’s ignoring changes that have taken place over the decades, telling his son that “you and I” belong to “that ‘below’” in the racial hierarchy of American society: “That was true in 1776. It is true today.” He writes that “the plunder of Black life was drilled into this country in its infancy and reinforced across its history, so that plunder has become an heirloom, an intelligence, a sentience, a default setting to which, likely to the end of our days, we must invariably return.” Such asser-tions skate over the very real — and still dismally insuffi-cient — progress that has been made.

He points out that his son has expectations, hopes — “your dreams, if you will” — that he did not have at his age, and that he, himself, does not know “what it means to grow up with a Black president, social networks, omnipresent media, and Black women everywhere in their natural hair.”

“The grandness of the world,” he tells Samori, sounding a more optimistic note, “the real world, the whole world, is a known thing for you.”

Each January, I struggle with what feels like an important de-cision. What should I do with the holiday photo cards I’ve re-ceived? Choices include storing the cards with the Christmas decorations to view again next year, keeping them a bit closer such as in an album or memory box, or (bah humbug) throw-ing them away with discarded paper and tinsel.

During my college years, I spent many hours searching for the perfect Christmas card. This winter ritual involved driving to a small downtown bookstore, purchasing a tall dirty chai from the coffee counter, and looking at boxes of cards promising holiday cheer. The perfect card had many qualities: touch-ing but not sappy, scenic but not overdone, spiritual but not religious, and of course – very different from the year before. In my mind, this card would remind people how much they missed me, how life wasn’t the same since I moved away from my home town. Friends and family would smile and think of me fondly, nodding thoughtfully as they pictured me com-pleting another successful semester.

The birth of my daughter changed it all. The search process simplified … now I just had to select a recent picture of my precious child and show her off to the world. The background design didn’t matter, the sight of her perfect smile and blond curls, aged by exactly one year, would be enough to melt hearts and possibly even inspire donations to her 529 college fund.

When my daughter was two years old I became pregnant with my son. A few months into the pregnancy we received the news he would be born with Down syndrome. My high-risk OB doctor called me at work with the news, stating she had waited until 3:30 p.m. in the afternoon “so she wouldn’t ruin my whole day.” I knew my husband wouldn’t be home from work for another hour, so I decided to drive to a friend’s house for support until he came home. In an attempt to be helpful, my friend searched the Internet for pictures of children with

DS to show me how beautiful they were, but I just cried and looked away.

The first Christmas after my son was born, I was still emotion-ally tender and mourning the son I thought I was supposed to have … a future engineer, pharmacist, or lawyer (well, maybe not a lawyer.) I planned to celebrate the season with my usual photo card, but a thought crept into my mind. I was new at navigating this journey through special needs parenting, and was concerned that a photo card could cause people to re-spond to his image the same way I did initially, with sadness, confusion, and/or even pity. I never considered not including my son in the photo card, but was still processing the grief that came with having a child with facial features associated with a chromosomal disorder.

I mentioned this to my husband, asking specifically, “What if we send our Christmas card to friends and the picture of our son makes them sad?” This was a heartfelt question accom-panied by tears on my part. His response? “If a Christmas card with a picture of our family makes them sad, well, they can go F*CK themselves.”

Oh my. I had no words, just more tears. But rather than feeling sad I started to laugh so hard I cried. While I was busy overan-alyzing small decisions and worrying about how people might respond to my card, my husband crudely but eloquently stat-ed that none of that mattered. What matters is that my son is perfect, in spirit, ability, and appearance. His almond shaped eyes squint when he dances to bluegrass, his low-set ears lis-ten for Daddy coming home from work, and his squishy nose seeks out freshly made cookies. He is exactly who he is meant to be, and my cards show the world how much he is loved.

The holiday season has ended, but while it often puts pres-sure on parents … expectations of travel, shopping, gifting, and more... this year I chose not to try to impress others, but to embrace images of my loving husband and children. We are not picture perfect, but our family is exactly as it should be.

Now, don’t forget to send me your updated address for next year. And if you received a card, I might be looking for it on your refrigerator … no pressure.

Follow our journey on www.facebook.com/arlonaut

FAMILY

Picture Perfectby Michelle Lamb

Michelle Lamb has been a member of All Souls for 10 years. She is married to Josh and is the mother of Annette and Arlo and works as a pharmacist in the area pediatric behavioral health.

We are not picture perfect, but our family is exactly as it should be.

23January/February 2016

Everybody knows Tulsa Public Schools are hurting. Repeated funding cuts continue to rob teachers and students of much needed classroom teaching materials. The number of teach-ers dwindles as class sizes swell and so on and so on. It’s all pretty depressing.

The schools we serve are in lower income neighborhoods and experience special challenges when it comes to atten-dance, teacher and student turnover, reading test scores, and more. The underfunding of education experienced in recent years compounds these already difficult circum-stances. So, what’s a soul to do?

Here’s a thought: Come to the All Souls Partners in Education Sing for Our Schools. You’ll have way too much fun singing along to your favorite tunes, accompanied by All Souls musicians and song leaders – best of all, you’ll be helping our three partner schools. Our mission at PIE is to help in every way we can to channel resources, both human and material, into our partner schools.

This is the second year for the sing-a-long. On its way to becoming the signature fundraising event for PIE, Sing for Our Schools benefits Gilcrease Elementary, Jackson Elementary, and McLain Seventh Grade Academy.

The inaugural Sing for Our Schools was a resounding suc-cess. The feedback from attendees was, to say the least, enthusiastic. We filled Emerson Hall with music and voices singing old favorites like: Hey Jude, I’ll Fly Away, Oklahoma, and This Land Is Your Land. Rev. Marlin Lavanhar emceed the event and added his special brand of positive energy.

And if the sing-a-long wasn’t enough, PIE threw in a silent auction of desserts featuring marvelous confections from fine Tulsa restaurants like: Elote, The Chalkboard, Polo Grill and many more. Some of All Souls’ gourmet cooks stepped up to donate their after dinner delights. Some attendees shared their desserts after the sing-a-long, while others took home their prize dishes to serve at Super Bowl parties. There were no leftovers.

What better way to help our schools than with great songs and great sweet treats. You’ll find Sing for Our Schools may be the most fun anyone can have on a Friday night in February.

Save the Date: Friday, February 5th, Emerson Hall, 7:00 to 10:00 pm. Admission is $10.00, more if you can, less if necessary. Libations will be available for donations.

Songs and SweetsBy Charlie and Martha Cantrell

AT A GLANCE

TransitionsDecember 2015

BIRTHS:Congratulations to these All Souls parents on the birth of their children.

Mary Jane and Gary Lindaman on the birth of their grandson, Everett Bradley Lindaman on December 4, 2015.

DEATHS:Deepest condolences to these All Souls members on the loss of their loved ones.

Shannan Williams on the loss of her grandmother, Helen Williamson on December 5, 2015.

Jim and Judy Jarvis on the loss of Judy’s mother, Virginia June DeCamp on December 6, 2015.

Teresa Osborn on the loss of her brother, Randy Osborn on December 8, 2015.

Sara Carlson on the loss of her husband, David Carlson on December 20, 2015.

If know of a transition in the life of an All Souls member, please let us know by emailing, nogundare@allsoulschurch.org

NEW MEMBERS:Join us in welcoming our new members

Thomas Dooley, Angela Easter, Kelly Jennings, Garry McBerryhill, Teresa McBerryhill, Anah Newman, David Newman, Hope Wilkerson

Thomas Dooley Angela Easter

Kelly Jennings Garry & Teresa McBerryhill

David & Anah Newman Hope Wilkerson

David Hjalmar CarlsonAugust 9, 1929 - December 20, 2015

David taught 8th-grade church

school for 18 years at All Souls

Unitarian Church, where he was

also an organizer of the Religion in

Action Committee as well as other

church committees.

All Souls Grief Groupmeets the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m.

In our monthly grief group, you will discover the profound ways myth can support resilience. Addressing grief in a group setting deepens our experience to explore how the wellspring of the unconscious can guide us through the necessary encounter with meaninglessness and suffering. We will examine – through story, art, writing, and reflective exercises – how changing our myth of grieving can make deep, necessary, personal, and social changes. This group will meet 7:00 p.m. the third Thursday of each month in Thoreau Lounge, and will be facilitated by Kay Todd.

Time sensitive information.Pease deliver promptly.

2952 S Peoria Ave

Tulsa, Ok 74114

December at All SoulsTree Trimming Party &Christmas Eve Candle Light Service