In a Dark Time, Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win!

A sermon by the Rev. Connie Yost
11/20/16

First, I want to say that I know many of you are concerned about the recent election and what it may mean for the future of our country, our democracy, and our people. I share your anxiety and disbelief. November 9 was especially hard for me because in the midst of what I thought was the impossible happening, a very good friend of mine passed away. So I, too, am reeling from a world seemingly turned upside down and very dark.

My topic for this sermon - inequality - which I had been planning all along, is even more crucial and timely today. I wish I could say that we have some reason for hope that policies with this new administration and Congress will work for the good of all people, especially those in poverty. But I cannot say that I see much chance of that.

What I do hope is that we can turn our disbelief, our outrage, our fear and our anxieties into a renewed commitment to work for justice. This is my prayer and my hope, and I hope that you will join me in this.

What this election has made clear to me is the deep disenfranchisement of working people who have experienced the downward effects of the last decades of our economic policies. In a very sad way it comes as no surprise that someone outside the political system, making promises to restore jobs and communities to some past idyllic time, would appeal to so many.

I can only hope that when it becomes clear that new policies have made things even worse, that more Americans will stand up and fight for justice.

We cannot ignore the fact that a white man who brazenly trumpeted his xenophobic, sexist and racist beliefs won this election. It is not all about our failed economic policies. For some, it was the backlash against eight years of a black man in the Presidency. For some, it was the fear of a woman in the Presidency. And surely it was also the rush of white America to find someone to blame.

On Friendship

Ministerial Meditations

by The Rev. Connie Yost 

March 10, 2016

Jan and Me

On Friendship

My friend Jan recently gave me a birthday card, which perhaps doesn’t sound very remarkable except for two things:  1) it wasn’t my birthday and 2) she thanked me and said “I love you very much.”

I have known Jan for about 40 years, and though I moved away from Seattle where she continued to live, I tried to keep in touch with her when I came back to visit.  In the beginning of our friendship, I wasn’t aware that she had a neurological condition.  But over the years, she became progressively more unable to take care of herself.  For years, she lived in a little rented house near Seward Park.  She enjoyed cooking and gardening and her cat, Baby.  She had help that came in a few times a week.  Then she started to have falls, and surgeries, and a stroke.  On the phone one day she told me that she had had to move from the little house into an adult family home on Beacon Hill.  Though it was hard to give up the independence that she had had, the worst thing was that she couldn’t take Baby with her.  A cat person myself, I grieved for her.

Jan lived in that first adult family home for about 5 years, then was told she was moving one morning.  She never did know why.  The new adult family home was visually unappealing to me, located next to an auto repair shop with a dump of tires visible in the back yard.  But Jan became quite attached to the older woman who cared for her, and she had a large room to herself.  All seemed well for a couple of years until her caregiver went to the hospital for back surgery.  A new, younger couple took over as the caregivers.  Jan thought this was temporary until the older caregiver recovered enough to come back, but as the months went on it became clear that the younger couple was there to stay.