The Movement That Made Martin

We who believe in freedom will not rest until it comes. 
Ella Baker 

We are deeply grateful to be living into an alternative form of pastoral ministry. We envision the core of our work as “soul accompaniment.” Our vocation is part-pastoral-counseling, part-spiritual-directing, part-advocating-for-the-most-marginalized. We partner with organizations and communities and families and couples and singles courageously facing into this world which often (and increasingly) offers inadequate supports.

For the most part, we are freed from the constraints of a “normal schedule” during the week. Although we naturally tend to keep a full calendar of meetings and appointments, events and gatherings, the therapists, mentors, soul friends, supporters and twelve-steppers in our life continue to teach us the immense value of vigilant margin-building. This helps us tend closely to a practice of personal recovery, out of which healthier boundaries can flow. This also keeps us accountable to the two key aspects of our vocation:

1. To be both spontaneous and flexible for deep connection with those taking on more "traditional" and busy vocations (juggling jobs, children, ministry, health concerns, caregiving for parents, etc). We hope that we can be on-call for emergencies in the day-to-day, but also committed to consistent meetings on the calendar (facing the challenges of conflicting time zones and schedules). 

2. To be nurtured and inspired for this vocation through daily reading, writing, prayer, yoga and other spiritual practices. We are learning more and more that any power to accompany and offer nurture sustainably gets stifled without this kind of regular self-inventorying practice. A lifelong journey of self-healing-blind-spot-weeding-wisdom-tapping-transformation, to be sure. 

To this second point, our mentor Rick Kidd puts it like this (especially applicable to those of us engaged in all variety of helping professions and capacities): "Resentment seeps in when one of two things is happening: (1) our expectations are too high/unrealistic--for ourselves or others, (2) our boundaries are poor."

From experience, we have hit the walls of burnout too many times to think we can do this work unsupported by a regular personal practice of Recovery. One vital discipline for us both has become the keeping of a morning journal. This first-thing-upon-waking ritual helps not only to center us for the day's work and greet it with joy, honesty and gratitude, but also to stay current--to track and work with what is coming up regularly in our spirits--resentments, pains, anxieties, fears, griefs, gratitudes, dreams and spiritual proddings. When we neglect this work, it hurts us, and by extension, those we are committed to serving. We have come to see these practices as essential groundings for all our work.

Many have asked about the where and what of our work. We work from home a lot. Skype calls. Phone calls. Non-profit administrating. Tom writing blog posts, articles and his current book project. Lindsay writing letters and postcards, including her current commitment to write daily postcards to Clare Grady (Aunt to dear friend, Cait De Mott Grady), who was arrested with six others on April 4 at the largest nuclear submarine military base in the world. This is a ministry of encouragement and solidarity, as well as profoundly impactful spiritual discipline. If you are not already familiar with the King's Bay Plowshares action, check out their powerful work! And consider writing mail to jail, or to anyone you know incarcerated and in need of spirit lift and encouragement.

This month, Lindsay accompanied her Mom and Uncle on a journey to her Dad's hometown of Mankato, MN. This was a long-anticipated spiritual pilgrimage that delivered. It planted seeds of treasured memory and further strands of family work to pursue, as well as unveiling forgotten stories of people and places going back through generations of both the Lamont and Casper clans. Lindsay came away from this sacred time with feet more firmly planted in her family's history, and with feet literally getting the chance to walk the same places her Dad walked, played, ran, built forts, and fished as a kid (photo right: Dad and Uncle Chris's childhood "fishing hole"). As hoped for, she emerged from this pilgrimage with an expanded understanding and grounding in who she is, where she comes from, and all the promise, peril, gift, pain, beauty, responsibility, and unexpected glimmers of grace she carries in her gut as part of this particular people and place.

A special thanks to Lindsay's Mom (as well as immediate and extended family) for making this trip not only possible, but deeply connecting, spirit-filled, celebratory, rich and prodding!

(Below: from left to right; Lindsay's Uncle Chris, Mom, Grandfather Jerry's younger brother Jason and his wife Pat; spending time delving into Lamont family records at the Le Sueur County Historical Society in Elysian, MN)

Generous support from friends and family commissioning us for this work has also allowed us to spend one day a week this month in Lansing, supporting the work of the new Poor People's Campaign. It is a movement of tens of thousands in forty different states, rooted in the original Poor People's Campaign planted by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders in the 1960's who were determined to make justice a reality.

One of those conspirators was Ella Baker, described by a biographer as “a middle-aged hell-raiser who defied categorization.” Baker was so brilliant and subversive that the FBI secretly followed her for decades. Her leadership, through both word and deed, critiqued the male-dominated, hierarchical, “charismatic” mentality of King and others. She famously proclaimed that “Martin didn’t make the movement. The movement made Martin.” I am because we are. The Poor People's Campaign has exemplified this beloved community for us, the heavy-lifting and support that keeps it going conducted and sustained in large part by women community leaders.

As of Tuesday, May 29, Tom no longer has a clean record. He was arrested with eighteen others in a nonviolent direct action focused on the violence and oppression of the military-industrial-complex (see below for the press release Tom wrote for national, detailing our local PPC action). Lindsay served as Tom's support (spiritually, emotionally, financially), as well as with a team of larger support keeping an eye on logistics and needs of those who chose to act. Next Monday, we will reverse roles. Lindsay will cross the line. The theme for next week is focused on water, health and ecological devastation. Poisoned water in Flint. Shut-off water in Detroit. The scandalous give-away of free water to Nestle. We covet your prayers of solidarity, and encourage you to get involved with your local chapter of The Poor People's Campaign as you are able!
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The day after Memorial Day, about two hundred of us gathered on Anishinaabe land—now called “the Capitol steps in Lansing, Michigan.” We were people of faith and conscience responding to the creative call for a new Poor People’s Campaign. After gut-wrenching testimony and songs of lamentation in ninety-degree heat, we formed a silent procession on to the Capitol lawn. We laid down coffins and crosses—reminders that policies crafted by the powerful too often lead to death to real people. The Anishinaabe were the first to be targeted.

Our procession reverently filed into the Capitol building, up two flights of stairs to the gallery of the Legislature. They were in session. We broke out in song. Everybody’s got a right to live. Politicians tried in vain to drown out these echoes of Resurrection with business as usual. We shouted more testimony about the billions spent on the military. And where those billions could be spent instead. 

Education. 
Health Care. 
Jobs. 
Clean and affordable water. 

After forty-five minutes, we made our exodus from the gallery, down the stairs for the Promised Land: the floor of the House. Five years ago, the floor of this House overturned an official vote of the people of Michigan. This House voted to make it legal for the governor to appoint a dictator to preside over any “struggling” municipality. Elected officials are stripped of all power. Every Black majority city in the state has had an emergency manager. He poisoned the water supply in Flint. He came in and shut off water to low-income residents of Detroit. He has done a whole lot more too. 

Nineteen in our midst were risking arrest. We had covenanted to principles of nonviolent direct action. There was one security agent guarding the doors to the House chamber. Three of us got through to the floor—three white men from three different generations wandering around the House floor like it was a political wilderness. Only their Whiteness knows why these didn’t get arrested (or shot) for defying the security guard and walking into that powerful chamber like they belonged. These three were virtually untouched while Black and Brown are arrested or killed for far less.

The throng made it’s way to the rotunda. We read of policies that keep on killing people. We staged a die-in. A protesting choir led by a young Black Detroiter named Rocket circled these victims with song. At 5:30pm, the Capitol closed. The choir exited the building. Nineteen stayed and got arrested. And before this campaign fails, we’ll all go down to jail.