Reflection on Racial Justice & Healing Retreat
Reflection on Racial Justice & Healing Retreat
Vicky and Meghan are members of Grace Episcopal Church, Minneapolis, close friends, as well as mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Together they attended the racial justice and healing retreat at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, St. Paul on March 22, 2025.
Vicky: For 35 years, I was an educator in the K-12 world and an adjunct professor of education at a local university. The last 12 years, as a teacher, professor, school district administrator, and education consultant, the collective focus was on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for all students. Witnessing what continues to unfold since the presidential executive orders around DEI has been devastating for all who believe the strength of our society lies in our diversity. When I read in our Sunday church bulletin about the opportunity to attend the Racial Justice and Healing Retreat, my heart leapt. “Maybe,” I hoped, “I will find a source of balm for my heartbroken soul.”
Meghan: In our beautifully diverse world, I’ve developed a deep understanding of racial and identity development and transformative justice practices through my work as an academic advisor in a college setting. I was drawn to this retreat to experience racial healing and justice from a Christian perspective and to answer the questions, “How does God view justice?” and “How are we called to respond to God’s call to justice?” I also wanted to be in community with other believers who were focused on a shared mission and vision of seeking to take action to make a more equitable, inclusive world.
Vicky: What I saw and experienced at the retreat was far more than a “balm” for my troubled heart. Every moment from when I walked through the doors of Holy Trinity Church that morning to the closing eucharist at the end of the day was an immersion into the “beloved community.” This phrase, “beloved community,” gets a lot of use and attention, particularly in spaces focused on racial justice and immigration. But what does “beloved community" really mean?
The beloved community is a place without physical walls. Instead, it is defined by the people who gather there. It is a spiritual place where differences in theology and individual experiences fade, while at the same time, a binding together by God through the Holy Spirit resides. It is arelational space where culture and color are no longer barriers, and it’s replaced by a sincere desire to know and understand each other. Finally, it is a place that stirs the individual to action, to bring this deepened awareness to our broken world, and being open to the Holy Spirit for direction and courage. That is what I experienced at the Racial Justice and Healing Retreat.
Meghan: What was most striking and profoundly meaningful to me were the experiences of encountering the Holy Spirit and using a justice-focused lens.
Through one particular Bible reading from the Book of Isaiah, I encountered the spirit in two unique ways: In connection of the spirit through the retreat group, and a personal calling to the diaconate made clear through the reading. At the beginning of the retreat, we read as a group the reading aloud. It was already clear that the spirit was “moving and shaking” by connecting us. We were asked to share a word or phrase that resonated strongly with us. Vicky and I uttered the same phrase one after the other of “your light shall rise in the darkness.” At the end two people vocalized at the same time, “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn.” The church space audibly reacted. As I read through this reading again later, I felt the Holy Spirit “hitting me” with a message to pursue a calling to be a deacon, which I am actively pursuing with my rector and the diocese.
Experiencing a justice-focused church service and reading Bible verses from this perspective was profoundly meaningful to me. It was the most incredible church service I had ever been a part of and using this perspective to interpret scripture “broke open” the Bible for me in a way that I had never thirsted for before. I am not a person who usually wants to “crack open” my Bible, yet this retreat left me with an electrifying need to know and encounter God more, and an escalating desire to take personal and collective action towards justice (even more than before).
Vicky: Have the politics around DEI changed? No, they have intensified. However, nothing, including the powers that be, can diminish the “beloved community.” Bishop Loya said it best, through his most recent weekly letter:
“What Jesus both promises and expects of us is not to escape from it, but to keep casting into new places, in new ways, so that we can join God in drawing the whole world into the net of God’s liberating life, shouting our joyful and defiant alleluia to all the forces that break down the children God so cherishes, and longs to hold.”