Pauli Murray

(November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985)

Pauli Murray is often remembered for “firsts” - for being the first Black woman ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church (1977); for being the first Black person to graduate with a Doctor of Juridical Science Degree from Yale Law School (1965). These milestones are significant, and yet even they do not convey the breadth and influence of Pauli Murray and Murray’s lifelong commitment to justice and faith. Murray dedicated years to a legal vocation, graduating first in class from Howard Law School in 1944 and going on to confront systems of sexism that denied Murray admission to Harvard Law School the following year. Murray’s legal writings became a key resource for the work of other legal justice advocates such as Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Gisberg. At a time when the relationship between women’s rights and civil rights was unclear and at times tenuous, Murray affirmed that justice for people of color and justice for women are deeply interconnected.

Also deeply connected to Murray’s legal career was Murray’s Christian faith, which ebbed and flowed throughout Murray’s life, reaching a point of clarity and fulfillment with Murray’s ordination to the priesthood in 1977. Pauli Murray stated, “I began to realize that universally, all of mankind is constantly falling down from these high ideals... that racism and sexism are actually sins, the sickness of sin; that human beings are not really in harmony in relationship to their creator. And since they are not, they are not able to be in harmony, in relationship, and to love-- to respect their neighbor.” Faith gave Murray a lens through which to imagine a better future. This faith in the future is particularly inspiring given all the ways that the world was not welcoming of Pauli Murray: as a woman, a Black person, and a gender non-conforming person who explored using different pronouns in public and private life. Murray’s faith in God and in the future is perhaps best expressed in Murray’s poetry:

Dark Testament Verse 8

By Pauli Murray

Hope is a crushed stalk

Between clenched fingers

Hope is a bird’s wing

Broken by a stone.

Hope is a word in a tuneless ditty —

A word whispered with the wind,

A dream of forty acres and a mule,

A cabin of one’s own and a moment to rest,

A name and place for one’s children

And children’s children at last . . .

Hope is a song in a weary throat.

Give me a song of hope

And a world where I can sing it.

Give me a song of faith

And a people to believe in it.

Give me a song of kindliness

And a country where I can live it.

Give me a song of hope and love

And a brown girl’s heart to hear it.

In 2017, Yale University named a new college after Pauli Murray, who among many accomplishments is an alum of Yale Law School. We also lift up the legacy of Pauli Murray as a faithful Christian, and leader in the Episcopal Church.

Sources:

“Fighting Jane Crow: The Multifaceted Life and Legacy of Pauli Murray,” BackStory, podcast (20 March 2020), https://www.backstoryradio.org/shows/pauli-murray/, accessed 24 Feb. 2021.

Pauli Murray, Dark Testament and Other Poems (Silvermine, 1970).

Preparing Our Ministries to Resume

In March we are gathering with several of our committees to prepare our ministries to resume once possible. We certainly can't wait to return to church and restart our ministries. Our staff members have already been working on getting our ministries ready for action. We now want to connect with parish members through our ministry committee.

• Tuesday March 2, 5:30pm: Outreach Committee | Zoom Link

• Tuesday March 9, 5:30pm: Pastoral Care Committee | Zoom Link

• Tuesday March 16, 5:30pm: Liturgy Committee

• Tuesday March 23, 5:45pm: Music Committee

We will meet on Zoom and all committee members are called to join, as well as all who are interested to be part of the conversation.

Livestreamed Organ Recital

Walden will present a half-hour organ recital from the First Congregational Church in Madison on Friday, March 5, at 12:15 pm as a part of that church's Five Fridays Lenten Concerts. The recital, containing works of Fanny Mendelssohn, Florence Price, Louis Vierne, and Cesar Franck, will be livestreamed on First Church's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/fccmadison) or listeners may park outside the church on the Madison Green and listen from their cars via the sound being broadcast from speakers in the church steeple.

Allan Rohan Crite

(March 20, 1910 - Sept. 6, 2007)

Allan Rohan Crite, born in Plainfield New Jersey and an almost lifelong resident of the Boston area, was an artist whose life work demonstrates two things: first, a commitment to exploring and celebrating the lived experience of Black Americans; and second, his deep Christian faith as a lifelong Episcopalian. Crite’s early paintings depict lively, everyday scenes in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, a predominantly Black neighborhood. Describing these works, Crite writes: “My intention in the neighborhood paintings and some drawings was to show aspects of life in the city with special reference to the use of the terminology ‘black’ people and to present them in an ordinary light, persons enjoying the usual pleasures of life with its mixtures of both sorrow and joys… I was an artist-reporter, recording what I saw.”

During the 1930s Crite shifted to more religious subject matter. He created profound ink drawings and lithographs depicting stories from the Bible, particularly the life of Jesus Christ, in contemporary settings. In one image, Mary cradles an infant Jesus next to a trash can in a poor urban neighborhood. In another, a dark-skinned Jesus hangs on the cross facing oblivious light-skinned pedestrians with the caption: “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” Crite’s images are heartfelt, faithful meditations on how the incarnation of Jesus is present in our lives today, and how we as Christians are called to see Jesus in the face of those who are marginalized and oppressed; those whose very lives are at stake in a country still plagued by racism. In his autobiography, Crite stated, “For a long time, I felt as far as the Church was concerned, that there was too much the impression of a mostly European institution, practically to the exclusion of anything else.” Crite offers a different impression - an impression of a church that is diverse and courageous in facing the social realities of our present time.

While Crite does not have a direct personal connection to the City of New Haven or to Trinity, we are grateful to have come to know Crite’s work better through Trinity parishioner Bill Kellett, whose father the Rev. William Kellett was a pastor to Crite while serving at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Boston.

Sources:

“Allan Rohan Crite,” The Smithsonian Institution, website, accessed 17 Feb 2021, https://americanart.si.edu/artist/allan-rohan-crite-1047.

“The Art of Faith: Allan Rohan Crite at St. John St. James Parish, Roxbury,” Historic Boston Incorporated, blog (28 Feb 2019), accessed 17 Feb 2021, https://historicboston.org/the-art-of-faith-allan-rohan-crite-at-st-john-st-james-parish-roxbury/.

The Way of Love

Coffee Hour Topics during Lent 2021

During the Season of Lent, our Coffee Hour will begin with 5-7 minute breakout groups in which we are invited to explore a theme of the week, based on the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry’s roadmap of Christian faith, The Way of Love. The Way of Love is not a program or a curriculum, but rather a description of a core set of practices that have long guided Christian life:

• Turn - Feb. 21

• Learn - Feb. 28

• Pray - March 7

• Worship - March 14

• Bless - March 21

• Go - March 28

• Rest - April 4

Join us for these breakout conversations, or feel free to stay in the main “Zoom room” if you simply need a breather after our service. Grab a cup of tea or coffee - and our regular, unstructured Zoom Coffee Hour will begin shortly.

Plan Ahead! Coffee Hour Topics are based on this introduction to The Way of Love: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/06/way_of_love_introduction.pdf

Stations of the Cross with St. Luke’s

Our neighbors at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church Whalley Avenue have invited us to tune in to their weekly observance of the Stations of the Cross, on Fridays at 7:30pm on Facebook. Join us (you do not need a Facebook profile to access the following link) >> https://www.facebook.com/WhalleyAve/

Praying with St. Luke’s is one way of walking together with this parish, which is linked to our own through Trinity’s historic failure to allow Black members of our congregation to sit in the main pews, a sad manifestation of racism that led to the subsequent departure of Black parishioners to found their own congregation, St. Luke’s, in 1844.

St. Luke’s has invited members of Trinity to participate directly in Stations of the Cross on Friday, March 26, by reading the scripture texts that accompany different stations. Email Heidi (hthorsen@trinitynewhaven.org) if you are interested, and we will get you connected!

Alexander Crummell (1819-Sept. 12, 1898)

Alexander Crummell was an African American priest, missionary, and educator whose life exhibits both the amazing contributions of Black Episcopalians to the church, and the failure of the church to make space for the ministries of Black Americans. Throughout his life, Crummell struggled to find a place in the church in which to exercise his vocation. Having been born and raised in New York City, Crummell was denied admission to New York’s General Theological Seminary. He studied independently for ministry instead, during which time he lived briefly in New Haven, CT. Crummell was at one time in conversation to become the first rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, which had recently formed after members of Trinity on the Green refused to allow Black people to sit in pews designated for the general congregation. Ultimately Crummell moved on instead to Providence, Rhode Island, where he began parish ministry. Crummell was ordained a deacon in 1842, and a priest in 1844.

Crummell’s next call was to a church in Philadelphia, though he resigned in protest for being excluded from diocesan convention, due to his race. Crummell moved to England, where he could finally pursue a formal theological education while serving as a curate. While in England, Crummell discovered a passion for missionary work. He moved from England to Liberia, where he served as a missionary from 1853 to 1873. Despite his passion for the work, Crummell struggled to find his place there as well, at times caught between his white Episcopal colleagues and the ruling elite class of mulatto Americo-Liberians. Crummell returned to the United States in 1873, where he founded and served as rector of St. Luke’s Church, Washington D.C. He also organized the Conference of Church Workers Among Colored People, a forerunner of what is today the Union of Black Episcopalians (UBE).

W.E.B Dubois, whose grandfather was one of the founding members of St. Luke’s New Haven, was profoundly moved by Crummell’s story and wrote about it in his book The Souls of Black Folk:

“He did his work, --he did it nobly and well; and yet I sorrow that here he worked alone, with so little human sympathy. His name to-day, in this broad land, means little, and comes to fifty million ears laden with no incense of memory or emulation. And herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, --all me know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, --who is good? Not that men are ignorant, --what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.”

Sources:

Randall K. Burkett, “The Reverend Harry Croswell and Black Episcopalians in New Haven, 1820-1860” in The North Star: A Journal of African American Religious History (Fall 2003: Vol. 7, No. 1).

The Episcopal Church, “Crummell, Alexander” in An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church, https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/crummell-alexander/.

W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, originally published 1903 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009).

Harold T. Lewis, Yet with a Steady Beat: the African American Struggle for Recognition in the Episcopal Church (Trinity Press international, 1996).

Words in the Wilderness

Walk through the season of Lent with Trinity, one word at a time. Every day (except on Sundays) we will post a photo and a brief refection on Facebook and on our website from a Trinity parishioner responding to a Lenten "word of the day." These words are chosen from the weekly lectionary texts, and are chosen to help us embrace Lent as a season of repentance and restoration.

We want you to contribute!

Email Heidi (hthorsen@trinitynewhaven.org) if you are interested and might like to contribute a photo and reflection, or if you have any questions. Alternately, you can see the full list of words and sign up here. We want you to sign up!

This Week’s Lenten Reflections

Reflections this coming week will be provided by: Barb Hedberg, Paige Nelson, Joe Dzeda, Will Oxford

On Facebook >> https://www.facebook.com/trinitynewhaven

On our Website >> trinitynewhaven.org/words-in-the-wilderness

Do you need help registering for the COVID-19 Vaccine? Let us know!

The State of Connecticut is beginning to offer the COVID-19 vaccine to essential workers and people who are 75 years or older. We know that there are some members of our parish who have received the vaccine already – and this gives us hope! We give thanks for the doctors, researchers, and government officials who have brought us to this moment. If you are 75 years or older and need help registering for the vaccine, let us know! Please also see the following resources:

CT COVID Vaccine Appointment Assistance Line: Call 877-918-2224 Mondays through Fridays from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

State of CT Online Vaccine Enrollment >> https://dphsubmissions.ct.gov/OnlineVaccine

State of CT Vaccine Information >> https://portal.ct.gov/Coronavirus/covid-19%20vaccinations

City of New Haven Vaccine Information >> https://covid19.newhavenct.gov/pages/covid-19-vaccination

Throughout 2019 and the beginning of 2020 a group of seniors met on a monthly basis in the undercroft to connect with each other, and to discuss issues of mutual interest, both spiritual and practical. We called ourselves The Trinity Sages (the Wise People). Then came Covid-19 and disrupted our gatherings. We now wish to reinstate these meetings on Zoom. They will take place on the second Tuesday of every month at 11am. Everybody is welcome. No need to register, just join us. The first meeting will be on Tuesday. February 9, at 11am. Contact Lilian Revel to express interest and request a link to the Zoom meeting.

Exploring Black History at Trinity

As a way of honoring Black History Month at Trinity, we will be providing a weekly biographical feature on a Black Episcopalian who has strengthened us collectively, as the Body of Christ. We have specifically chosen to explore the stories of people who have some connection to New Haven or to Trinity on the Green specifically - and we hope that these biographical features will be a starting point for deeper exploration in confronting racism and anti-Black bias in the Church.

Jacob Oson (?-1828)

While biographical information about Jacob Oson prior to 1821 is scarce, we know that Oson was living in the city of New Haven by the year 1805, most likely having moved there from the West Indies. Much of what we know about Jacob Oson today, we know through the diaries of the Rev. Harry Croswell, the rector of Trinity Church on the Green from 1815-1858. Croswell first met Oson in his pastoral care rounds attending to people in the Black community of New Haven. Croswell was soon impressed by Oson’s public speaking and his faith, recommending him for holy orders. In a letter to Bishop White in 1821, Croswell wrote: “I do not hesitate to express my opinion that Jacob Oson, a man of colour, ‘possesses extraordinary strength of natural understanding, a peculiar aptitude to teach, and a large share of prudence’... [having] had frequent opportunities to witness his manner of reading the prayers of the Church, and of instructing youth, both as a school-master, and as a Sunday-school teacher.” 

Oson encountered administrative roadblocks to his ordination, despite Croswell’s support and the eagerness of a Black parish in Philadelphia, St. Thomas Episcopal Church, to have Oson serve as rector. These setbacks were undoubtedly a manifestation of structural racism in the church. Oson persevered in his sense of calling, and gradually felt drawn to a different kind of ministry - aspiring to serve as a missionary in Africa. Oson’s call was finally affirmed, and he was ordained a deacon at Christ Church, Hartford on February 16, 1928. Oson was ordained a priest the very next day - the first person ordained for the African mission field, and the fifth African American ordained in the Episcopal Church. Oson never made it to Africa, that place where he felt so drawn to personally and in his ministry. He became sick later that year, and died on September 8, 1928. Croswell’s son wrote this poetic tribute to Oson in the Episcopal Watchman, a few weeks after his death: “the work for which thy bosom yearned / Shall never rest, though sin and death detail / Messiah from his many-peopled reign, / Till all thy captive brethren have returned.”

Source: Randall K. Burkett, “The Reverend Harry Croswell and Black Episcopalians in New Haven, 1820-1860” in The North Star: A Journal of African American Religious History (Fall 2003: Vol. 7, No. 1).

Walk through the season of Lent with Trinity, one word at a time. Every day (except on Sundays) we will post a photo and a brief refection on Facebook from a Trinity parishioner responding to a Lenten "word of the day." These words are chosen from the weekly lectionary texts, and are chosen to help us embrace Lent as a season of repentance and restoration.

Participate! Here's how:

(1) Sign Up - Email Heidi (hthorsen@trinitynewhaven.org) if you are interested in doing a Lenten word reflection; if you'd like you can sign up for a specific word / day on the list here.

(2) Prepare your Reflection - your reflection consists of two parts, a photo and some text to accompany it. The photo is a photo you've taken, either in the past or for the sake of this exercise. It can be a view from your window, a photo from a family album, a photo of an art work - anything that reminds you of the word you are reflecting on. The text is a short reflection (around 150 words) on the word of the day. You can tell a story related to the word, reflect on the word, or share a favorite Bible text or piece of writing that relates to the word of the day.

(3) Send your Reflection - All reflections are due the Sunday before the day you sign up for. Email your photo and the text to Heidi (hthorsen@trinitynewhaven.org) and we will share it on Facebook, with attribution!

Date Word

February 17, 2021 dust
February 18, 2021 return
February 19, 2021 offering
February 20, 2021 hungry
February 21, 2021 SUNDAY
February 22, 2021 remember
February 23, 2021 truth
February 24, 2021 humble
February 25, 2021 wait
February 26, 2021 wilderness
February 27, 2021 repent
February 28, 2021 SUNDAY
March 1, 2021 mercy
March 2, 2021 hold
March 3, 2021 name
March 4, 2021 inherit
March 5, 2021 consider
March 6, 2021 reckon
March 7, 2021 SUNDAY
March 8, 2021 power
March 9, 2021 outward
March 10, 2021 inward
March 11, 2021 witness
March 12, 2021 judgment
March 13, 2021 human
March 14, 2021 SUNDAY
March 15, 2021 pray
March 16, 2021 heal
March 17, 2021 sacrifice
March 18, 2021 trespass
March 19, 2021 grace
March 20, 2021 lift
March 21, 2021 SUNDAY
March 22, 2021 change
March 23, 2021 loving-kindness
March 24, 2021 broken
March 25, 2021 clean
March 26, 2021 serve
March 27, 2021 commandments
March 28, 2021 SUNDAY
March 29, 2021 approach
March 30, 2021 branch
March 31, 2021 release
April 1, 2021 weary
April 2, 2021 anoint
April 3, 2021 tomb
April 4, 2021 EASTER