Repairer of the Breach

Posted on July 22, 2026 by Mary Blocher

Our thanks to the Reverend Dr. Martha Tucker for this meditation which first appeared in this column in 2023.

If you remove the yoke from among you, the accusing finger, and malicious speech;
If you lavish your food on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted;
Then your light shall rise in the darkness, and your gloom shall become like midday….
“Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you,
“Restorer of ruined dwellings.”

—Isaiah 58:9–10, 12

So many prophets radically and poetically call us to participate in a sacred restoration of wholeness, to be “restorers of the breach”. I believe that this is a valuable lens through which to gain perspective on the concept of reparations.

It is not about money, at least not principally so. It is about becoming part of a movement of restoration to a sacred wholeness in which all will be One, in which divisions will cease, in which mountains are leveled and valleys raised up, while lions and lambs live in peace.

The above are prophetic images and metaphors for some ultimate harmony in the realm toward which we are progressing, toward which God invites us. And…that realm, that “kingdom”, is here and yet to come, within and without. To jump to a discussion of reparations without the context of the goal of holy wholeness might tempt one to seek quick material fixes and similarly transactional responses. If I write a check, then I can discharge my duty.

The problem is that all that misses the opportunity, the opportunity, to make reparations a mission and ministry, to allow it to change our hearts. It seems to me to begin with a genuine acknowledgement that we are broken and have also been part of the breaking, albeit in some cases unknowingly and unwillingly, is to begin the process of gathering the fragments.

Deep bias and hegemonic power can masquerade as harmless when in fact they are crushing souls and discriminating mightily. Love in all its holy manifestations is what will mend and repair. I wonder whether the focus might be on gathering the fragments in the wake of centuries of oppression and becoming repairers of the breach.

Taking a cue from the Japanese art of kintsukuroi, wherein broken pottery is reassembled with a beautiful golden glue filament so that the seams and brokenness become renewed and even more beautiful and certainly unique, might be the prompt.

Imagine taking this image to God’s creation, where the binding gluey glittering materialis kindness, mercy, justice and humility. Imagine each of us pouring our gluey stuff into and onto the brokenness of the world, especially pouring it into the seam of the racial divide.

Specifically, I feel invited to turn toward the shards of systemic oppression and to offer compassion. I hope to be surprised by the beauty and magnificence of a renewing wholeness of humanity. I hope to become a repairer of the breach.

–Mary Beth Clack, Mary Blocher, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol, Liz Levin

Juneteenth 2026

Posted on May 26, 2026 by Mary Blocher

The National Museum of African American History will honor Opal Lee, the “grandmother of Juneteenth” in this year’s events.

Events for Juneteenth in Boston will take place from June 18-20, 2026. The flag raising ceremony on June 18th will commemorate “June 19, 1865, the day when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, were finally informed of their freedom more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.” The city’s Juneteenth is a “celebration of freedom, remembrance, and the ongoing pursuit of equity and justice.” Other city events are described here.

Both locations of the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket, will mark the holiday with a summer season of freedom as described here. The Museum of Fine Arts offers a substantial array of programs as does the Institute for Contemporary Art: We Create the World.

This column provided a reflection by Alden Fossett in 2024. Alden will be ordained to the diaconate in our diocese this week.

–Mary Beth Clack, Mary Blocher, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol, Liz Levin

Virginia Theological Institute’s Reparations

Posted on October 14, 2025 by Mary Blocher

Our Racial Justice Working Group follows the news of ongoing reparations processes as they unfold in institutions of The Episcopal Church. One of TEC’s oldest seminaries, the Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS), recently announced the next phase of its historical research and monetary reparations: “VTS breaks ground on reparations memorial honoring at least 557 African American laborers.” —Episcopal News Service, September 26, 2025 Continue reading →

#DouglassWeek

Posted on September 30, 2025 by Mary Blocher

Fall has arrived and we are back to learning about and attending programs related to racial justice. As we write, Boston and other Massachusetts cities are hosting the annual celebration of #DouglassWeek.

Launched in 2021, the collaborative event series highlights Frederick Douglass’s time in Ireland in 1845. He spent about four months there in self-imposed exile after the publication of the first edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

Continue reading →

King’s Chapel unveils ‘Unbound’.

Posted on September 22, 2025 by Mary Blocher

photo credit: WGBH Boston

On September 14, 2025, King’s Chapel unveiled its Memorial Sculpture, “Unbound,” by artist Harmonia Rosales.

Rosales’s work was stewarded by the MASS Design Group. It is a tribute to the 219 enslaved parishioners brought to church by their enslavers.

As many of you know, King’s Chapel has been actively engaged in studying and revealing many aspects of its racial history over recent years. A rich summary, including their plans for an ongoing project, is presented online via the page entitled King’s Chapel Memorial to Enslaved Persons.

September 22, 2025 –Mary Beth Clack, Mary Blocher, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol, Liz Levin.

Juneteenth Events in the Boston Area

Aside

The local commemorations of Juneteenth included three events of note. Dio Mass held its Juneteenth service at St. Stephen’s Church, Lynn, with the Rev Bernadette Hickman-Maynard presiding. At Old South Church. The Reverend June Cooper, Theologian in the City of Boston and alum of the United Boston Sankofa Cohort, preached. Her reflection on the holiday, and the unfinished work of repair, appears in this blog post, Juneteenth, and the Unfinished Work of Freedom.

Juneteenth at Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters was held on June 22, 2025. The accompanying video, Who are my ancestors? highlights the reflections of the descendants of Cuba and Darby Vassall, who lived at the house. Continue reading →

The Green Book Tour of Boston’s South End

Posted on May 26, 2025 by Mary Blocher

May 26, 2025

A reprise of the Green Book Tour of Boston was offered on May 17, 2025. The tour was organized by The Reverend June Cooper, social justice educator, activist, and Theologian in the City at Old South Church.

She invited Byron Rushing to be our guide. Byron was Massachusetts State Representative for the South End from 1983-2019 and has been lay deputy to our General Convention since 1973. The tour was supported by the Boston Faith and Justice Network.

Victor Hugo Green, a postal worker, created the first Green Book in 1936. It was published until 1966 (with the exception of the years 1940-1946). A guide to establishments open to black travelers during the Jim Crow era, it served as an essential tool in welcoming them to many U.S. towns and cities.

Included on the Boston tour are the Union Combined Parish, the Columbus Avenue AME Zion Church, and Harriet Tubman Park, along with jazz club locations, other community gathering places, and Slade’s, operating since 1929. We also stopped at the home of Julia Henson, 25 Holyoke Street, which was the first Harriet Tubman House, founded to provide housing for black women who were excluded from college dormitories and rooming houses. Henson founded the African American Northeastern Federation of Women’s Clubs and was active in the settlement house movement. Harvard’s Houghton Library acquired a copy of the 1949 edition of the Green Book, and it is freely accessible via this link.

The chapter on Massachusetts lists 50 businesses open to Black travelers in Boston, including hotels, restaurants, beauty parlors, barber shops, tailors, and one jazz club. In the Introduction, we read: “There will be a day sometime when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes, we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.”

—Mary Beth Clack, Mary Blocher, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol, Liz Levin

Suzanne Hiatt & Pauli Murray

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Mary Blocher

Emmanuel Church dedicated its third pulpit statue this past Sunday to the Rev. Dr. Suzanne Radley Hiatt (1936-2002), priest, theologian, prophet, professor, and advocate. Sue Hiatt was ordained as one of the Philadelphia 11 (July 29, 1974), and served as an inspirational mentor to many, including our rector.

Pam’s sermon on Sunday included examples of Hiatt’s devotion to equality and justice; as “bishop to the women,” Pam said that she was “pressing the Church to deeper inclusion and fuller love.”

It was interesting to learn that Suzanne Hiatt wrote about her connections to Pauli Murray (1910-1985), who had discerned from our parish and in 1977 became the first African American woman to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. In April 1970, they attended the Graymoor Conference, an important event in the history of women’s ordination, attended by about 60 women and numerous male supporters. One of the organizers, Hiatt was stalwart in her advocacy of the movement. After years of experiences as a civil rights lawyer, professor, and Women’s Movement activist, Murray attended Graymoor. After the conference, she and Henry Rightor, a former lawyer and professor of pastoral care at Virginia Theological Seminary, studied the Church’s Canons and Constitutions. Their report presenting their findings after the conference set the stage for persuasive arguments for women’s ordination.

Sue Hiatt’s admiration for Pauli Murray was expressed in an article she wrote in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.* She noted that she had learned a lot from delving into Pauli Murray’s writings about her unceasing dedication to the pursuit of justice. Hiatt considered Murray a “foremother, not only to be proud of, but also to learn from and emulate.” Those who came before Hiatt’s generation “shook the foundations so that we could topple the walls.” Hiatt deeply admired Murray’s contributions: “Pauli believed above all in justice, and despite a lifetime of disappointments and tragedies, she never stopped seeking it. She just never quit.”

May we be inspired by the women who now live on in our sanctuary, and, as Pam said in her Eastertide sermon: “Arise, wake up, come alive to become who and whose you are called to be.”

*Hiatt, Suzanne, “Pauli Murray (1910-1985): May Her Song Be Heard at Last,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 4 (Fall 1988), 69-73.

See also the chapter of the same title in The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me: The writings of Suzanne Hiatt, ed. Carter Heyward and Janine LeHane (New York: Seabury, 2014). This compilation of Hiatt’s writings is a wonderful tribute to her.

—May 15, 2025. Mary Beth Clack, Mary Blocher, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol, Liz Levin

Thoughts of Reparations in Lent

Posted on April 13, 2025 by Mary Blocher

April 15, 2025

“Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you, “Restorer of ruined dwellings.” Isaiah 58: 9–10, 12

Reparation is not a task or a moment; it is a process and a movement. As the prophet Isaiah and at least one diocesan mission statement make more clear, reparation, and its sibling “restoration”, line the path which leads from remembrance to reconciliation and, I would add, redemption. No matter recent, lawless chaos and profuse oppression, I believe that it is important to remember that this path persists and we have made a covenant to labor on.

As stated in the Diocese of Washington’s commission on reparations mission: “It [reparations] involves a process to remember, repair, restore, and reconcile historical and continuing wrongs against humanity that can never be singularly reducible to monetary terms, but must include a substantial investment and surrender of resources.

”This reminds me of another covenant we are in the midst of, namely to keep a holy Lent, to engage in the process of prayer, fasting and almsgiving that we might deepen our relationship with God and offer compassion and mercy to one another in more profound ways.

Not only might the process of engaging Lent be reparative of self and soul, it also might lead us to a new understanding of how we might become repairers of the breach and restorers of ruined dwellings.

For me the agents of repair and restoration are mercy and compassion. They are the compass which identifies brokenness and the glue which joins jagged edge to jagged edge.

Goodness knows jagged, shattered edges surround us in this wilderness. And I believe there is another agent which assists us in finding the courage and hope to even tackle the work of reparation and restoration when we have almost given up on grace…almost. It is memory.

Remembering is the agent which precedes restoration and reparation, catalyzes and inspires us toward action.

In my own quest I am remembering Bishop Budde’s sermon at the National Cathedral on January 21, 2025, when she courageously reminded the newly inaugurated president of his and our mandate to be merciful. In that reminder I felt some, albeit thin, thread of grace reenter political discourse repairing frayed hope.

Remembering, summoning our life stories of mercy and justice, is the first step toward the grace of redemption.

Remembering can be as a light which shines on possibility in the face of what seems impossible.

Remembering called us into the wilderness and will sustain us in our summoning of mercy and compassion, in our beloved communal work toward reparation and restoration.

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. It is in returning, re turning, that we know God’s whole and perfect grace.

— The Rev. Dr. Martha Tucker

Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston

Believing is not a condition of beloving or belonging here.

Join us for Episcopal worship Sundays at 10:00am.

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