Hi everyone,

Sy’s back! Until his wife goes back to work, that is, and he’ll be taking another, longer parental break.

We hope this message finds you in a posture to receive God’s love and joy in the midst of all that is happening around you. You are loved. And it is out of that well of love, grace, and truth that we step out into the world. Here are this week’s resources to help you engage, intercede, and work towards leaving colonized faith.

Sy’s recommendations:

• Earlier this week, authorities in New Mexico arrested and indicted a man they believe is responsible for the killing of four Muslim men over the last several months in Albuquerque. The city’s Muslim community has been on edge, fearful that the uptick in attacks were a targeted effort to terrorize them. Now that prosecutors believe it was a Muslim man who committed the killings, possibly motivated by intrareligious conflict, we might be tempted to think the tragedy is, at the very least, not tinged with islamophobia. But that would be missing the forest for the trees. In the US, Christians, or white people, or any dominant group do not spend weeks in fear because several murder victims in a community share their identity. The fear the Muslim community in Albuquerque felt is itself the result of the oppression which makes that fear reasonable. Let us mourn with them, both over the loss of life and over the country that engenders their anxiety.