Dear Louisville Seminary Community,
We remember where we were one year ago. A quiet dis-ease was descending upon our city, nation and world. We did not know yet about the police killing of Breonna Taylor in the late hours of the night. We had not heard about the impending arrest and rush to injustice against Kenneth Walker. We could not yet know the brutal machinations of that day. It was the Friday foreshadowing our seminary’s Research and Study week. The apprehension that many of us were experiencing was in response to something else, however, another vexatious virus not called racism, a public health calamity that would sweep across the globe and violate the sanctities of our homes, recreational spaces, houses of worship and work spaces.
No one was immune from what emerged out of the shadows onto the world stage to ultimately take the lives of hundreds of thousands of persons in the United States of America and millions more around the world. No one knew that entire families and communities would be so ravaged and devastated by COVID-19. No one knew that our lives would be physically distanced from one another, learning made virtual or work become remote. We have been exhausted and made anxious beyond words. None of us can be the same.
Nor was the death, disease, and dis-ease attributable only to coronavirus and anti-Black racism. The cascade of pandemics continued. The contagion of a dysfunctional governance system at national, state and local levels played out with searing ferocity in the quadrennial presidential campaign. Lost in our internecine incivility, hostility and even proclivity to insurrection were the individuals and families wounded and devastated by job loss. Public confidence in social institutions waned (and were already in decline before last year) and interpersonal relationships suffered. Deadly anti-Asian sentiment resurgent recalls the internment camps of an era not so long ago. Xenophobic resentment of immigrants, toward the Biblical stranger, in a society formed of immigrants no less, yet born of violence, demeans and devours us.
What have we learned and learned again in the last year? That life is precious, valuable, ineffable. It is not a given. That life is its own recognition beyond us, within us, around us, regardless of us. That life companions us, cajoles, celebrates and humbles us. It does not belong to us. That life invites us to stop, be still, and know. That we are not in charge of this exquisite earth as much as we think. That help is on the way. That vaccines work. That we can innovate our learnings. That we can transform our work. That the God of life is larger, wiser, more expansive still than any of our deepest imaginings. That Black lives matter. That we are our sibling’s keeper. That we stand irrevocably and incredibly in need of each other in a world where we have been taught to determinedly make it on our own. That ours is an age of reckoning. That sexual violence does not have the last word. That Mother Earth is not without defense. That love is fierce. That justice is love in action. Whether by dint of greed, legislation or fear, love and justice on this planet and in the universe will not be denied. That community is whosoever – bounteous, beautiful, beneficial, beloved.
Thank you, Louisville Seminary for your whosoever witness. Thank you, Louisville Seminary, for your steadfast endurance, resilience, and witness to goodness in these times. We are far from perfect. But now more than ever, it seems, the world has need of our people, preparations, compassion and presence.
One year in the life, may we remember, and never forget.
In the Presence,
Alton B. Pollard, III
President
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
