I’ve gone back to the picture a few times this week, just to make sure that I’m getting it right: Woven through all of the responses at some level, a deep sense of spiritual community was a constant theme of appreciation.

This past Tuesday night, in response to a request from a church member, and endorsed by the antiracism group, the Session discussed a letter urging the President to create a commission to study reparations for slavery.

Before the Session talked about the issue, I invited them to share what they hoped God would be up to in our meeting. One person mentioned “good trouble”; another, that we would be the courageous community we aspire to be. For the record, in our theology “Good Trouble” may be another name for the personage of God we call the Holy Spirit, and “courage” is another word for what Jesus meant when he told the disciples, “Take heart.”

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As we get ready for this weekend before Indigenous Peoples’ Day, what used to be celebrated as Columbus Day, I’ve been doing some homework on the Doctrine of Discovery. I had never heard of this doctrine until National Capital Presbytery co-sponsored a 2016 overture for the Presbyterian Church (USA) to repudiate it.

If you were part of the Free Inquiry class when Western’s former interim pastor, Rev. Leslianne Braunstein, spoke, you’ll know the Doctrine of Discovery came about in 1452 when Pope Nicholas V …..