Sunday Worship Service: How Might We Observe Columbus Day/Indigenous People’s Day? With Rev. Patricia Guthmann Haresch

Every Sunday, join Sunday Worship Service at 10AM (9:45 gathering), currently offered in person and on Zoom.

Pennsylvania will celebrate Columbus Day on Monday, October 10, while the Federal holiday is now named Indigenous People’s Day. How might we hold these two truths? One holiday that honors a man who helped to establish and become wealthy off the “triangle slave trade” of Europe, the Americas, and Africa. A governor and viceroy of what’s now the Dominican Republic, so cruel and greedy he was arrested and brought back to Spain in chains. And another holiday that honors the First Peoples of this continent, those so decimated and dishonored by the havoc that dawned with the coming of the European explorers. Let us name the difficult truths behind historical figures like Columbus and others memorialized in UUCL’s stained glass windows and celebrate those who have stood with the First Peoples.

[Those of European descent] are not responsible for colonization,
but. . .are the beneficiaries of that process. We are responsible for what we do now – – now that we begin to comprehend and understand the devastating long term consequences [of colonization]
– Words adapted from UU Rev. Margaret A. Beckman