Session 9: Restoration and Reparations

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Goals

  • Explore practices that are restorative and that offer reparations, through the lens of the COIC report and findings.
  • Apply the findings and recommendations to the context of your community/congregation and also within the larger geographic communities you serve.

Materials

  • Chalice and something with which to light it
  • A copy of Widening the Circle of Concern: Report of the UUA Commission on Institutional Change (2020)
  • The text of the covenant guidelines to which the group has agreed, on newsprint if in person or accessible as electronic text to share if online
  • Newsprint and markers (if in-person) or a computer to record discussion contributions

Preparation

  • Read the Restoration and Reparations chapter.
  • Download the Feelings Wheel from the Gottman Institute website. Share electronically or print copies for all participants.
  • Identify a recorder for this session.
  • Prepare a chalice and something with which to light it.
  • Post the group covenant. (If in person, post newsprint; if online, plan to “share screen” and/or post the covenant guidelines or a link to them in the chat.)

Chalice Lighting

Invite one or two participants who have not spoken in recent discussions to read the chalice-lighting words:

What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt. What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. — Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations”

We must move away from an idea of personal and individual ‘success’ and toward ecological economics, collective advancement, collective achievement, and collective wealth. — Diallo Kenyatta, The Bro Diallo Show

Light the chalice.

Discussion

Take a moment to review the group’s covenant. Ask if anything should be added or amended. If there is consensus, add or amend the covenant and save the changes.

Make sure a recorder from the group is ready to document discussion.

State that reparations can be a hard topic and one that causes fear to arise. Invite the participants to check in about how they are feeling as they anticipate this discussion. Referring to the Feelings Wheel, ask people to spend a moment identifying the “feeling family” most present for them. The four feeling families are MAD, SAD, GLAD (including Peaceful, Powerful, and Joyful), and SCARED. Invite people to share one of the core words.

Discuss the following questions:

  • What struck you in reading the chapter that pertains to our community? Which of the recommendations or actions seems most relevant?
  • If you were to open a discussion about reparations within our congregation/community, what would you want to explore?
  • Where would an ongoing conversation about reparations and restoration be held in the structure of our congregation/community?
  • What would be the hardest discussion for us to have? What might be the cost of having it? What is the cost of not having it?
  • What positive outcomes might occur if conversations about reparations that aren’t happening now were to be held?
  • If our congregation were to open a conversation with our larger community about reparations and restoration, where would you want to start? What would be the next task to continue this conversation?

Closing and Next Actions

Ask people to revisit the Feelings Wheel. Invite them to check in about their most dominant feeling. Acknowledge that discussions of reparations and restoration are difficult and that they evolve in a community over time.

Invite the group into a closing ritual: Ask volunteers to read aloud the Take-Aways at the end of the Restoration and Reparations chapter. You may extinguish the chalice while participants read.

Remind the group that both study and action are the purposes of this group. Offer a quick check-out by asking the following questions, inviting each participant to take a moment to reflect and then to respond in one sentence to any question:

  • What is one idea you want to continue to think about before our next discussion?
  • What are the short-term actions that we should consider or take to translate this discussion into action?
  • What are the longer scope actions?
  • What is an element that makes the hard work meaningful and worthwhile for this group?