SL01-04 Cultivating Essentiality in The Cosmos

Recently, near the feast day of Jonathan Myrick Daniels observed on August 14th in the Episcopal Church Lesser Feasts and Fasts calendar, I had the pleasure of re-discovering the public theologian Ruby Sales.   Ruby Sales was the 16 year old student whom Jonathan Myrick Daniels pushed out of harms way in Fort Deposit, AL, on August 20th, 1965, when he saw Tom Coleman level a shotgun at her and he died a martyr having taken the full force of the shotgun blast.  He would later be recognized a martyr by the Episcopal Church for his actions that day.    Ruby Sales, went on to attend seminary and continue her civil rights and social justice work and continues her ministry and work through The Spirit House Project.   The interview she gave on the On Being Podcast in August of 2017, is a must hear as it speaks deeply to the current situation facing all lives in the United States today.  The show notes posted on our website at angelsofthenativity.org/speilumina will have links to that interview and to the blog post I wrote in 2015 remembering the 50th anniversary of the martyrdom of Jonathan Myrick Daniels.   Theology and theologies have often been too heady for me and too philosophical and far removed from the day to day steps and progress I attempt to make in my spiritual journey.  Ruby Sales sparks within me a desire to reflect on my role — as I continue along in my spiritual journey — in the theology/theologies she is calling all those involved in social justice, civil rights and faith to envision, when she says:   "I really think that one of the things that we've got to deal with is that — how is it that we develop a theology or theologies in a 21st-century capitalist technocracy where only a few lives matter? How do we raise people up from disposability to essentiality?" — Ruby Sales