Cecil Williams, Mystic & Prophet & Genuine Christian Chief, Half II

We’re meditating on the life and items of Cecil Williams, pastor since 1963 at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco who died this week. 

Cecil and his spouse Janice Mirikitani based numerous therapeutic teams not only for AA however for all method of wounds and addictions, and moved individuals from victims to brokers.  Lots of the working leaders on the church had undergone therapeutic in such teams.  Applications for HIV/AIDS screenings, and for intravenous drug customers and for ladies coping with homelessness, home violence and psychological well being points.

The church served 500,000 meals in the course of the 12 months 2020-2021 alone.  On Thanksgiving and Christmas, 2500 meals of ham, turkey, and extra have been supplied by quite a few volunteers in a spirit of festivity and neighborhood.

Within the 1960’s, San Francisco was like the remainder of America vis-à-vis the homosexual neighborhood—arresting LGBTQ residents only for gathering.  However Cecil, working on his rules of welcoming the poor and disenfranchised, opened his church to LGBTQ teams and even hosted drag balls there.  This was earlier than Stonewall.

His church has been referred to as “the soul of the town” and it’s stated he approached the whole lot he did with “unconditional love.” Cecil, the grandson of a slave raised within the segregated South, sought “to like everybody, the identical factor as Jesus did,” remarked a person who had identified him for 48 years. 

Stated Willimas in a 2013 interview: When you actually perceive, it appears to me, the liberated gospel, the liberated acts of Jesus, it might imply that we might take any hatred out of our hearts….Take judgment out of your coronary heart and pour love there. That’s what must be there.

He mentored youthful generations of ministers straight and by his instance.  It has been my privilege over time to work together with a variety of such leaders within the Bay Space. 

It was our honor to bestow an honorary doctoral diploma on Cecil from our College of Creation Spirituality and he graced us by his presence and prophetic phrases on that memorable event.

To me, Williams as a frontrunner was the whole lot a follower of Jesus needs to be: A lover, a listener, a challenger, a prophet who interfered with social, gender, financial, racial and homophobic injustice the place he noticed it. A person with a comfortable coronary heart and a delicate approach plus the warrior and lion spirit of a prophet. 

Might this man of peace relaxation in peace and be remembered by those that imitate his methods.

See Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Put up-denominational Priest, pp. 304-333, 340, 352, 442.

And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Presents for the Peoples of the Earth.

And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Reworking Evil in Soul and Society.

Banner picture: “Cecil Williams in San Francisco Metropolis Corridor’s Board of Supervisors chambers talking on behalf of the Worldwide Lodge tenants.” Photograph by Nancy Wong. Wikimedia Commons.

Queries for Contemplation

Do you agree with Cecil’s formulation to “take judgment out of your coronary heart and pour love as a replacement”?  How would possibly that alter political life in America and past?

Really helpful Studying

Confessions: The Making of a Put up-Denominational Priest (Revised/Up to date Version)

Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his private, mental, and religious journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. 5 new chapters on this revised and up to date version deliver added perspective in gentle of the writer’s continued journey, and his reflections on the present modifications going down in church, society and the surroundings.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible religious revolutionary enlivens the thoughts and emboldens the center — should studying for anybody concerned with braveness, creativity, and the way forward for faith.”
—Joanna Macy, writer of World as Lover, World as Self

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Presents for the Peoples of the Earth

Fox’s spirituality weds the therapeutic and liberation present in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of each non secular and political persuasion to unite in a brand new imaginative and prescient by means of which we study to honor the earth and the individuals who inhabit it because the present of a great and simply Creator.
“A watershed theological work that gives a standard floor for non secular seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Observe.

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Reworking Evil in Soul and Society

Visionary theologian and best-selling writer Matthew Fox presents a brand new theology of evil that basically modifications the standard notion of excellent and evil and factors the way in which to a extra enlightened therapy of ourselves, each other, and all of nature. In evaluating the Japanese custom of the 7 chakras to the Western custom of the 7 capital sins, Fox permits us to suppose creatively about our capability for private and institutional evil and what we are able to do about them. 
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a greater imaginative and prescient and depth of notion far past the grasp of anybody single science.  A breath-taking evaluation.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, writer of Quantum Theology: Non secular Implications of the New Physics