Saturday, January 16
10 W. Franklin Street, Baltimore, Maryland

Sacred reflection at noon, including raising  the #Black Lives Matter banner on the Portico of our historic Sanctuary.

We gather at noon to stand in witness to our desire to be transformed as a people. We yearn to express the reality our faith proclaims—the interdependent web of existence, of which we are a part, and the inherent worth and dignity of each person—and we acknowledge that in our society, Black lives are more subject to violence, police abuse and brutality, and mass incarceration. And so, to affirm the sacredness of every life, we must declare that #BlackLivesMatter.

40 Days of #BlackLivesMatter
January 15-February 23, 2016
First Unitarian Church of Baltimore
(Universalist & Unitarian)

From the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to the birthday of Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, First Unitarian Church of Baltimore will mark #BlackLivesMatter in our community. Each day, we will offer one opportunity to engage in study and reflection, direct service, or public witness to our aspirations to be transformed as a whole people on a journey together.

“Forty” is an image drawn from Hebrew tradition to signify a very long time. The story is told of a deluge lasting forty days and forty nights, during which a faithful remnant of living beings, gathered by Noah, brought forward a transformed life of the whole planet. The followers of Moses were said to have wandered in the wilderness for forty years as a part of their journey toward liberation. The prophet Jesus of Nazareth was said to have spent forty days in the wilderness fasting before he was fully prepared to engage his public ministry to the good news of a transformed and transforming way of being in the world, a way of healing and community building, of teaching and justice making. We look forward to the changes in our identity, relationships and effectiveness in the world that will come from periods of concentrated spiritual activity.