I’m a fan of the action-reflection model of learning. Try something, see how it goes, learn from that, build on what works, let go of what doesn’t, keep on trying and learning as you go. I once heard a church consultant describe it this way: “Ready-fire-aim!” While I don’t love the shooting metaphor, I’ve found this mantra helps me overcome inertia. I am an internal processer with a perfectionistic side, someone who really likes to have everything sorted out in my head before I speak and a plan laid out before I act. And yet, I find that I often have to choose between total paralysis and being willing to move ahead and make mistakes.Adopting a “ready, fire, aim” mentality keeps me from getting stuck in my own frame of reference, and allows me to welcome the creativity and wisdom of others. This sort of iterative process, I find, also allows the Spirit to move and to illuminate the path forward in surprising ways.
The action-reflection model was first developed by the educational theorist Donald Schön. Digging into his model a bit more I learned that he actually identified three types of action: “Knowing in Action” describes the intuitive way we absorb our training and practice into our way of being, so that it looks and feels instinctive. “Reflection in Action” means thinking on our feet—evaluating and adapting and learning while in the midst of an activity. And “Reflection on Action” is a deliberate pause away from the heat of the moment; it means creating intentional time and space to consider what we can learn from the past. It can include sharing with peers or mentors, identifying patterns, and integrating theory with practice.[1]
This morning, we continue to delve into the brief parable in the Gospel of Matthew that compares a wise life to a house built on solid ground. During this month of shared worship, as University Baptist Church kicks off the celebration of their 175th year, we’re taking notes and preparing to steal all their good ideas, since our same anniversary is next year. Our sermons each week address a different word from the text. The word I chose for this morning is “act.” “Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise person who built their house on rock.” I notice that Jesus is into the action-reflection model, too! He puts hearing and doing together as equally important grounding for a well-built community. So I wonder, what can we learn about who we are and where we’re going as congregations by reflecting on the actions of the past? How will we continue to be a people of action—taking bold steps even on uncertain ground? How will we keep moving, while accepting that our actions will be imperfect?
I’ve been studying the involvement of First Church in the abolitionist movement. I know that UBC also embraced this movement, and I believe Doug may be talking about that next week. The story of Eliza Winston is one of Minnesota’s illuminating hidden stories. Minnesota, whether as a territory or state, never legally allowed slavery. And yet owners of the Winslow House in the frontier settlement of St. Anthony, where our churches were first located, cultivated the summertime business of wealthy southern slaveowners, and the community made a habit of looking the other way. When Eliza Winston was brought to Minnesota from Mississippi with her captors in the summer of 1860, she made the decision to challenge this practice and seek her freedom. She expressed her desire for liberation to Emily Grey, a free Black woman who had her own business as a seamstress, and whose parents were conductors of the Underground Railroad during her childhood.
The Rev. Charles Seaccombe, founding pastor of First Church, was a committed abolitionist who preached frequently about the subject. Emily Grey often attended the worship services he led. Grey approached Seaccombe and other white abolitionists with the request from Winston. Their first plan involved abolitionists escorting Winston to the church, where a car would pull up and take her away to safety. Unfortunately, word leaked to Winston’s captors and the plan failed. However, it was Seaccombe’s permission to use the church as a meeting place that has led historians to say that First Congregational Church was a stop on the underground railroad. (Though, generally speaking, the railroad did not pass through this area and this was probably the first and last opportunity the church had to demonstrate our solidarity in that particular way.) Once the escape plot was uncovered, Winston’s captors took her away to a resort on Bde Maka Ska. It seems that Seaccombe’s involvement in the situation ended there; he is not mentioned again in the various sources I read. Others persisted, however. The abolitionists pressed a local judge to issue an order that Winston be brought to court. They escorted her there, and supported her in making a successful petition for her freedom.[2]
In studying this history, I noticed a few things. Our society grapples with the same sort of ethical issues people faced in St. Anthony in the 1800s. We are entangled, just as they were, in the economic system set in motion by colonization, one that urges us to exploit all that is sacred—people and land. We, too, have the responsibility to resist this harmful way of relating to each other, even as many people around us simply view these circumstances as normal and inevitable. Like Rev. Seaccombe, we have blind spots that drive us to contradict our own values. One priority of his ministry was ending slavery. The other was “Christianizing the frontier.” This process of conversion was not simply a spiritual effort; it asserted the superiority of white culture and paved the way for the domination of white people and institutions—the very thing Seaccombe claimed to oppose. As we act, and reflect on our actions, may we not be afraid to examine our own hypocrisy and seek to grow out of it.
I also learned that the underground railroad was a grassroots effort that centered the leadership of those affected by slavery. Abolitionism, on the other hand, tended to be a more paternalistic campaign led by white folks in a top-down manner. It was unusual for white abolitionists to associate directly with African Americans or take direction from them. So Emily Grey’s relationship with Rev. Seaccombe and her role in freeing Eliza Winston was significant and unusual in the ways it resisted that pattern. At the same time, the abolitionist movement and white society as a whole has failed to celebrate the agency and courage of people like Winston and Grey until now. If we hope for fruitful relationship between diverse people, we have to change the way we hold and share power and the way we tell and honor the stories of our past and present.
Finally, it seems worth wondering why Seaccombe apparently withdrew from the effort to free Eliza Winston. Did he encounter resistance from his neighbors or his own congregation members? Was he afraid? Did he disagree with the strategy being used? Did he think he wasn’t needed, or get busy with other matters? There are many reasons that we, too, may fail to sustain our efforts and truly see our actions through. It is important for us to consider what is getting in our way and what we can do to remove the obstacles to our showing up as people who act for justice with love.
Ironically, the solid, storm-withstanding rock on which Jesus urges us to build our lives and community is not rigid or dogmatic. It is fluid, dynamic, and alive. Being followers of Jesus—who hear and act, who cultivate integrity, or alignment between what we say and who we are—means that we commit ourselves to an unending process of action and reflection, reflection and action. It means that we embrace a posture of radical openness to the transformational wisdom of our teacher and the creative energies of the Spirit. The incredible poet, Andrea Gibson, who died this past week, summed up this sort of life well, I think, when she said: “In the end, I want my heart to be covered in stretch marks.” Amen.
[1] https://workplacehero.co.uk/blog/the-sch%C3%B6n-reflection-model
[2] (Sources: It Took Courage: Eliza Winston’s Quest for Freedom, by Christopher P. Lehman; “The Church and the City: Congregationalism in Minneapolis, 1850-1890” by Paul R. Lucas, Minnesota History, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Summer, 1974); “Eliza Winston and the Politics of Freedom in Minnesota, 1854-1860”, by William D. Green, in MN History Journal, volume 57, no.3, Fall 2000)