A single black woman. Confirmed in a small Episcopal church in rural Kansas. The year was 1900. Elizabeth May DeKonza was one of a very small number of African-American residents of the town , and she was a loyal Episcopalian. She never married, lived alone, and supported herself with a patchwork of jobs throughout her life. She was seriously disabled after being struck by a car in her mid-fifties. She attended worship services as often as possible, walking the 1½ miles each way during hot summers and freezing winters, using crutches in her later years. She wrote of her isolation, as she sat alone in a pew. A 1981 centennial history of the parish recorded that Miss DeKonza was “tolerated but not accepted” by her fellow parishioners, all of whom were white. She received the blessed wine of Holy Communion from a separate chalice reserved for her use alone. When she died in 1959, the rector presided over her burial in an unmarked grave in the local cemetery.

I had been serving as priest-in-charge of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Clay Center, Kansas for only a few months when a new parishioner came across the brief mention of Elizabeth May DeKonza in the parish’s commemorative history. Dr. James Beck, a psychologist and former faculty member of Denver Seminary, and his wife, Ginny, were deeply touched by the story and the image of a physically impaired woman of color being ostracized by people who tried to follow Jesus and aimed to do God’s work in the world but, reflecting the cultural norms of the time, failed to welcome and include her as a beloved child of God. At the very least, Jim and Ginny urged, we should give this unknown woman the dignity of a proper grave marker.

Thus began the search for the deeper story of Elizabeth DeKonza, who later began to call herself Mai DeKonza. Further digging – including a sheaf of letters to James Wise, the fourth Bishop of Kansas, revealed Mai’s active life as a writer, composer of music, and public speaker on issues of race and politics. As we learned more about Mai, we grew to feel her pain and admire her spunk. It became clear to all of us that God was gifting us with an awesome opportunity and responsibility. We felt called to hear and to heed the lessons of a faithful Christian who was overlooked and rejected by the good people of our own church, those just one generation ahead of some of our current members. We believed that God was inviting us to acknowledge and claim this sad bit of our history and to do what we could to make amends.

I researched services of repentance and healing in response to racial and social injustice and shared what I learned with vestry members, who enthusiastically endorsed a special service to honor Miss DeKonza. As Jim developed and circulated Mai’s story and plans began to come together, one of my main concerns as the congregation’s spiritual leader was that we would be able to honor this woman who had suffered much injustice and rejection during her life – without being just some white folks trying to feel good about ourselves or assuage our guilt. I reached out to seminary professors and classmates from the Episcopal Divinity School, seeking their reactions and perspective about our ideas and plans. With their encouragement and support, we moved ahead.

A set of “goals and intentions” helped us keep our focus on our sister, Mai, and on her gifts that our “parish mothers and fathers” had failed to appreciate when she was their neighbor. Our statement of intentions included our desire to give voice to a strong, creative, and sometimes cantankerous woman who refused to back down – and to look for the lessons she could teach us today. We wanted to encourage people to examine the issue of racism in our individual lives and in the nation as reflected by shootings in Ferguson, Mo., and Charleston, S.C. – and to ask how we can contribute to positive changes. We challenged ourselves to look for the “Mai DeKonzas” who live among us now, and to do a better job of opening our arms and hearts to fully include them in the life of our parish and the community. Finally, we hoped to open a conversation within the parish, the community, and the Diocese of Kansas about the sins of racism, past and present, and to participate in efforts to listen and to seek healing and wholeness.

The Service of Repentance, Healing & Reconciliation to honor the life of Elizabeth May (Mai) DeKonza was held September 20, 2015 at St. Paul’s. Prayers followed at Miss DeKonza’s gravesite, where a polished black marble headstone had been placed a few days earlier. A letter to the parish afterward from the Right Reverend Michael B. Curry, who was installed as Presiding Bishop a few weeks later, read in part: “What you have done in memory of Mai DeKonza, and in thanksgiving for her incredible faithfulness, is a ….testament to the power of Jesus Christ to heal the deepest wounds, to reconcile that which is broken and to make it whole. … People joining hands with each other, then placing their hands in the hands of the Almighty God of love can change the course of history.” We all have been deeply touched, reassured, and inspired by Bishop Curry’s words. We pray that we can move forward, loving and valuing each person we meet as God graciously loves us.

You can read about the service in an Episcopal News Service article. For more about Mai DeKonza’s story, visit the St. Paul’s website and look for the link at the bottom of the home page.

About the author: The Rev. Lavonne Seifert currently serves as associate rector of Grace Episcopal Church, an urban parish in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. Previously, she was priest-in-charge of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Clay Center, Kansas, a nearly all-white rural community in the heart of wheat country. The small congregation of St. Paul’s organized a service of reconciliation and healing in September 2015, to honor the memory of Miss Mai De Konza, a single woman who was the only black member of the parish in the early half of the 20th century, and to ask God’s forgiveness for failing to welcome her fully into the congregation. Rev. Seifert holds a master’s degree from Episcopal Divinity School.