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In college she was privileged to be part of a work group that lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota helping build a community center for the tribe. This was her first look at the racist cruelty present in the United States. It was deeply shocking. Then during summer college breaks she volunteered in downtown St. Louis with a community project offering activities and basic human needs to the children of the residents of the city housing projects. This was another deep shock. So as the civil rights movement spread across our nation she was clear that a loving God was on the side of justice. The Civil War had not ended. Racism was rotting the core of the American experiment.

After college she enrolled in the Chicago Theological Seminary seeking to strengthen and deepen her ability to be a decent human being. It was clear that the “church” [in all flawed forms] had as its mandate to live with love as the strongest force in the world. How can we harness that force, the power of love, to change the lives of the people? How could she become a person for whom the actions of faith guide her days. Her years in Chicago were a heady mix of Social Justice leaders, poets, theologians, scholars and people with a passion for change. Even now as she is ageing she remembers the power and brilliance of the Saturdays when ML King, and other leaders, would be present and preaching to the seminary community. One catch phrase used every week was the litany “I am somebody, you are somebody”. So simple yet so very powerful. Another way to look at human equality. We are all “somebody” of worth and high value. At the same time the peace movement was growing, the women’s movement was awakening, and hard work was beginning to change the structural limits placed on some by banks & laws.

During her seminary years she spent one summer among migrant farm workers and 18 month teaching Headstart in the city of Chicago. These jobs among some of the least privileged people in our country solidified her commitment to working for change.

Graduating in 1970, she began active ministry. After one year as a Christian Education worker she moved to Assistant minister in a multi-cultural congregation in Providence, RI. Today that congregation remains one of the few truly muti-cultural UCC churches. Among the members are old New England Congregationalists, Black, and Brown neighbors and a large Asian mostly Chinese community. Within the life of the congregation those superficial differences made no difference at all. Truthfully the equality of our humanity made the surface differences irrelevant. While in Rhode Island she joined the Clergy Consultation Service, an abortion referral organization formed by clergy responding to the desperation of women with “problem pregnancies” and no legal options. This was before Roe v. Wade. She also continued agitating for peace and justice as well as taking time to strengthen pastoral skills through Clinical Pastoral Education. When the UCC General Synod, being held in St. Louis, determined that it was appropriate to send a delegation to the Coachella Valley to join and support Cesar Chavez. Dolores Huerta, and the farmworkers movement, she was one of the group.

Her next call was a church in suburban New Jersey. The congregation was full of Rutgers University faculty members and very focused on social justice. We organized information & conferences on “Conscience”, “living with AIDS”, and supporting some who were more committed to helping than fearing the virus. We also monitored ammunition transport over the roads as an ammunition dump was not far from our congregation.

Being an agitator for justice was easy for the members of the congregation were onboard. SheI met and married Elvin in NJ and with his very early retirement they were free to move. After 7 years in NJ, they bought a farmhouse in Maine and moved to our own 40 acres. Gardening, heating mostly with wood, shoveling snow became our work. After about two years she was called to serve a small town UCC congregation in Newport, ME. During her ministry the congregation responded to the chaning economic realities in rural Maine by opening a food pantry. That pantry is still pen many years later. She was also designated as the local Salvation Army Welfare Secretary, given a checkbook and told to help those in deep need.
After 8 years she was called to serve a church in suburban southcoast Massachusetts. A welcoming congregation, the membership included a few gay couples, a few black members and a great deal of warmth. When the state Supreme Court ruled Gay Marriage legal the rafters shook for a moment. A thoughtful conversation ensued and very soon the reality was the new normal.

Thorough out these years she continued to engage in deep questioning about how to best “do justly, love kindly and walk humbly” and to “love neighbor as one loves oneself.”

In 2004 she retired from active ministry and moved 3000 miles across the country to the high desert of California. Retirement did not stop her from living with the constant question “what is the right action in this moment”?

Since living in the desert she has been active in the Land Trust [preserving desert lands], responding to racist activity by seeking to proclaim the Morongo Basin a “Hate Free Zone”, and following the murder of Geroge Floyd establishing the MB Social Justice Coalition. Some of the work involved purchasing billboards with messages calling for equality, civility and decency. These efforts have met with significant resistance.

As the theme of Bloom’s 2022 Spring Fling was to be “Bending the Arc” after Dr. King’s famous lines, it would seem that recognizing Paula Durrant with our Community Justice Award is extremely fitting. Here is a person who has dedicated her life to bending that arc toward justice. She is known throughout her community and everywhere she has been as an advocate for social and economic justice. Bloom is proud to have Paula in our congregation and proud to present her our 8th Community Justice Award.