Order of Service

“Courage, Compassion and Creativity”

Maggie Carey, Lay Worship Leader, preaching

Lay Worship Leader Maggie Carey examines how Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his colleague Rev. Vincent Harding focused on courage, compassion, and creativity in their innovative, daring, and extremely difficult work in the early 1960’s regarding civil rights and US involvement in the Vietnam war.

Maggie Carey first lived in Arlington in the 1980s before work and love led her to New Jersey, Atlanta, and New York. She later returned to Massachusetts, living in Brookline and Newton before settling once again in Arlington. Her daughter, Kiki, attended Hardy Elementary School, survived Ottoson Middle School with her sense of humor intact, and thrived at Arlington High School. First Parish has long been central to Maggie’s connection to the town. Over the years, she served on a variety of committees and volunteered whenever work allowed. Now retired, Maggie dedicates much of her time to reparations work through First Parish and several other organizations, including the NAACP, the Reparations Interfaith Coalition, and the MLK Birthday Committee. Maggie believes slavery is the nation’s “original sin” and the root of deeply embedded systemic racism, institutional bias, the settler-colonial mindset, and the crisis of mass incarceration. The persistence of these injustices motivates her to do whatever she can to help educate fellow white people about racism’s enduring legacy.