What do I need to be nourished?

 Sunshine or a scarf and a cat in my lap

Just enough chocolate

Time to work

Time to think

Voices from people of color who can forgive

Wise words with rhythm

An accent fingernail in blue

Team members who do work I don't even know about

The Power of Privilege - Tiffany Jana

 

Poem - won't you celebrate with me - Lucille Clifton

what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

More than words

 I believe 3 things are needed to sail through this to that, as Lucille Clifton wishes for us.

1) That we cultivate bold, just goals of equity in process and then ongoing equality in outcomes.

2) That we, at all levels, continually look for and root out the constraints and the causes of all the practices and institutions and systems that stand between us and the embracing and achieving of our shared goals.

3) That we individually do the work to build skills of valuing difference and negotiating conflict, unlearn implicit bias, root out prejudice, leverage privilege, cultivate compassion, and celebrate and share joy in community.

It is not enough to espouse our intentions. We know that impact is a better measure of justice. 

Strategic planning has taught us not just to find our vision but ask what stands in the way of that vision. If we all want justice, what is it that stops us from attaining it? 

On a macro scale, it's easier to point to the GOP's blatant racism in the policies that would disproportionately benefit white communities and undermine communities of color.

It's harder, on an individual scale, to find the barriers that keep me from having a diverse set of friends. Or why my beloved liberal faith, which professes the dignity of each individual and celebrates diversity as a source for life meaning and wisdom, is overwhelmingly white. 

And the answer, of course, is institutional racism scaffolding around white supremacy culture. And to achieve equality for all and diversity that we can celebrate? Dismantling systems of oppression in our church culture and in our personal interactions with those who are different from ourselves. 

And how to do that? To give up the privilege of comfort of white people as the norm. To accept the stress and the challenge and the adventure of being a traveler among other cultures - to learn from them, to interact with humility and curiosity and respect, to be very aware of the cultural identities that we bring into each interaction. To accept that diversity is to be the new norm, to give up the idea of the "universal experience" and instead be ok with the relativity of multiculturalism and intersectionality of identity. To learn how to see difference and not be afraid or offended. To experience offense and be brave enough and mature enough to say so in nonviolent terms. To ask for what you want in positive terms. (John Gottman's got this one nailed when it comes to the best relationships - anger is ok but say what HAPPENED that you didn't like and what you WANT TO HAPPEN instead, not criticizing or belittling or, in the case of a one community member to another, giving up on them altogether.)

This is the anti-racism that Ibram X. Kendi describes, as opposed to segregationist or assimilationist urges of the past. Again, easier for me to see at the national scale. Harder to see at the level of my church, my life, when I make decisions on what is "relaxing" and "refreshing" on a weekend. 

Although Kendi advocates "zero tolerance" on microagressions, my Unitarian Universalist faith means I cannot give up on someone - not that I have to embrace them or not hold them accountable - but following Ruby Sales, I cannot give up on anyone or write anyone’s obituary "until they no longer have breath in their bodies." 

"It’s almost like white people don’t believe that other white people are worthy of being redeemed." - Ruby Sales in On Being

Dr. Yaba Blay on Brene Brown's Unlocking Us talked about identity as three components, "the meeting of

• who you are, 
• who you believe yourself to be, and 
• who others tell you that you are."

I think we’re all trying to navigate that space to come to understand who we are. Because we can’t act like other people’s definitions of us or other people’s projections onto us don’t impact us. A lot of us are constantly massaging our identities to fit in a variety of spaces and places. And I think it’s healthy to do so. But I’m sure over the course of our lives, we’re constantly revisiting the question of, “Who am I?” That’s constantly changing based upon the experiences that we have, and for better or for worse, some of us might define ourselves according to our experiences, or some of us might try to meet an identity that is projected on to us.

 And the responsibility for our identity when it includes our street race, and perhaps how we land on others, even acknowledging, maybe especially acknowledging that implicit bias, stereotypes, and prejudice are real and present in almost every interaction, means that we must get better at being multicultural and intercultural to minimize the stress and associated negative health effects that come with it. 

The way Brene and Dr. Blay talk about codeswitching as stressful but unavoidable in the podcast link above is what I think white people need to accept. We are leaving/dismantling a world built for white comfort and instead building a world where we all must get more comfortable being uncomfortable, staying on our growing edge, growing our awareness and skill of using our bodies as antenna to notice when we or others have crossed a cultural line and offended or hurt someone, and getting much better - bolder - braver - more skillful - in asking for, hearing, and acting on feedback and then resolving conflict, repairing the relationship, and building trust again - one marble into the jar at a time (as Brene's daughter explained trust with her friends). Snowflakes? What a joke! This is the hardest work there is. Scorched earth is a white colonists solution to all conflict. Knitting? Weaving? Forgiving? Building community across difference? What fortitude! What wisdom! What maturity and dexterity and skill is needed!

And so I have dreams of anti-racism trainings that just drill offense, feedback, apology, repair. And eventually, you move to difference, (internal fear, deep breath, cultivating curiosity about an individual), laughter and/or questions, listening, stories, asking for what you want, discussing different values and needs, and brainstorming/working together on how to get everyone a little more of what they want and need. 

Poem - "blessing the boats" by Lucille Clifton

                                                (at St. Mary's)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back     may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

Poem - Affirmation of Hope - Loretta Williams

 

We, bearers of the dream, affirm that a new vision of hope is emerging.
We pledge to work for that community in which justice will be actively present.
We affirm that there is struggle yet ahead.
Yet we know that in the struggle is the hope for the future.
We affirm that we are co-creators of the future, not passive pawns.
And we stand united in affirmation of our hope and vision of a just and inclusive society.
We affirm the unity of all persons:
We affirm brotherhood and sisterhood that allows us to touch upon each other’s humanity.
We affirm a unity that opens our eyes, ears, and hearts to see the different but common forms of oppression, suffering, and pain.
Yet we are one in the image of God, and we celebrate our hopes for human unity.
Within ourselves and within the gathered community, we will discover the strength not to hide in indifference.
Affirming that hope, publicly expressed, energizes and enables us to move forward. Together we pledge action to transcend barriers — be they racial, political, economic, social, or religious.
We pledge to make our tomorrows become our todays.

Ross Gay - Delights Reading + Talk with Hanif Abdurraqib with Timestamps

 

(All from The Book of Delights)

4:20 "Weirdly Untitled" 

8:55 "The High Five from Strangers, Etc."

13:20 "The Marfa Lights"

14:45 "To Spread the Sweetness of Love" (Stevie Wonder in the airport)

17:45 "Ambiguous Signage Sometimes"

21:50 "Cocoa Baby"

25:20 Talk with Hanif Abdurraqib

Ross Gay - Poetry reading with timestamps

 

11:30 "To the Mistake" (Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude)

15:30 "That's Some Bambi Shit" (The Book of Delights)

16:55 "Tap, Tap in the Time of Trump" (The Book of Delights)

18:58 "Transplanting" (The Book of Delights)

23:40 "To the Mulberry Tree" (Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude)

28:37 "Just a Dream" (The Book of Delights)

33:23 (Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude)

Poem - Nessie Wants to Watch Herself Doing It - Patricia Lockwood

 Doing what, I don’t know, being alive. The green

of her is a scum on the surface, she would like
to look at herself. Should I have a memory?
she wonders. Of mother washing my frogskin
in muddy water? I do not have that memory.
My near-transparent frogskin? Mother washing
it with mud to keep it visible? I do not have that
memory, almost, almost. Warmblooded though
she knows for a fact, and spontaneously generated
from the sun on stone, and 100 vertebrae in every
wave of the lake, as 100 vertebrae in every wave
of her. All of her meat blue rare blue rare, a spot
on her neck that would drive her wild if anyone ever
touched it, and the tip of her tail ends with -ness and
-less. So far all she knows of the alphabet is signs
that say NO SWIMMING.
                      So far all she knows is her whereabouts.
Has great HATRED for the parochial, does the liver
of the lake. Would like to go to universe … al … ity?
She has heard there is a good one in Germany.
They stay up all night drinking some black sludge,
and grow long beards rather than look at them-
selves, and do thought experiments like: if I am not
in Scotland, does Scotland even exist? What do I look
like when no one is looking? She would listen to them
just as hard as she could with the mud-sucking holes
in her head – and they, she thinks, would listen back,
with their ears so regularly described as seashell.
The half of her that is underwater would like to be
under a desk, the head of her that is underwater
would like to be fully immersed.
                                                 I will be different there,
she thinks, with a powerful wake ahead of me.
When will the thinkers come for me. Visited only
here by believers. Is so deep-sea-sick of believers.
When will the thinkers come for me here, where
the green stretches out before me, and I am my own
front lawn. The green is a reflective green, a green
in the juicy shadows of leaves – a bosky even green –
a word I will learn to use, and use without self-
consciousness, when at last I go to Germany. I have
holed myself away here, sometimes I am not here
at all, and I feel like the nice clean hole in the leaf
                          and the magnifying glass above me.
She looks to the believers on the shore. A picture
                          it would last longer! shouts Nessie.
Does NOT believe photography can rise to the level
of art, no matter how much rain falls in it, as levels
of the lake they rose to art when Nessie dipped
her body in it. Nessie wants to watch herself doing
it. Doing what, I don’t know, being alive. The lake
bought one Nessie and brought her home. She almost
died of loneliness until it gave her a mirror. The lake
could be a mirror, thinks Nessie. Would be perfectly
                                                            still if I weren’t in it.

Poem - We Don’t Know When We Were Opened (Or, The Origin of the Universe) - Morgan Parker

after Mickalene Thomas

A sip of liquor from a creek. Saturday syndicated
Good Times, bare legs, colors draped like
an afterthought. We bright enough to blind you.
Dear anyone, dear high-heel metronome, white
noise, hush us, shhhhh, hush us. We’re artisinal
crafts, rare gems, bed of leafy bush you call
us      superfood. Jeweled lips, we’re rich
We’re everyone. We have ideas and vaginas,
history and clothes and a mother. Portrait-ready
American blues. Palm trees and back issues
of JET, pink lotion, gin on ice, zebras, fig lipstick.
One day we learned to migrate. One day we studied
Mamma making her face. Bright new brown, scent of Nana
and cinnamon. Shadows of husbands and vineyards,
records curated to our allure, incense, unconcern.
Champagne is how the Xanax goes down, royal blue
reigning. We’re begging anyone not to forget
we’re turned on with control. We better homes and gardens.
We real grown. We garden of soiled panties.
We low hum of satisfaction. We is is is is is is is is
touch, touch, shine, a little taste. You’re gonna
give us the love we need.

Leaning into Conflict

At the risk of going a bit down the road of making a colorblind racist argument, I'm thinking more and more about how the crux of the ongoing issues around race centers around our lack of skill dealing with and successfully navigating through and negotiating conflict.

I remember when I was interviewing for a scholarship before beginning college, and someone asked me if I had hope that men and women would ever resolve their differences. I remember saying that it's a miracle that any of us can relate to anyone else, and gender differences just complicate things further. 30 years later, I would just add that race, class, urban/rural, liberal/conservative, democrat/republican, formally educated/life educated, and on and on add to the complexity and potential for miscommunication, misunderstanding, false assumptions, implicit bias, discrimination, prejudice and on and on.

A common trope is to say the life skill that should be taught from kindergarten up. Taking turns? Check. Saying sorry when you make a mistake? Check. But what about examining why you make mistakes more often when someone seems different from you? Not so much. Maybe Sesame Street? But only in a "we're all different, and that's ok!" kind of way. Not "You're different from me, and my first instinct is fear, but I need to lean into that and realize I just have something to learn - and you have something to each me!" And please, lord, teach us early and often how to work through conflict using nonviolent communication: "When you [observable behavior], I felt [real emotion, not a phrase beginning with "that"]. In the future, I would prefer [action the person can take or not take]."

I made the off-hand comment to a friend that no one likes conflict. We all avoid it. And that's clearly not true. The worst bullies among us LOVE picking fights. And every Karen among us thinks she has every right to make anyone else feel uncomfortable if she's got any want, need, or complaint. But most of us are in the not-so-sweet spot between the poles of "I have every right to ask for anything I want/need" (i.e. entitled arrogance / arrogant entitlement) and "I have no right to ask for anything I want or need" (i.e. no self esteem / underfunctioning / invisibility).And we're terrified to say anything out loud lest we be asking too much. Am I worth it? What if they say no? Is the request worth the conflict?  

Instead of this win/lose polarity, we need healthy boundaries and ... ugh ... balance. Like the new thing people use as ground rule at meetings: Take space / Make space (the adjustment to replace the less inclusive "Move up / move back"). This comes with 2 acronyms to think about:

• W.A.I.T. = Why Am I Talking? 
• S.P.E.A.K. = Share Perspectives / Engage Another Knowledge-base

There are 3 stickies on my desk that I stare at all day long:

• What does it mean to undo harm?
• What would being silent exacerbate?
• Diversity does not equal racial justice

What would my life be like if I asked myself (and everyone else did the same) these questions in every interaction when we notice difference (and we should continually be learning to notice difference more) interfering with our communication and/or relationships? 

Cancel Culture vs. Accountability + Forgiveness

Watched Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar talk with Katie Couric about their new book: You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey.

Amber said she feels no compunction to teach white people why what they just said is hurtful and ignorant. Lacey, as an HR representative and one of the only people of color in her company and in Omaha, takes responsibility for teaching the history lesson, when she can.

This makes me think even more about the sermon Forgiveness by the Rev. Angela Herrera, which is worth watching (daily!) in its entirety.

The key points are transcribed (poorly) below:

5:05

To forgive is to let the debt go, is to release a claim you have against somebody. It is to say we are no longer bound to each other by what happened and by what remains unresolved. I release it. And in doing so, I release myself.

Sometimes people speak of forgiveness as a gift to the person who is being forgiven, and it certainly can be. It can be an underserved gift, which is to say, something that you could not be entitled to, the other person couldn’t do anything to be entitled to be forgiven.

Of course, If you revel in how undeserving the other person is, you’ve probably undone some of the goodness in that. But if you do it well, you can forgive somebody in such a way that doesn’t involve any sense superiority but leaves you that a burden has just been lifted from you – the burden of being angry. Where forgiving with a sense of condescension or superiority leaves you with a new negative way of thinking, forgiving freely is liberating and it helps us to be at peace and well in ourselves.

That feeling works even if the person never knows they have been forgiven…. It opens up more space in us for gratitude, love, awe, joy. Releasing our claims against the past allows us to become more present to now and to what goodness is still unfolding.

8:36

Hindu teaching – Bhagavad Gita 

“If you want to see the brave, look for those who return love for hatred; if you want to see the heroic, look to those who can forgive.”

 

12:32 – start with curiosity. Compassion questions.

Forgiveness does often begin with cultivating compassion in ourselves. Even Just a tiny bit….

Compassion might begin with a little curiosity. How did this person come to do what they did?

Have they been broken by something larger than themselves?

What does their behavior or their way of being cost them? Are they happy? Are they caught up in larger systems of oppression and violence? Do I have any personal experience with that kind of mindset? … Is it possible that on some terrible level, they are doing the best they can? …

It’s not actually necessary to believe that the person deserves to be forgiven. It’s more important to believe that you deserve to be free of anger, resentment, and the desire for revenge. …

Anne LaMott – 

"Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die."

13:55

Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. It does not require speaking to the other party… or being ok with what happened. Forgiveness doesn’t mean letting someone continue to do someone to harm. It’s not weakness. We can forgive and still find it best to end the relationship. Forgiveness does not mean liking or agreeing with bad or even evil behavior. It does not mean becoming friends from someone who would continue to hurt you… We can forgive and we still expect the offender to face reasonable consequences, whatever those might be.

15:00

To forgive is to say outloud or in our hearts: I’m not going to be angry anymore. It’s saying: even though what you’ve done is bad, and it would be perfectly acceptable. It’s too late to have a better past, it’s not too late to be present to what is and to experience liberation

When you forgive another person, you release the power their action has over you, the tension of that debt pulling on you is released, and you can get back to yourself, back to some peace because the chains between you and that other person have been broken or removed.

17:50

The message of our Universalist faith is that Every one of us is forgivable. Everyone is lovable.

It’s like our reading this morning from the poet Mary Oliver– I am so distant from the hope of myself.

…

18:28

Goodness and discernment are big things to fail at. Yet the trees stirring around her remind her that she came into the word to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine. My hope for each of you, for all of us, is that we’ll experience forgiveness however we need it. May you receive it and give it as often as needed, even an inch at a time. May it be so. Amen.

Poem - When I Am Among the Trees - Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Calling Out / Calling In

This week, the forces for white supremacy were besides themselves with indignant rage at cancel culture at work in eliminating the gender from Potato Head and the casual racism of Dr. Seuss.

The same week, I participated in a Lunch and Learn about Intercultural Communication where the instructor taught that if we ever faltered in how to handle microaggressions, we were to just think of them as sexual assault and handle them that way. The perpetrator was to be banished. The victim was to be believed and supported. End of story.

As a white person who freely admits that I have been steeped in and shaped by white supremacist culture, I know that I have been guilty of casual racism, implicit bias, subtle acts of exclusion, and unjustifiable ignorance. I acknowledge that I must work to stay awake, stay aware, learning and growing and listening. 

And I do not believe that microaggressions are only perpetrated by white people. If you accept intersectionality of power and oppression, you acknowledge that it's a one-up, one-down game in all direction and at all levels. 

And if you accept that, then you must know that despite all our best efforts, mistakes and slip-ups and gaps in knowledge, skill, and grace are inevitable. And "punishment" for microaggressions is not just short-sighted but woefully inadequate for the ocean of water that we all have to carry to get from where we are to a world in which we resolve conflicts with peaceful resolution. What's peaceful about treating a microaggressor as a perpetrator of sexual assault? 

I am a Universalist Unitarian, and the first part of my faith history is a heretical belief - at the time but also now - that every human being is worthy of salvation. That we are all redeemable. As Ruby Sales put it in her interview with Kristen Tippet in the podcast On Being:

This whole business of demonization, I’ve been deeply concerned about it, because it does not locate the good in people. It gives up on people. And you see that most especially in the right and the left. I have been very concerned about the demonization that comes out of right-wing communities and also the demonization that I’ve heard on the left. And it comes from the same source of displaced whiteness. So I think that there is, at the heart of this business of finding something good in people and not giving up on anyone and not writing anyone’s obituary until they no longer have breath in their bodies, is very problematic today. And I have had deep problems with the anger, the vitriolic rage that has come out of the right and the left — and I never thought I would say this — and the only safe landing space seems to be in the middle. [laughs] And I think we should really think about that. I do believe that we’re witnessing something that we need to pay real attention to.

She entreats us to ask "Where does it hurt?" when people are acting poorly, acknowledging that bad choices are born of pain, hurting, feeling like no other option is available. She alludes to white grievance feeling like white culture is under attack, that to be white is to be racist, to be irredeemable, to be flawed, to be bad.

To say that white supremacy culture leads white people to walk around harming others by denying their own cultural centers is not to say that whiteness is bad. It is to say that white supremacy is bad. And that actions and words and inaction and silence that reinforces white supremacy is bad. The difference between guilt - I have done a bad thing - and shame - I am bad.

But to let go of shame is to let go of the excuse that because I cannot shed whiteness, I have no way of doing better. And those who support and defend white centered culture want no part of any path that would hold them to doing better.

But the admonition that anyone who perpetrates a microaggression is akin to a rapist also narrows the paths toward reconciliation. Where is the island big enough for all the misfit toys? Hint: It's all the continents of the world.

And so if we say that all people are made up of intersectional identities, and each is connected to cultures, we must also say that because we are constantly communicating across cultures, miscommunication is to be expected and mistakes large and small will be commonplace. And therefore our work to be in right relationship, in Beloved Community of acceptance and celebration, must be the work of openness to learning and affirming and repair and reconciliation when harm occurs. 

(Is my feeling of urgency to get to learning skills of conflict resolution and reconciliation and repair a way of skipping past the acknowledgment of the need to learn and do better? Or, rather, is it side-stepping the instinct to not do better until I "learn enough" - a trap of inaction because there is an never-ending amount to learn?)

I want a "how to have hard conversations when you've screwed up" course. Or a "how to call in when someone's screwed up" workshop. I want more models of mama love - the image of a wolf nipping at her cubs when they get out of line but mostly letting them learn their own lessons through play with their littermates. 

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg gets at this new culture where mistake and repair is normalized and de-stigmatized when she offers this language, with a laugh, in an recent podcast with author Ijeoma Oluo, "You could just say: I did a racism, didn't I?" and then use the about how the Jewish tradition of atonement as a model for how to get back into right relationship. 

Rabbi Ruttenberg responds to Amy Cooper's sorry-not-sorry apology after calling the police on a black man when she broke the law:

She will not own that she DID a racism -- she could not possibly have DONE a racism, because that means she IS racist. ... Rather than, for example, saying something like, "I did something that was racist and I commit to educating myself to better understand why what I did was so harmful and to make better choices in the future." Something that would involve owning harm, working to change, and, I might add, offering amends of some sort to Christian Cooper. ... I don't believe that people cannot learn and grow and choose different actions. But that work demands taking full responsibility for the harm caused -- including amends and a real apology to the harmed parties -- and taking steps to become different (which could involve things like therapy, education, etc.) 

Rather than acknowledging, eg, that we all live in a white supremacist society and that it takes a lot of work to fight the messages that we have all internalized.

I would offer that a full apology to the person harmed is Plan A. But I'm remembering a sermon on forgiveness by the Rev. Angela Herrera in which an apology is perhaps more necessary to oneself. A moment of reflection and reckoning and re-orientation to be in right relationship with one's own values and a re-commitment to do better (and do what doing better will require, including therapy, education, etc.). Forgiveness involves 2 people but only requires 1 to act. 

And the reflection part includes Ruby Sales' question: Where is it hurting? What made you say or do or think or act or not say or not do or not think? (Seeing the water in which you swim. Reasserting your values. Re-orientation. Re-commitment.)

And the larger question of how to be in relationship with others, to be in community? It's a longer timeframe and more than 1:1 interactions. We should not only be focused on the success or failure of individual interactions and the quality of apology and atonement for 1 microaggression. The microaggressor may not be the right person to help heal the harm they caused, which is not to say that they shouldn't apologize, but rather to say that we all have a role in repair. That many hands make light work. That some harm can only be healed in community and over generations in the progress we make in dismantling systems of oppression. Which is not to let anyone off the hook for the responsibility to learn more so that we can individually do better, or to learn better how to apologize and repair/atone when we don't always do better. 

This is both/and. Individual interactions and the long arc of justice. The resilience of a tree, turning to grow in a new direction when the light is blocked from one side, as poet Jane Hirschfield writes in the poem "Optimism." Or, as Ruby Sales said, cultivating and embracing the love borne of redemptive anger ... that moves you to transformation and human up-building." (And fortifies you to hold others to account for their missteps.)

I'm thinking here of the usefulness of the wave/particle metaphor - that light acts both as a wave and a particle, depending on how you set up your equipment to study it. Our interactions are this way - a lesson at the level of 1:1 interactions as individual particles and on systemic levels when we look at interactions among intercultural communities and across generations. Both are true. Both are useful depending on the level you're working on. (Ah, William James, you so-and-so, teaching us that what's useful is what's true! I see you!)

"We are incomplete without knowing each other." Ruby Sales says. And because of our intersectional identities, there is an infinite web of cultures to know.

"Our job is to take care of one another. To fight for a world where everyone is safe, is free, is whole. All of us. In this together. That's it. That's the work. Don't ever forget it." - Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg