Author: nancymthurston

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Daniel’s Arrival

Big Topics at Midnight’s dedication reads, “My ancestors and I dedicate this book to [my grown children] Paul and Laura. May you and other young adults and children around the globe today, as well as your children, benefit from my generation’s work to create the transformation we long for. Blessings as you live your own lives fully, wildly and boldly.”

I wrote that in 2012.

Just after midnight on April 25, 2018, the bleak hospital maternity waiting room cleared out as other eager but tired grandparents left to find a more comfortable place to rest for a few hours. Left alone, I felt free to sing out loud. A favorite lullaby I sang to Paul and Laura when they were young. Beloved hymns. Chants. One flowing into the next, all lifted up for the parents, Lauren and Paul, in the last stages of laboring.

Just before 3:00 am, I heard faint bells ringing. They ring when a baby is born; at that moment, the bells pealed to announce Daniel Gunner Thurston’s arrival. Within the hour, I stood beside my 6’4” son as he held his 19” newborn with such gentleness. Soon, I too got to hold Daniel close to my heart. One so tiny burst out of his tiny womb-home, and a new generation in the family had arrived.

I am so excited to be Danny’s Grammie. As my mother used to tell young Paul, we’ll have many grand adventures together.

With my one-week old grandchild in my heart, I am more committed than ever to help create a world where all children and adults can live fully, wildly and boldly.

For me, that commitment used to hold an urgency. Seeing all that was so unjust and inequitable, I wanted things to change quickly.

I’ve learned that urgency only slows down the process.

Daniel reminds me of the mystery and grace of a life lived in both body and spirit—a life that can’t be rushed. Before I know it, he will also show me the awe of discovering the wonders of the world around us, the joy of playing and the natural flow of creativity.

As always, the flow of gift between the generations moves in all directions. As I hold Daniel, I can feel my ancestors, especially my parents, Sue and Ed, my grandparents Ann and John, Ruth and OR, great-grandparents Allie and Arthur … gathering around. Those long gone from this earth and this one so newly arrived all encourage me choose integrity, love, equity and respect in every moment. And to have fun along the way.

Daniel, and all of his generation, send out this summons to you and to me with their adorable sleeping faces, their lusty cries, and their innate desire for snuggling. I want to be a student of the seasoned teachings from the ancestors, from my colleagues and friends, from my own heart, and from Daniel’s baby’s delight. Together, we are all up for the task of living and loving our way into a beautiful world that values us all.

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Trusting Refrigerator Wisdom

My cooking claim to fame is that I can open the refrigerator, scan the shelves, then create a meal out of whatever is available. (Leftover Oatmeal Cobbler. Salsa and Vegetable Soup.) I may check a recipe, but only to play with possibilities. If I have a handful of apricots, I might mix together something Moroccan. Sprigs of cilantro could lead to Whatever-I-Have-on-Hand Enchiladas. Scanning the shelves, I am curious to find out what dish will emerge from the random ingredients I find there. No fears or what-ifs. I’m not concerned with tomorrow’s lunch or next week’s dinner. And I trust that whatever I make will be edible, and often delicious.

I’ve just come face to face with the fact that I have a very different approach to other tasks I need to accomplish. Particularly tasks that involve working collaboratively within organizations that hold a bold vision that makes my heart sing.

Instead of playing with what’s in front of me, I grab my tattered recipe for I-Need-To-Make-Something-Happen-NOW. Defaulting to distrust, I scramble in over-responsibility with things that aren’t mine to control and don’t notice the tasks that are mine to tend.

Throughout my life, part of me is always looking down the road a piece—weeks or years in the future. All too often, I focus that sight on potential pitfalls or possible brick walls endangering the path up ahead. I try so hard to be positive—and part of me is naturally that way—but my innate bias is to focus on what might go wrong. From there, my ironclad responsibility kicks into to full gear. Grabbing all the ingredients and tools I can find, I scramble to rigidly follow my inner “recipe” and try to “help” as a way to calm my preemptive fears.

My favorite life-refrigerator ingredient is my astute analytical thinking. Though it has served me well, in this case it keeps me focused on the recipe of Solving-Potential-Problems rather than the mystery of creativity. I need to drop my thinking into the soup pot and let it bubble on the back burner for a bit. Turning from the stove, I then need to squat down and dig in the back of the bottom shelf. There, hidden in the shadows, are my tucked away feelings. They’ve always been there flavoring everything I cook. Ignored, sometimes they taint the entire dish. To bring my cooking skills into my skills in life, I need to include my feelings as a valued ingredient.

Starting from a perspective of possibilities, I remain open to the mystery of what might emerge. The only way I can have the openness I seek is to release my need to hold tightly onto my beautifully constructed plans filled with desires for my own life and for everyone else around me.

Stepping into organizations with my Chef-in-Life apron on, I remember the vast array of options held in the mystery of the moment. The taste of the unexpected. The way the flavors of different ingredients innately combine to become something greater than the parts.

It’s really simple, even in its complexity: Face each moment with the same fresh openness that I have in front of an open refrigerator before dinner. Peek at a pre-determined plan, if needed, but just for ideas. Trust what I already know—my intuitive experience of years in the kitchen and in organizations.

All that is required of me is to show up fully with all I have to bring to the task at hand, enjoy the process, delight in the remarkable array of partners, honor my training by mothers and grandmothers, and relax into the mystery of all those who join me at the Table.

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Which Court Will I Serve?

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.

Gandhi

 

I was in a courtroom (on break) this week when I read this quote in my novel, “Glass Houses” by Louise Penny. It was quoted by Chief Superintendent Gamache while he was on the witness stand. I felt well supported in that liminal space between fact and fiction.

Fifty of us who were called by Multnomah County Circuit Court gathered for the selection of fifteen jurors for a civil suit resulting from a motorcycle and delivery truck accident. The injured motorcyclist was suing for twenty-five million dollars.

For five hours, split by lunch, all fifty of us were grilled by both attorneys while most of us sat on very uncomfortable wooden pews.

We were instructed to keep an open mind, not forming any opinions until we had heard the facts. We were told that in a civil case (unlike a criminal case), all that needed to make a decision was that one side be deemed fifty-one percent true. If the delivery truck company was on the fifty-one percent side, there would be no money paid. If the motorcyclist was on the fifty-one percent side, the jury would decide the size of the judgment.

As a young girl, I had many conversations with my attorney grandfather about how our legal system worked. He always came down on the side of the law, the court system and the need for every attorney to fully defend their client (even if they were personally unconvinced of his/her innocence).

As a sixty-three-year-old, I sat in the courtroom and wrestled, again and again, of how I could answer the attorneys’ complex questions briefly and honestly.

In the end, I was released from the trial along with thirty-five others. But I continue to sit with the experience.

Trial by jury. I listened carefully to the history of our jury system from

To Kill a Mockingbird

the welcoming judge speaking to over a hundred citizens of Multnomah County in the jury waiting room, from the introduction video that followed his speech, and from the courtroom judge where I spent my day. I take my responsibility to show up as a potential juror as my part in the making of a fair and just legal system. Nevertheless, I also know that a jury of peers hasn’t, in the past nor in the present, ever guaranteed justice. Cultural prejudice, hatred and bias bleeds through juries. Access to good lawyers can easily sway a jury. Decisions about the charge and whether it comes to trial can be tainted by bias. I wish this complexity could have been acknowledged, even while holding onto the strengths of a jury system.

I know there are times when injustice or negligence occurs and a lawsuit is a necessary (though horrible) solution. When two of the fifty balked at the size of the judgment as egregious, the judge stepped in to ask what she/he had pre-decided was a fair amount and why they had made a decision before hearing the facts in the case (i.e. not keeping an open mind until hearing all of the evidence). Most thought there should be no cap on the size of a lawsuit, believing that the jury was the best place for that decision to be made.

One potential juror remarked that an individual deserved restitution if they were unjustly hurt. Funny to hear that in a country that is happy to consider twenty-five million to an injured individual but won’t even have the conversation about restitution for unimaginable hurt perpetrated by our nation on whole populations of people.

Another juror remarked that money for non-economic damages (pain and suffering as a result of the injury) made sense because “Money is the only way we can make things right.”

Really?

“Could you keep an open mind about the amount of the judgment if the person sued was as wealthy as Bill Gates or a homeless person?”

“Do you have any difficulty with the fact that in a civil trial fifty0one percent is all that is required for one side to win?” Almost everyone said it was hard to have that much money hanging on such a small percentage, but that they could make such a judgement if the evidence was there. I admitted that I am never comfortable with “winning” anything by two percent.

The attorney for the company that owned the delivery truck noted that there is much controversy in our country today about immigrants, and noted that the defendants are immigrants (from Mexico or Central America I suspect). “Would that fact affect your ability to be open in this case?” she asked. It was interesting to me that the motorcyclist was also an immigrant—a white man from Belgium. That fact was only mentioned when the two attorneys named all of the witnesses for the trial (to see if any of us jurors knew any of them), noting that since his family would likely be unknown as they were from Belgium. No one flagged the question of prejudice toward a white European immigrant.

I take seriously my commitment to the law and our jury system. I want to serve as one of a fair and impartial jury. And yet I can’t set aside my deeper commitment to my values and heart. In this struggle, I feel close to my dad. We are both rule and law followers. Both of us have served on juries and took that responsibility very seriously. Dad may not have agreed with most of my opinions about the issues raised in this trial, but he was also a man who was deeply committed to following his conscience. I know my grandfather would have disagreed with my opinions, but he would have appreciated my wrestling with the issues. I felt Gandhi, Gamache, my biological family and my global family by my side as I walked into and out of the court room this week.

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The Journey Toward Justice

For a journey of the heart, it matters what I use as my guiding star.

My heart journey began when I woke up and realized that my perspective and worldview was too small and limited. I wanted to find a way to expand the boundaries of my heart and life, to live as one member of a global family on our shared earthly home.

There was no need for this sort of journey when I believed what the culture told me—that we were already a nation of freedom and justice for all. So much of the culture was set up to distract me, especially as one with more cultural access and power, to keep me from noticing the injustice and inequities at the heart of my nation.

I began my heart’s journey, a journey toward justice, by first waking up to the world as it was, contradictory with its glorious beauty and soaring vision alongside its profound injustice and disrespect directed at certain groups of people.

Once I woke up, I saw brokenness all over the place: our treatment of the earth; our power and access inequities based on race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, sexual identity, homeland or legal status. Many of these have hundreds or thousands of years of inequity behind them, but all are still riddled with injustice today.

Part of me is a fighter. Since I was a child, I’ve believed that the direct path is best and most efficient. Therefore, when I saw something wrong, I wanted to call it out and fix it.

There are compelling and very logical reasons to begin by fighting injustice head on. Once the cultural blinders have fallen away, injustice screams to be transformed from many directions at once. The need for immediate change feels urgent.

However, even stronger than the fighter within me was a longing for metanoia—a transformative change of heart. This required me to shift my orientation, both a spiritual and how-I-orient-in-the-world turning. To use metanoia, rather than fighting, my guiding star required that I begin my journey toward justice “outside the distress of oppression.”*

Those words—know myself outside the distress of oppression—are like a koan meant to shock me into a whole new way of seeing.

When the oppression, both within me and in the world around me, is so overwhelming and so flesh-and-blood real, why would I choose to begin outside of it? When the wrongs are so obvious (once I saw them), why would I choose not to directly fight the wrong and liberate the right?

And how can I, with all of my first-world, white skinned, wealthy, traditionally educated privilege, call myself oppressed?

The culture I was born into was complex and sophisticated. Its values were both honorable and grand (visions I love like freedom and inalienable rights, for example) as well as greedy and power-hungry (legal and tax bias toward corporations and people who are wealthy, or acting as if black lives aren’t as valuable as white lives, for example). I was schooled in these values in my public education, laws, popular novels, churches, playgrounds, advertisements, institutions and traditions. They seeped into my brain—as internalized oppression, prejudice against certain people, and a bias toward the status quo.

For me, I’ve struggled with the oppression of sexism (primarily internalized and directed against me) and with the oppression of a skewed world view that gave access and privilege to me—calling it normal and earned—while keeping me tragically blind to the inequity behind it all.

When I tried to stand within the mess of oppressor/oppressed, my sight was limited by the dichotomy, and I wanted to fight. Unfortunately, when I tried to fight the oppression I saw around me without simultaneously noticing and moving to transform the injustices in my own conscious and unconscious beliefs and behaviors, I kept slipping into the very injustice I was fighting to change.

But this journey isn’t only toward expanded sight and understanding. While metanoia is a transformation of the heart and Spirit—an internal realignment—unless stunted, it will naturally continue to unfold into a life that participates in the transformation of society.

That brings me back to “knowing myself outside the distress of oppression.” Who am I, who are you, who are we, outside the distress of oppression?  What is it that interferes with each of us and keeps us from living from the fullness and uniqueness that is our birth right?

For me, orienting myself outside the distress of oppression has been the most demanding journey of my life. Stepping outside the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy requires that I take responsibility for myself and continually align my beliefs and actions with my values of justice, love and equity. Self-knowledge and self-responsibility are the keys to both personal metanoia as well as sustainable social change. I need to act with integrity, no matter what injustice I am experiencing. Change is possible in any moment, but it requires someone (like me) to act, respectfully and honestly, and thus open up a space that opens the possibility for justice to emerge, moment by moment.

I have patterns, mostly unconscious, that still emerge from time to time. I get uncomfortable or scared and go silent. I don’t like sitting in my own fear and project it onto others. These behaviors tend to show up when I am tired, irritated or feel like someone is treating me unjustly. For me, stress is the doorway through which my old habits and unconscious beliefs tend to emerge.

But that is very dangerous. Most fracturing of relationships and partnerships, especially across cultural differences, happen in moments of stress or conflict. If I don’t learn how to change my behavior and thinking at the roots—seek metanoia—stressful times will continue to be moments when I am not able to sustain my values and respectful behavior. Instead of being part of the healing, I will participate in the brokenness.

My journey toward justice requires me to keep metanoia as my guiding north star. Only then can I keep my sight free and flexible enough to focus outside the distress of oppression. I walk on this journey with many friends and partners, mutually taking time to lovingly but firmly support each other as we navigate the path of justice. There is no need for shame as together we know we are on a journey of learning and alignment.

But even when my friends are not around, I am not alone. Spirit is always present. The natural world opens her arms to me. I am part of the human family. In addition, this journey has led me into a powerful, healing relationship to the diversity that is within me. Demanding as this journey has been, following metanoia as my guiding star is leading me on a joyful journey home.

 

*This is the first step of Be Present Inc.’s Be Present Empowerment Model.

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Black Women’s Leadership: My (White Woman’s) Leadership

From Facebook posts to last Sunday’s sermon, the influence and effectiveness of Black women’s leadership is indisputable. The mid-session Alabama senate race spotlighted the critical power of the leadership of Black Women. While this leadership has been long present, many other white-skinned people are just noticing it … and are deeply grateful.

However, it wasn’t news to me. I’ve been working in a network that was started by a Black woman, Lillie Pearl Allen, and whose foundation was built by Black women and girls. All aspects of our work for the past four years have been held within Be Present, Inc.’s Black Women’s Leadership Initiative, aimed to “raise the visibility of Black women’s leadership as key to social justice movement-building in the United States … highlighting the process and achievements of using a collective leadership approach.”

What is a wealthy, white woman like me doing in an organization highlighting Black women’s leadership? And why am I on the leadership team of next June’s Black & Female Leadership Conference?

This seeming contradiction is, in fact, not incongruent because Be Present, Inc. understands true leadership. This Initiative “specifically demonstrates the leadership of Black women in partnering with diverse people [like me] to create sustainable change that serves everyone in our communities.”

Black women as a powerful force building sustainable leadership for social justice didn’t start in Alabama with this election. Likewise, the crisis in American leadership—leadership for social justice as well as corporate and institutional leadership—didn’t start with the Alabama election or the current administration in Washington. These two things merely highlight what has long been true: Black women have always played a powerful role in leadership (even though largely overlooked), and patriarchy’s way of leadership (even when tweaked and updated) is tattered and full of holes.

2017 was the year I faced the ways I have internalized and acted out of “traditional,” patriarchal leadership. Some of my actions flowed from how I was schooled (often without words) to be in leadership as a woman: watchful and suspicious of my own power and wisdom, silent instead of asking for more information or addressing things that felt off, and truncating my sharing of insights if it appeared that others didn’t agree or understand. This was despite my self-image as a liberated woman. Others of my behaviors were solidly set in patriarchy: over attachment to my plan or idea of how something should be done, and my belief that work is best served when everything is organized and planned out ahead of time—unconscious of the fact that both of these flowed from a white, masculine framework.

I was supported and mentored in stepping into leadership aligned with my values and Spirit by an organization birthed and supported by Black women’s leadership. In this network, I’ve grown to understand the self-responsibility required for me to fully bring my sight and wisdom into a collective where everyone also brings the fullness of their sight and wisdom.

It’s been a very demanding process. I’ve stumbled in public and been unable to step into my leadership in a few places where I cared deeply about the work. But I was held as I opened up what happened, and I was able to catch a glimpse of what within me blocked my full participation and thereby shift my behavior.

A recent innovation in leadership theory is to “posit race analysis as central to effective leadership that can exercise power in social justice movement building.” Be Present has been doing that for almost 35 years. But the old ways cling tightly as “leadership within the social justice movement or more broadly, continues to be defined within a framework that assumes white males are the default leaders and a ‘leader and follower’ dichotomy is the natural order.”

For the last few decades I’ve understood the importance of keeping sight of the Big Topics—race, gender, power and class—and the benefits of collective leadership, but something shifted this past year. Leadership is only partly the theory, style or skills we use. Without addressing what is within me—old habits and assumptions—in a difficult moment, I far too often have defaulted to either going silent or trying to control, and reacted by getting angry or deeply disappointed.

Effective and sustainable leadership that moves from the heart and Spirit must begin with me, then move out to respect and honor my relationship with others and finally flow into the work that we do together.

As this year draws to an end, I am deeply grateful for the leadership and partnership of Black women. Thank you.

 

*Quotes from Be Present, Inc. website.

 

 

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From “Shut Up and Follow” to “Step Up and Lead”

There was a voice in my head that told me to shut up and follow. It was finally loud enough that I took notice when, during a cross-class Bible study on Jesus, Faith and Money, it bellowed inside me, “Why do you—a white, wealthy woman—think anyone could benefit from your ‘privileged’ perspective?” I shut up.

There are lots of variations on this theme within the social justice movement. Men need to shut up and follow. White men in particular. And wealthy folks.

There is a certain logic in this thinking. For 6,000 years, patriarchy has upheld men and the masculine as ideal, while deeming women and the feminine as subservient. The whole concept of whiteness was conjured up around 1790 to give power to people with light colored, “white” skin (as long as they weren’t southern Italian or Irish or Jewish). The current demand by some in the social justice movement toward those with cultural power and access to shut up and follow, many would assert, is merely a desperately needed rebalancing.

But, for me, this logic breaks down quickly. At this moment of deep divides, both ancestral and current, we need everyone to stand up and step into the fullness of their leadership. The only way out of this mess is through the full, creative thinking and perspective of all of us.

That does not, however, mean that people like me can lead, unconscious of our assumptions of the “right” (i.e. “white cultural”) way of taking charge.

Collaborative leadership that includes everyone demands that each of us takes a level of personal responsibility that is rare in our culture. This requires a process of unlearning and learning anew that requires conscious awareness of ourselves, and sharpening our skills for working collectively within diverse partnerships.

I wrote Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Gender, Power and Class because I understood two things. First, my family’s white skin let us settle into a white-centered view of the world without any conscious awareness of that privilege. In the writing, I sorted through assumptions and perspectives to see what things were true, what things held only part of the truth and what was completely false and out of alignment with my values. Second, I realized that I’d been almost exclusively raised with the white male perspective of history and current events.

The “silencing myself ah-ha” in the middle of my Bible Study class led me to the work of Be Present, Inc. There I learned a model that has been invaluable in waking up to both the injustice woven into the middle of our culture and into the edges of my mind.

This model, called the Be Present Empowerment Model, was birthed through the leadership of Black Women with a vision for a world not constrained to the injustices they had experienced but rather a vision of the playground of life where all are welcome to bring our full, creative selves.

Here are a few of my learnings along the path from “shut up” to “step up.”

I need to take the risk to step in to conversations with as much integrity and justice as I can muster, and the humility to admit it and change when I stumble.

I need to release my assumptions that the world has worked for everyone the same way it worked for me, and really listen with openness to other’s experiences.

I need to slow-down awkward moments in my interactions so I can take responsibility to know what is true about me—even when I don’t like what I see—and what is an inaccurate assumption.

In conversation, I need to listen to myself—those powerful inner voices—to see when I am listening more to myself than to the other person and when my mind begins to shape what I assume I am hearing.

And I need to show up with my sight as one sight among many. We need to hear the beautiful diversity of everyone’s perspective, including mine.

It takes partnership with others for me to “step up” as much ease as possible. Someone to help me remember the goodness of my heart when I stumble. Someone to stop me when my behavior smells like it might be tainted with the very injustice I am working to shift—even when I am in public and embarrassed that I “got caught.” Someone to help me keep my sense of humor.

While “shut-up and follow” might seem logical from one perspective, at this moment in history our world needs all of us to “step up and lead” as one part of the global collective.

This is the 25th year of Be Present, Inc. In honor of that anniversary, I’ve been pondering my learnings over the 15 years I’ve been part of the network. I’ll be flying to Atlanta the first week of November where I am part of the leadership for Be Present’s National Network Convening and 25th Anniversary Fundraiser. I invite you to join me in supporting this groundbreaking work by making a donation to Be Present, Inc.

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Homegrown Terrorism is the Battle Cry for Repentance

Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey

More Americans have been killed in the US by white male citizens, often white supremacists, than by any other domestic or foreign group.1 Well-armed with guns and hatred of Jews, Blacks and Muslims, these white Americans fight to regain a white and “christian”2 nation.

It is accurate to say that our country was founded on white, male, wealthy, “christian” supremacy. While that foundation still has a strong foothold on almost every aspect of our culture, it is predicted that by mid-century, white skinned people will be in the minority in the US.

I can’t pretend that I am totally separate from these white extremists. They have lit their torches illuminating the fact that our country has long been dominated by whiteness and anti-Semitism. This same system has opened doors for me all my life, as it did for my ancestors. The natural consequence of generation after generation of exclusion has erupted today as hatred directed at non-white and non-Christian people.

My grandfather was an attorney who believed in justice. Yet, in a letter to his fiancé (my grandmother) written in 1923, he spoke about one of the best speeches he’d ever heard: “This Col. Simmons of the KKK made a talk [at the Texas Capitol] to 20,000 people. He has a wonderful personality and is a good speaker. I wonder if you have joined the Klan? Or the Order of Camelia, I should have said.” Years later, my grandfather publically supported the first black female attorney’s nomination to the Wichita Falls, TX bar association. And I loved him.3

In Big Topics at Midnight, I wrote a chapter titled “Did My People Survive Slavery?” After listening to a Sweet Honey in the Rock’s song “I Remember, I Believe,” where black women asked that questions about their own ancestors, it struck me that the same query applied to my ancestors, and I asked myself: What was the moral legacy of families like mine who owned slaves and were moved by a KKK speech?

Unfortunately, we are living that legacy now.

This legacy came through families like mine and through the larger cultural family of Euro-Americans. Unnoticed without confession or repentance, the moral flaws of yesterday erupt now in the growing movement of white supremacists, our nation’s homegrown terrorists.  A terrorist is defined as “a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” Our focus on foreign terrorists is merely a distraction to the real terrorists within.

The signs of this ingrained white supremacy is fully visible for anyone who cares to notice. Can you imagine if the August 11 march on the University of Virginia campus—complete with lit torches, armed men and hateful rhetoric targeted at specific groups—had been as assembly of black skinned rather than white skinned men? Or Jewish? Or Muslim? Can you imagine the uproar if President Obama, a black skinned man, had spoken and acted as disrespectfully as white skinned President Trump has consistently done? Can you imagine what the law enforcement response would have been if the armed men who took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon had been black skinned? Or Jewish? Or Muslim?

Our national law enforcement and public sentiment response would NOT have been the same.

I’ve spent years unmasking the tendrils of white supremacy that have been part of my nation and my family and my life. Denying that, or white-washing it as merely a historical problem or an isolated issue of extremists, is to personally participate in the movement for white supremacy.

The cry of my heart is directed at others like me—white skinned and Christian. The legacy of racism, patriarchy and religious intolerance that was one part of our nation’s founding is threatening to destroy us all. While we are not responsible for actions of our ancestors, we are living in the toxic legacy of the moral disconnect between values and actions that worked their way into our institutions and systems. We—you and me—are fully responsible for how we live today.

Being quiet and disconnected is no longer an option.

My prayer is that our nation is going through the last gasp of what has been and is still a dangerous and hateful legacy. For that to be true, however, all of us need to step up and embody justice for all. Each in our unique way.

The steps forward to constructive change are ancient and outlined in many of our faith traditions: open your eyes and heart to see; confess where you as an individual and where you as part of the national collective have participated in injustice and inequity; repent—a transformative change of heart; and then take action that flows from your new, wide-open heart.

Our nation’s racism and anti-Semitism runs deep. The call of my heart to our beloved nation is to wake up and repent, remembering these self-evident truths: that all are created equal; that all are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of a union with the good spirit (named as “happiness”).

1 Article  with links to more primary sources

2 A side note: I can’t help putting christian (with a little c) in quotes. There is no relationship between the heart of Christianity and white supremacy’s christianity. Unfortunately, far too much of CHRISTIANITY as a institutional church has become infected by the sin of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Likewise, it is also true that white-skinned people and male people have too often been culturally infected by a sense of power-over superiority inherent in racism and patriarchy (among other things), and perhaps should also be noted with quotation marks. This cultural sin has a wide and deep legacy.

3 Individuals (such as my grandfather) like nations are complex and paradoxical, full of wisdom and generosity and prejudice and hatred. I am hopeful that seeing our own shadow will give us greater compassion as we support each other on the journey back to the just and equitable essence that is our birth right. We need each other as we unhook from the toxic parts of our national legacy.

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Memorials

People keep coming, bringing flowers, candles, notes, posters, photographs. Silent. Some sitting in the grass around the central of several the ever-growing altars. Some with their backs to the flowers and candles, turning instead to the chalk-covered wall of words. Others picking up pieces of chalk and adding their words to the “wall” that begins on the sidewalk near the street, past the gym that lines the Hollywood Transit Center, up the ramp walls and continues on the bridge to the steps down to the light rail Max stop. Others heading to catch the train, looking down and reading the words on the overpass under their feet.

I’ve seen little public altars before. They dot the highways with their white crosses, plastic flowers and little mementoes of lives cut suddenly short.

These spontaneous memorials are powerful altars. They hold so much: grief, an awareness of the beauty of life and the reality of death, memories, regrets, sadness, gratitude for gifts given long ago, lament, cries of the heart.

I have an altar at home. A multi-colored cloth spread over a small table in my office is set with a candle, a stick of incense, symbols of my faith, items of beauty that have meaning for me and symbols of people I love and am praying for. The items change as life moves on, but the altar remains.

Public and private altars are sacred places to sit with the huge mysteries of life and death, sacred and horrific. They help us stop and not rush through our feelings, giving grief and hope a chance to rest in our hearts and bones for a while.

There is talk that the Portland transit system will erect a permanent memorial here. The heartfelt impulse is beautiful, but that sort of official altar is more complicated.

Why a memorial here, and not at other places of death and heroism? Are some deaths more worth marking in public than others? Are some acts of heroism bigger than others? Is the undercurrent of cultural racism, ethnic bias or sexism within our culture influencing the decision of who/what gets honored?

These questions are too often unasked when our public hearts are broken and we want to “do something.” But they are questions that need to be asked as we as a nation seek to transform the very divisions that were at the heart of the tragedy that exploded at the Hollywood Transit Center. Sustainable and equitable partnership across our differences is the memorial I seek.

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The Bigger Story of Hate and Heroes

On August 20, 1965, Alabama resident Tom Coleman, a white-skinned vigilante, aimed his gun at seventeen-year-old, black-skinned Ruby Sales and threatened to blow her brains out. Jonathan Daniels, her white-skinned companion in the Southern Freedom Movement, threw himself in front of Ruby and was killed instantly.

In a recent On Being interview, Ruby Sales reflected on the larger context of this incident: “When you signed up to be a part of the movement, it became very clear that we were willing to die. Not because we were suicidal but because we believed so much in the work that we were doing that we did not believe that death was the end.”

As a correction of how the story of Jonathan’s murder is usually framed, Ruby said, “Truly I am grateful that Jonathan saved my life and truly that was an important event. But at the same time, the narrative must include the profound impact that local black people had on shaping and stretching my life as a young black woman in the south.”*  Jonathan’s heroic act was one small part of a larger justice movement that had been active for generations both in Ruby’s community and around the world.

I thought of Ruby’s words recently when a raging White Supremacist yelled anti-Muslim vitriol at two teenagers, one wearing a hajib, and then killed two white men and injured another who stepped between hatred and those threatened. Ruby’s words remind me that the horrifying event that occurred in my Portland, OR neighborhood on Friday, May 26, 2017, was one part of a nation-wide pattern where other Muslim, Black and Brown people (among others) experience violence.

Racial slurs and violence toward Muslims and non-whites aren’t new. Killing unarmed black men and women isn’t new. Injustice from the “Justice” system isn’t new. Prejudice and threat of deportation to immigrants aren’t new. They are, however, becoming more visible … to whites like me.

The incident in my neighborhood a few weeks ago isn’t an isolated event. It is part of a much larger story of hatred and violence that still festers at the heart of our nation. It is also one part of a long, powerful movement for compassion, justice and equity that many have bravely walked for hundreds of years.

The larger context is important. Oregon was founded as a white supremacist state: black-skinned people were barred from living within our borders. The KKK long supported our governmental leaders. Today, green and progressive Portland is one of the whitest big cities in the nation.

I am grateful for the heroic deeds of Ricky, Taliesin and Micah, and for the heroic deeds of millions over the centuries who have stepped forward to follow the leading of their hearts and courageously stand for compassion and justice. I am saddened by the impact of hatred hurled at two teenage girls, and for millions over the centuries who have long been the brunt of prejudice, inequity and hatred. The power to transform our world’s injustice and stark divisions lies in our ability to see these individual incidents as one part of a much larger movement.

This is a journey of transformation that we must take together. This is not a time to deepen our divides, even if the divides are between oppressed and oppressor. This journey requires us to all step courageously into the gaps that divide us. Standing together in the midst of both hatred and the compassion, each of us can begin—or continue—to look inside our own skins and root out assumptions, stereotypes and fragments of the “isms,” then take the risk to actively build the world that best serves all of our children, now and for generations to come.

Otherwise, actively or passively, we are complicit in supporting the underlying generational behavior that erupts into violent and hateful deeds.

 

*These critical words of context for Jonathan’s death were cut from the finished Krista Tippet’s On Being interview of Ruby Sales. For that reason, I recommend listening to the uncut version.

This blog is one in an upcoming series of “The Bigger Picture” blogs.

 

 

 

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Nothing Lasts Forever

 

Nothing lasts forever;

No one lives forever.

Keep that in mind, and love.*

These words have danced through my head all spring. For the last few months, almost a dozen friends and family have experienced a traumatic, life changing event. Sometimes resulting in death, but more often in an event that will change them forever. Even after “normal” life returns.

Friday afternoon, just as I was finishing a support group call with friends, police car after police car streaked down the street in front of my home. It was an hour before I knew what had happened. During what most expected to be a routine light rail trip home before a holiday week end, a white man began yelling hateful things to two Muslim young women. Three men stepped in to try to deescalate the situation. The ranting man pulled out a knife and killed two of the men and injured the third.

A Memorial Day holiday that, for two families, began with death, for one family, began with a hospitalization, and for all the rest unfortunate enough to have been in that light rail car, began with witnessing hatred and death and compassion.

I too will die one day. Maybe today. All that I think of as essential parts of my life will one day pass, maybe in the blink of an eye.

Tagore reminds me that I must keep that reality in mind, and still love.

Love. Open my heart again and again. Knowing that nothing last forever.

This is at the heart of my spiritual path, the container that holds my whole life and death (both the daily little deaths and, one day, my physical death). I have many freedoms and choice in my life, but I am not charge of everything life brings to me. Life and death have their own rhythm and power, in my life and in all of nature. Birth, life, death and rebirth are all part of the natural cycle of life.

How we live matters. How we die matters. How we savor life and then, when it is time, release life, matters. For me, life invites me to live fully—savoring the gifts that surround me—and to die open-heartedly—surrendering to the big divine love in every moment.

The Rule of St. Benedict admonishes, “Keep death before you daily.” Know that only by fully accepting death can we fully accept life.

In our death-phobic culture, remembering our death and honoring the transitory nature of life seems crazy. In reality, it is the only way.

*Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey. Poem by Rabindranath Tagore

This blog is dedicated to the three who bravely stepped forward Friday in an attempt to bring peace to a violent moment— Micah David-Cole Fletcher, Ricky John Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche (The latter two died in the process). And to all my friends, and yours, whose life in these past few months has taken them to places they never would have chosen. And to my mother, Mary Sue Tipps Mathys, on this eve of what would have been her 91 birthday. Thirty years after her death, I still feel Mom’s presence and guidance.