Class

August 26, 2015December 18, 2019

Go Set a Watchman: Critical Warning for Whites Like Me

Atticus, To Kill a Mockingbird’s small town attorney, was one of my childhood heroes.

My girlfriends and I—white girls who rarely thought about race but considered prejudice ghastly—were deeply moved by Atticus. He was clear, inspiring and willing to stand against the racism of his Alabama neighbors.

We hadn’t noticed signs of racism around us in our white schools, churches and neighborhoods. I was glad that my family was respectful to our black maid, Mary, the only black person I knew.

We might have been polite, but none of us girls ever wondered why we carefully called all white adults by the formal Mr. or Mrs. followed by their last name yet referred to Mary by only her first name.

Oblivious to our contradictions, we distanced ourselves from the handful of openly racist students we noticed in our schools and believed that racism was on its way out.

In her recently published novel, Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee paints a more complex—and more believable—picture of Atticus. And of us all. It is time to make room for a bigger, truer picture.

Atticus was a man of values who lived by the letter of the law. He had an unusual level of respect for all his neighbors, regardless of their behavior or skin color. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus honorably defended Tom Robinson, an innocent black man. Unlike many of his neighbors, who believed that any black person accused by a white person was automatically guilty, Atticus stood on the side of truth.

Go Set a Watchman takes place in the mid-1950s, two decades after To Kill a Mockingbird. In the midst of a tense disagreement with his adult daughter Scout, Atticus asks, “Do you want your children going to a school that’s been dragged down to accommodate Negro children?” (page 246)

Scout snapped back about the low quality of her white school, but I focused on Atticus’s words and cringed at his racist assumption.

Unfortunately, some white people are still asking Atticus’ question today—people who would deny that they were tainted with racism.

My friend Sarah recently bought a home in Portland. The neighborhood school where her daughters will attend is 77% non-white (45% Latino, 17% Asian, 13% Black, 23% White and 2% Native American). Many of Sarah’s acquaintances and friends have responded with surprise that she would consider sending her children to school there. Unspoken, but implied, is that this is “a school dragged down to accommodate Latino, Asian and Black children.”

Schools were more integrated 40 years ago than they are today. Sarah’s children’s school is one of the few Portland schools with marked racial diversity. As a racially diverse elementary school, their classrooms will mirror the growing racial diversity of our nation. Children can learn their A, B C’s and also be exposed to a diversity of ethnicities, perspectives and cultures.

The issues, of course, are complex. The US has a long history of some public schools—more often in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods—getting better funding, staffing and parental time and financial support than schools in less white or affluent neighborhoods. Less affluent parents often work multiple jobs, have positions with limited job flexibility and have less money to invest in programs at their schools. Though the intelligence of the students may be equivalent, the opportunities diverge widely.

I remember being a mother of young children, and I worked hard to support their education. But any time my fight focused solely on what was academically best for my children and ignored the bigger picture, I actively perpetuated inequality and segregation.

The question for Atticus and for us today is not how to make sure our white, upper middle class children get the best possible education but how, together, all children get the best possible education.

Go Set a Watchman sounds a critical warning for whites like me. We need to begin to notice racism and its impact on people of all races, including ourselves, and learn to distinguish when our racial bias is active and when it is not.

The race problem isn’t “over there across the tracks,” as I naively thought as a child. The problem is in the middle of society (including our public schools) and in the midst of our own minds. Moral outrage or a good personal conscience isn’t enough. All of our children, black and white and brown and…, are harmed by racial inequality.

Sarah’s daughters will grow up with a diversity of people I couldn’t have imagined as a young girl. In order to support her children’s thriving, Sarah was wise enough to know that she needed support and training* to hone her own skills for living values values that empower all people in the middle of a world, and a school system, that has been divided by race, gender, power and class.

Now is the moment for clear sight and honorable action as together we turn the tide toward justice and equity in our own hearts and in our nation. What does that look like for you?

*In college, Sarah used skills gleaned from the National Coalition Building Institute to present prejudice-reduction workshops for her peers. As she prepares for her oldest child to go to kindergarten, she is joining a Be Present Peer Led Support Group.

March 8, 2015December 18, 2019

Deep Diving

I come alive when diving right into the middle of topics my father told me to avoid—money, race, religion, gender and politics.

Not interested in locking horns or intellectual analysis, I want partners who seek root-level transformation—from personal to global. I am captivated by sharing and listening to a wide variety of personal stories and experiences within diverse groups as these conversations can shift assumptions and misinformation—the things that keep us separated—in order for us to move forward equitably, together.

Since I was a girl, I’ve turned to the written word as my favorite way to explore both the edges of life and my own experiences. During the seven years I wrote and rewrote Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself I simultaneously honed my writing skills and dove into my own stories of sleep and waking up. It was a magical process.

I revel in the dance of writing and deep diving. The best way for me to begin a writing day is to wake before the sun rises with a brilliant first sentence, followed by a flood of ideas for a new writing. While noticing all that I hadn’t noticed growing up isn’t always fun, I savor the sight of expanded vistas that emerge as I begin to see my life as one part of a multigenerational, global human family in the midst of our diverse, earthly home. And then return to my desk to write about what I see.

In addition to writing and poking into the nooks and corners of my life, I also delight in hosting “big conversations” where groups of people share longings and experiences of living in ways that bring our faith and values right into the middle of our deeply divided world. One particularly juicy topic I enjoy exploring is how money flows in our lives, in the community and in the world and how to continue to bring our engagement with that financial flow into deeper alignment with our values.

Waking up to the paradoxes within and in the world around me is sometimes uncomfortable and often requires me to change my behavior. Yet this is the holy work of spiritual transformation, both personally and in our world. It is pure grace to bring my deep diving faith-in-action to this moment in history.

This is what makes me feel alive from my head to my toes. What makes you tingle with excitement for yourself and the world?

April 26, 2014

Economic Justice: Beyond Just Words

It is easy to talk about economic justice. Living it within a diverse world is another matter altogether.

The rules of the culture’s game are rigged where some have easy access to resources (jobs or foundation support), training (education at school or trainings) and publicity (ease of getting published or noticed by people of influence). This access is often along the lines of race, class and gender.

Individuals or organizations aren’t personally culpable because doors open easily for them but, for all of us concerned with social justice, we are responsible to open our eyes and begin to notice the way money and access flowing in our world. Once we’ve woken up, we need to find ways to align our values with our behavior.

Many speak words of justice. Fewer take steps to make that happen.

Be Present, Inc. is committed to having a diversity of people in their trainings. To shift from this being a value held in only words to one that is manifested within the organizational structure and programs has required an integration of fundraising by everyone in the organization—from children to elders, staff to volunteers—as well as people who attend the trainings.

This video is an excerpt from the second session of Be Present, Inc.’s 18-month West Coast National Training Institute on Race, Gender, Power and Class. Eugene Allen and I are co-chairs of the Institute’s fundraising committee. We will be working with participants to collectively fundraise to ensure access to the training by a diverse group of folks.

In this video clip, I explore why our unusual practice of holding fundraising as a perfect place of practice and is critical to our exploration of race, gender, power and class. Raising money moves from the sidelines to the center of the work of “building sustainable leadership for social justice.” *

Collectively we raise the funds “while simultaneously examining the dynamics of race, class, gender and power that influence their fundraising and giving practices … [in such a way that] success is measured not only by where money is given, but also the process by which it is given.” ** In this way, social transformation moves in the direction of justice for each of us individually as well as throughout the culture.

* Be Present, Inc. Mission statement http://bepresent.org/history,

** http://bepresent.org/BOARD-&-STAFF

April 18, 2014

Money and Transformation: Diversity

Fundraising. Money. Economics.

Strange topics for me. I hovered near the bottom of the sales list every year when my Girl Scout Troop sold cookies. I hated my economics class in college. Today, I struggle to keep putting myself out there to market my book, Big Topics at Midnight.

Nevertheless, most of my life has circled around economics, especially fundraising. I am passionate about spiritual transformation, global justice and partnership across our differences, and that journey has lead me directly into money.

Money that I invest, spend or give to organizations working in these areas close to my heart. And money that I invite other to give in support of those organizations.

Last week I signed up for yet another fundraising committee.

Did I mention that I don’t really like fundraising?

This past January, I began my third Be Present, Inc. national 18-month training institute. For my first training, which started in 2003, I was a participant soaking up everything I could learn. Though initially I had a difficult time understanding all that was going on in the room, I knew that something was happening that I’d never seen before. I wanted to learn how to know who I was outside of the distress of anything that stopped me from fully participating in relationships/partnerships with everyone from my husband, Howard, to my grown kids, to friends, and to my work in organizations dear to my heart. I wanted to know how to really listen with my full self. And I deeply desired to be in partnerships that sustained and grew even in the midst of conflict across our many historical divides.*

That training was one of the most important of my life, and was part of the nudge to dive into the writing of Big Topics at Midnight.

In my second training, Be Present at the Table: Effecting Sustainable Change in Philanthropy, and this third one, The National Training Institute on Race, Gender, Power and Class, I have been on the leadership team.

Many organizations talk about the importance of diversity in their programs, but Be Present makes sure this actually happens. Too often, money stops diversity in its tracks: In order to attend, you must either pay the fee or apply for one of a few scholarships.

At Be Present trainings, no one is turned away due to lack of funds. Registration fees are on a sliding scale and support is offered for individuals to creatively raise money to cover these costs.

Stopping there would allow a few more people to attend, but the trainings would remain minimally diverse.

However, in addition to personal fundraising, all of the participants fundraise. That means that everyone, including people like me who have enough funds to easily pay our own way, works together to make sure that all of the registration fees are covered at a level that covers the site/training and organizational leadership costs.

Normally, folks like me are exempt from this fundraising process, leaving the responsibility for ensuring a diverse training on the laps of people with limited economic resources.

Be Present understands that every one of us benefits with the full diversity of people in our trainings. Therefore, we work together to make sure that happens.

This is what is required for trainings and conferences to embody a new paradigm of justice and inclusivity.

No matter how often I try to turn away from working the money, my commitment to waking up to the big topics and experimenting with keeping my values in line with behavior keeps bringing me back to the money. And fundraising.

*Be Present Empowerment Model

March 24, 2014

Grief on the Way to Transformation: My Cell Phone and Violence #2

Why concern myself with human rights abuses in far away places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Why make connections between myself and the behavior of a long-ago king, the Belgium’s colonial policies or missionaries’ behavior when, although I personally am outraged by their behaviors, none of these people were my family members?

Why think too much about the fact that materials for my cell phone and wedding ring may have involved injustice and ill treatment of others half way around the globe? For me, my cell keeps me connected to people I care about and my wedding ring is a symbol of a life-long love.

I have no interest in collapsing in shame and despair. That is a dead-end street that feels lousy and helps no one.

Yet, I am no longer willing to keep global horrors at arms length, grateful that since I don’t approve I can wash my hands of any connection to things done by other humans, national and transnational corporations who produce the goods I buy, or “my people” (which includes people who share my Euro-American roots, white skin, Christianity or wealth).

Distancing myself from other’s behavior makes it too easy for me to forget the deep historical roots of today’s world events and the fact that I enjoy the benefits of things grown and produced under horrifying conditions.

Maintaining that distance requires that I go back to sleep. That isn’t an option for me anymore.

However I can’t, nor should I, shoulder the responsibility for all of these actions. Nevertheless, I can stop and grieve. Weep for violence and injustice—for both victims and perpetrators. Let my heart break open for those who suffered and continue to suffer far outside my neighborhood.

My personal grief and the world’s grief meet in my heart. That is where I experience the truth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”1

No defensiveness is needed. Only seeing. Grieving. Not getting stuck there, but also not bypassing my need to wail about tragic aspects of human behavior.

Fear is fanned on every street corner and news show. Despair for the enormity of the environmental destruction and human inequity feels like it could easily undermine our capacity to cope with daily life.

The only path I know of that moves toward transformation, runs right through the middle of grief. “To let ourselves feel anguish and disorientation as we open our awareness to global suffering is part of our spiritual ripening. … Out of darkness, the new is born.”2

Against all logic, this path leads me to joy and gratitude. Standing solidly in the center of both grief and joy, I find clarity about my place in the global world. I am prompted to continue to ask myself, “What’s next? What is my next step to further align my behavior with my values?” Not from a place of despair, shame or over-responsibility but from a solid knowing of the interconnectedness of us all.

Paradox again. I always return here. The more I can learn to hold grief and joy, the greater my capacity to live life fully in ways that serve us all.

1. Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
2. Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown. Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 1998) Pg 45

March 20, 2014

My Cell Phone and Violence: #1

My cell phone.

My Belgian roots.

My membership in a Christian church.

My wedding band.

The genocide and massive use of rape and sexual torture in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi are connected to these four things. The violence in that land is not a far off horror that has nothing to do with me, nor is it an innate character flaw within the Africans themselves.

The foundation for these atrocities has its roots in “my people” and me.

“In 1885 Belgian King Leopold ‘founded’ the land he called the Congo Free State (later Rwanda and Burundi) as his own private colony. Booker T. Washington wrote an article, “Cruelty in the Congo Country,” where he reported, ‘There was never anything in American slavery that could be compared to the barbarous conditions existing today [1904] in the Congo Free State.’¹ In 1908 King Leopold turned the colony over to Belgium. During the years of Leopold’s rule, the population of the Congo declined from an estimated twenty-five million to less than nine million.”²

Belgium assigned the responsibility for education of the Congolese to the missionaries, staunch supporters of colonialism who were interested in educating men who wanted to go into the priesthood. The first Congolese citizen admitted to a university without heading to the priesthood happened in 1954—the year I was born. “By the eve of Congolese independence in June 1960, the aspiring nation had only sixteen African university graduates out of a population of more than thirteen million. There were no Congolese engineers or physicians.

“Perhaps most crucially, the lack of centralized education left the new nation in a stunted state of growth. Across the African continent, educated Africans had often played a key role in the independence movements, and these leaders had then stepped in to govern the new nations which emerged in the 1960s.”³ Due to Belgian colonial education practices, however, this critical foundation was never built.

Limits to education weren’t the only blows dealt the Congolese by the Belgian missionaries. “The most important legacy of colonialism in Rwanda and Burundi involved the Belgians’ obsession with racial, ethnic classification. The Belgians believed that the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda was racially superior to the Hutu ethnic group because the Tutsis had more ‘European’ features.”⁴ They turned ethnic differences, which had long been present, into gasoline-soaked kindling for a bonfire of war.

Though this region is among the poorest in the world, it is resource rich. “It contains 2/3rds of the world’s remaining rainforests, and vast mineral wealth including cobalt, coltan (used in cell phones and other high tech equipment, Congo is home to 80% of the world’s coltan reserves) copper, cadmium, petroleum, diamonds, gold, silver, zinc, manganese, tin, germanium, uranium, radium, bauxite, iron ore, and coal.” ⁵ Greed for these natural resources was also a major influence in the Belgian, and later global, treatment of this country.

Millions have been killed. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people, mainly women, have been brutally raped and tortured. The land has also been raped through extraction of minerals such as coltran.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not taking personal responsibility for actions done generations ago by one of my homeland’s cultural ancestors. I am not refusing to own a cell phone or wear my wedding ring. However, I don’t want to pretend that I don’t see the connections between my life and these horrors.

For decades, my heart has ached for the women who have been brutally raped, their bodies and lives ripped apart. I am grateful that in 2011, many, including Eve Ensler, stepped in to open the “City of Joy” in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo, to serve these women.

Only recently have my thoughts turned to the perpetrators of this violence. How does a human being’s behavior become so twisted that he is capable of torturing, raping, brutalizing and killing? What can be done for the men who have perpetrated this heinous violence? How can there be a turning of the tide within these countries with extreme violence still active in so many men?

What can be done about the foreign and transnational corporations, and the people who run them, who have allowed their lust for riches to lead to violence and economic devastation of people native to this resource-rich land?

I don’t know how to stop these horrors, but I won’t pretend that I don’t see the ways that my cell phone, ancestral homeland, faith tradition and wedding ring have connections to unimaginable horrors.

I woke up to the paradoxes in our world today and won’t go back to sleep. In very concrete ways, I am not disconnected from anyone or anyplace on earth. I pray that my life, and my small and large everyday choices, will support the Great Turning so needed in our world today.

1. “The Booker T. Washington Papers,” University of Illinois Press (1904): 8, 85, http://www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.8/html/85.html.

2. Thurston, Nancy, Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Gender, Power and Class (Portland: Rosegate Press, 2012), 325

3. http://www.ultimatehistoryproject.com/belgian-congo.html

4. http://geography.about.com/od/belgiummaps/a/Belgian-Colonialism.htm

5. http://www.healafrica.org/learn/history-of-the-congo/

March 5, 2014

We Confess

I have ashes smeared on my forehead. They were placed there with the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

It is a good spiritual practice to live fully, whole-heartedly, remembering that we, along with everyone we love, will die.

But that is not the main reason Ash Wednesday is my favorite liturgy in the Episcopal Church. Since my first trip to Haiti, the service for this first day of Lent had a special place in my heart. It is the only time when the Episcopal community asks for forgiveness for our cultural sins.

This week, confession and asking for forgiveness as a nation feels particularly important.

Yesterday, I went to an Oregon Humanities Conversation Project talk on “Alternatives to Incarceration,” led by Walidah Imarisha. I learned disturbing statistics. Our prison population has increased 370% since 1970 (when I was in high school). If it hadn’t been for the “War on Drugs,” 70% of the people now in prison would NOT be there. We lock up more of our citizens than any other country in the world. Ironically, the amount of violent crime today is similar to what it was in 1950 (four years before I was born).

Incarceration is just one hot issue. If I started to list all of the cultural sins that are rampant in our world right now, I’d be writing for a very long time. With such a heavy heart, I headed to church on this Ash Wednesday to join my voice to others praying for forgiveness:

We confess to you, Lord …

Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people …

Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts. …

Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done:

For our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty …

For our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,

For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us. … ¹

These words of confession spoke the things I so long to address in my life and in the world. Often Christians focus on personal sin but ignore institutional and organizational sin that we all participated in together.

Not me.

Not today.

I ask for forgiveness for myself and for my country. That is the first step toward transformation.

1 “Ash Wednesday Liturgy,” The Book of Common Prayer, (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), page 268

December 12, 2013

A Definitive Guide

Mother told me to define my terms. So here goes …

Big Topics

1. Issues, subjects, matters great in dimensions, bulk or impact, not trendy topics, but those at the heart of the injustice. Melatonin in the skin. Bottom line in the bank. Y chromosome in the cells.

At Midnight

1. The moment between the end of one day and the beginning of a new one.

2. A dark time when most people need or would like to be sleeping.

3. A time when it gets quiet enough to consider the Big Topics, or when one wakes up whether or not one wants to, with Big Topics on the mind.

4. Culturally, midnight marks the moment where the crumbling of the old way meets the unknown—the dawning of a transformed culture or the deepening darkness of environmental and community destruction.

5. Now.

A Texas Girl

1. A young woman born and raised in Texas, the 28^th state in the union.

2. Who I tried not to be within a few years of moving away from Texas in my early 20s.

3. The person I am since I realized I couldn’t run away from my roots.

Wakes Up

1. Emerges from a state of physical sleep, opens one’s eyes and steps into the day.

2. Emerges from a state of slumber or a fog of unawareness induced by assumptions, unconsciousness or limited perspective, and sees other ways of being and embraces bigger picture of life.

3. An action that often leads to more action.

Race, Class, Gender

1. Three Big Topics that have cut through our globe for generations.

2. Topics riddled with assumptions, mostly unconscious and often unhealthy, that must be explored to create listening, learning and partnership building.

And Herself

1. A reflexive form of she

2. In this case, Nancy Ann Mathys Thurston, a fiery, hopeful, determined (also see “stubborn”), loyal, curious woman who has learned she must love all of her parts in order to love others (also see “not as simple as it sounds”).

Mother, you were right. It is good to break things down. I had fun playing with the definition of each part of my book, Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself.

December 4, 2013

What Is Your Theory of Social Change, and What Does That Have to Do with Money?

Rose Feerick Director of Harvest Time — Rosemary Feerick
Director of Harvest Time and author of this guest blog

“What is your theory of social change and what does that have to do with money?”

That was a key question that emerged on the first day of Harvest Time’s annual board retreat. Knowing that our plans need to be anchored in a clear vision, John Bloom asked the big picture question.

A rich silence ensued. Then, for the first time, I was able to see and understand clearly what it is that we do at Harvest Time and why.

I remembered a talk at the 2012 SoCap conference in San Francisco. John Fullerton of Capital Institute (www.capitalinstitute.org) distinguished between three paradigms of social change.

One way that people and organizations try to effect social change, Fullerton said, is by working to solve specific problems. For example, we work to solve hunger in a particular community by creating a local food bank.

Another way to create change is to shift systems. For instance, we might work to prevent the injustice and environmental destruction that are consequences of capitalism by working to shift capitalism so those problems do not occur.

Yet another approach involves trying to shift consciousness.

For years I have known that Harvest Time is not a social activist organization. Our goal is NOT to move x amount of money to organizations that serve people who are poor (though that often happens as a byproduct of our work). And the organizational impulse to move to “scale” in order to have a wider impact has never grabbed my passion. Why? Because what I am most interested in is shifting consciousness, and I believe that happens best in small, committed, authentic spiritual community.

But how does this make social change?

My fundamental assumption is that Christ is present and active in history, working, among other ways, through individuals whose hearts have been opened and transformed. For me, the most effective way that we can transform society is by supporting people who seek their own conversion so that they can participate in the flow of Christ’s love and energy as it moves through the world.

This support begins with helping people learn to recognize the presence of Christ moving through their lives and hearts. That is a function of spiritual direction and of spiritual practice.

We then create opportunities for people to support each other as each finds the courage to participate in that presence. We need this support because the way of Christ’s love is not the ordinary way of the human ego or of human culture. In other words, there is a transformation process that needs to happen if we seek to align our lives with Christ, and in this transformation we need one another’s help.

That is the work of authentic Christian community and of transformative spiritual practices. When hearts are converted and open, the Holy Spirit can then flow with ease through the individual into their relationships and communities as love.

The conversion need not be dramatic. God can work through any of us at any time, no matter where we are on the journey. But I do believe that the more we are able to open our hearts, the more effectively we can be channels of God’s love.

I love the way Rumi puts it: “Our task is not to find love, but to find everything in us that blocks love and remove it.”

For us at Harvest Time, money is the practice place. It is a great practice place, because money sits at the intersection between the person and society. It is exactly that place where so much individual and collective shadow is acted out in our culture. If you want to find your blocks to love, start paying attention to money and your relationship to it.

And there is more. Because money is a symbol of our interconnectedness, the more we are able to shift our attitudes and relationship to money, the more the love of God can move into the world through us through our money.

What we do with money, what we value through it – how much we hold onto, how much and how we give, how we spend, how we invest – all of this changes as our hearts change and are opened. Money becomes more and more an expression of love and an agent of grace as God works through the converted heart.

This is why I think what we do in Harvest Time — gathering people in small circles to talk about money and engage in spiritual practice — is key to social change.

What do you think? What is your theory of social change?

This blog was written by Rosemary Feerick, Director of Harvest Time. Seeking help to align my heart and spirit and money, Harvest Time was one of the first places Howard and I turned after my family financial inheritance came to me. We have been in one of their retreat circles ever since, and both of us have served on the board (that is still true for me). Harvest Time is a ministry of “Christians of wealth engaging with money as a doorway to spiritual transformation.”

November 2, 2013

Fracking

How do I begin to write about something as overwhelming as fracking?

I have good reasons why I’ve been silent on paper so far. Swamped with Big Topics at Midnight and opening Big Topics Conversations. Overwhelmed whenever I remember that right now rock formations are being fractured through blasts of chemical-laden water in order to free up trapped natural gas and oil. Troubled that this is happening in gas wells where I own a .01562501 royalty interest.

What am I to do with a paradox that wide?

Sell it and walk away, clean? Just like I could give away all of my family money and walk away, clean?

What is “clean”?

If I sell it, the practice will still continue and I will still be who I am. I won’t be absolved from responsibility. One way that money has made my thinking stupid* over the years is that part of me wants to escape from my complicity in a system I disagree with by pushing away my family financial legacy. I’ve tried to do the same thing with the privilege I receive merely because my skin is white. But I am still the same me.

Don’t get me wrong. I have sold stocks and mutual funds that aren’t in alignment with my values. But something more is required here.

I first heard about fracking in 2006 when I was visiting my grandfather’s ranch on a pilgrimage back to my homeland of Texas (where I am now a partial owner of the “mineral rights” but not “surface rights”). The journey was one part of a larger pilgrimage into my ancestral history to Germany, North Carolina, Texas and, now, Oregon during the writing of Big Topics at Midnight. I set out on those trips when I realized I’d spent far too much of my life trying to cut out parts of myself that embarrassed me. Knowing that I need all of me to live the life I was born to live, I returned to the land of my family hoping to find clarity, healing and right action.

On the ranch seven years ago, I knew nothing of the actual geological impact of this drilling practice. Nevertheless, it felt to me as if fracking was cutting out huge holes in the body of Mother Earth while spewing toxic chemicals into our farmland and drinking water. As far as I could tell, fracking waste would be added to nuclear waste, piling up for future generations to deal with.

It didn’t make sense to me.

Gas prices are currently low. If we frack now, what will happen when high prices tempt us?

Is there no end to what humans will do to make money and exert control over the natural world? This is an escalating conquest that we won’t win.

My work is to explore and participate in the shifting of Big Topics like money, gender, race, power, justice, generational healing and soul. These topics are at the core, like the magma at the center of the Earth. Hot, molten topics. How we are in them—personally as well as in families, communities, organizations, systems, nationally, globally—is the underpinning of our decision making and values. My focus is rightly there.

Yet I can’t ignore fracking. It is hurting our shared homeland. In addition, it is part of the flow of money that pays my bills, funded the writing and now marketing of Big Topics at Midnight, finances my travels to open these conversations and is the source of my financial support of three organizations dear to my heart—Be Present, Inc., Wisdom & Money, and Community Wholeness Venture.

My work continues. Fracking continues. There are only so many hours in a day. I continue my spiritual practice of standing in partnership with a diversity of people right in the midst of the deep gaps that cut through our world.

Giving words to this hot topic is the next step on my journey. I’m listening for guidance about the following step.

* I play with the ways that “Money Made [my husband] Howard Stupid” in Big Topics at Midnight, page 241 after he made that comment about himself. From time to time, money has indeed made Howard’s and my thinking stupid. The important thing is how we work with that before it translates into stupid actions.