Gender

March 10, 2014

What do you do? Take 1

I used to hate that question. I’ve rarely had a simple answer. Physical Therapist worked for a decade. Mother. Retreat Leader. Board Member. None of those sounded normal and solid enough to be a “real” answer.

I could have said I was a novice spiritual revolutionary, but that never occurred to me in my younger years. Or activist-from-the-heart in training. Or spiritual seeker. Or visionary.

But I was milder then, trying hard to navigate being a nice, normal girl when I was so much more. Trying to understand the connections I saw all around me while navigating the explosive steam of compassion and justice that hissed around inside of me.

Since I turned 50, I’ve been trying to walk right into the middle of Marianne Williamson’s challenge,

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”*

Courage is not conquering fear. I am still afraid. But I walk forward anyway. Boldness today is needed to serve our world for today and tomorrow.

“What do I do?” you might ask.

I am a stretcher of the boundaries. A catalyst. An awakener. A fire starter. A revolutionary. Warrior from the heart. Pioneer. Leader. Minister. Priestess. A root healer. A social activist seeking to change consciousness. A connector.

And I am only one of many.

What do you do?

Remember, playing it small doesn’t serve any of us. Be bold, even when your knees shake or part of you cowers at your audacity.

Future generations are waiting to see how bold we are willing to be.

*Marianne Williamson, A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles, pages 190-191.

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

February 25, 2014

Reacting rather than Answering

Comedy is often based on quick jabs and rapid-fire remarks. Answering serious questions, however, takes a bit longer.

An interviewer asked Jerry Seinfeld a question: why most of the guests on his Web TV series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee were white men.

Seinfeld got pissed off and rushed headlong into deflecting the question. “Who cares? People think [comedy] is the census or something, it’s gotta represent the actual pie chart of American.”

Many media reports followed suit.

“His job is to make people laugh, not fill quotas.”

He is “entitled to prioritize humor over diversity.”

Don’t forget that Seinfeld has lots of black comedian friends

Why don’t non-white men and women of all colors just create their own shows?

The usual reactive fare.

The conversation could have gone another direction. What would have happened if Seinfeld stopped to ask himself why he thought that 21 of the 25 guests chosen to be on his show had been white men?

The depth of my reaction to Seinfeld’s rant, however, wasn’t about him. It was about me.

I’ve spent far too many years reacting and getting offended when someone asks me a challenging question, especially one that I fear casts me in a light that is diametrically opposed to my stated values.

I may feel justified in my defensiveness, but my response doesn’t make any changes in me or in the world around me.

I am done with that. I am working like crazy to take responsibility for myself, to keep up my curiosity and to remember my commitment for a more just and joyful world.

I wanted Seinfeld to do what I didn’t do for so long.

Listen to the question.

Turn inward and try to stay open, without judgment or shame—both of which will stop us in our tracks. See what honest answer emerges.

Sometimes I hadn’t thought about it before. I was still asleep as to how race (or class or gender) influenced my choices.

Sometimes I was behaving in ways that felt comfortable or familiar.

Sometimes prejudice was lurking in the shadows.

Sometimes though my behavior mimicked injustice in the culture around me, in truth, I was acting justly.

Seinfeld could have stopped to understand his authentic answer underneath his bluster. Likewise, the interviewer could have wondered why his BuzzFeed Brews audience was predominantly white men and women, as the angry Seinfeld had pointed out. For me, I want to know my own truth.

We each get to make our own choices, hopefully after reflecting inwardly.

However, it becomes more complex when the perspective widens from the personal to the culture milieu. In fields like comedy, white males have more access to performances, especially lucrative gigs. The same is true for institutional or political appointments. Or philanthropic foundation grants going to pet projects of the (often white male) donors.

We live in a world with unequal access to power and position. For someone who has access, like Seinfeld, to say that he “has no interest in race or anything else” means that he is still unaware, or doesn’t care, how race and gender continue to unjustly influence opportunities available to equally qualified people.

In 1987 I became a charter member of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. When I saw their first exhibit of women’s art through the generations, I was stunned. Though the quality of the exhibit was equal to any I’d seen in a wide array of museums, I’d never heard of most of the artists. The standard curator’s excuse, like the one Seinfeld used, “if you are funny [or a good artist], I’m interested” doesn’t account for the extensive, high quality art/comedy of non-whites and females that has been overlooked for thousands of years.

Seinfeld, and all of us, have a right to make our own choices. But we live in a world that is still deeply divided. To react, rather than seriously ponder challenging questions, comes at a high cost to us all.

When we can wake up to ourselves and to the world around us, we can notice the rich variety of comedy, art or leadership that comes from the full diversity of who we are as humans. With exposure we can grow to appreciate something more than what comes through others who look like us.

February 14, 2014December 28, 2019

Rising Up With a Little Kick-Ass Help

I know Nancy signed her name to this blog, but mind you she wouldn’t be speaking today if it wasn’t for me—Hectate. I’ve been at her side all her life, but she didn’t notice me. She was sweet, nice and very helpful.

A few years ago I took hold of her ovaries, woke her up and she’s been rising every since.

Let me introduce myself. Straight-laced as Nancy was, she always had her little flare so she messed with my real name. When she first noticed me, she thought I was Hestia, the goddess of the home and the sacred fires. Nope. I was Hecate, wild goddess of crossroads like birth and death—those big paradoxes that make most humans quake in their boots. As much as her Texas roots have embarrassed Nancy, she was clear that I was the sort of strong-willed woman she recognized, like Sue Tipps Mathys, her native Texan mother. And, good as she is with words, she’s a lousy speller. My Greek name is Hecate. Nancy called me “Hectate.”

That works for me. All I wanted to do was to wake up good girl Nancy, light the flame of her heart and send her strong and clear into the world. Women have been on the sidelines for far too long. These midnight times for our Earth—the planet, people and creatures—are hopeless without the rising of feminine wisdom. Nancy’s always had that, but it was tamed and flimsy.

I like women who stand up and take charge. Women who lasso the lies of our culture and fan the flames of clarity. You women have been fed a pack of lies that now bounce around in your head. Quit hating your body, trying to fit into an airbrushed ideal. Life is too short and you are too beautiful.

Start thinking with your heart and your gut. All of that good head learning you got in school is still there, but balance it with your body’s smarts. Quit limping around with just part of your clarity.

Life isn’t a forced march. Quit trying to do everything all at once. Listen for what is yours to do next, then do it. Simple as pie.

Smash any box that tries to contain you or your thinking. Life is always bigger, broader, deeper. Keep the boundary of your heart soft and subtle so it can grow and grow and grow.

Remember what we are all here for—to live justly, joyfully and equitably—to build a world for ourselves today and generations yet to come. Keep your focus there.

Let your emotions flow. Anger. Delight. Sadness. Joy. Grief. Disappointment. They all have something to tell you. Ride their waves; dive deeply underneath to see the treasures they hold. Then let them go and act from the wisdom they gave you.

Pay attention. Quit being disrespectful in your words and stop tolerating disrespect from others. Check out your assumptions. Honor yourself and the others enough to treat everyone with respect.

Drop those scales over your eyes. Your experience isn’t everyone’s experience. Jump outside your own skin regularly and listen carefully. We can learn from the world’s diversity.

Be too much. Too loud. Too excited. We need to be respectful of those around us, but holding it in all the time leads to a constipated life.

Know who you are—the stuff you love about yourself—and do well. Your questions. Your burps. Your “good” and “bad” habits. Wrap your arms around the whole shebang. Then there is no need to be reactive or offended when someone says something about you. Either it is true or not true. You know. Quit quaking in your boots.

Sometimes you say or do something that looks like the messed up behavior in our crumbling world. We have millennium of crazy behaviors around stuff like money, skin color, genitalia, brain smarts and religion that has seeped into us all. When you get caught, notice it then change. When it just looks familiar to that smelly stuff, but isn’t, know the difference and keep moving forward.

Maybe you weren’t as far gone as Nancy was. Either way, I hope my little tidbits were helpful.

Now I’ll let Nancy say a few words.

Hectate came and never left. In my wildest imagination, I’ve always wanted to stand with billions rising for justice. Hectate stepped in and used her kick-ass ways to teach me how to do that in every cell in my body. Thank you, Hectate.

I am grateful to Hedgebrook for posting this blog on their website in February 2014. I love their byline– “Hedgebrook supports visionary women writers whose stories and ideas shape our culture now and for generations to come.” It is what our world needs now.

February 12, 2014December 28, 2019

Eight-Eyed Steam Girl—That’s Me

I’ve already come out of the closet as someone who listens for the voices of my ancestors, the moon, rocks and water, and then writes down what I hear. So I suspect you won’t be surprised to find out that I take dictation from other voices, too.

The process of listening for truths that lie within and underneath historical facts has taught me to value a different, feminine kind of knowing—one that can’t be documented or diagrammed or proved. One that doesn’t need to be. What a relief! What a joy!

In the middle of a hot August week, I decided to apply this process to myself and listen for what might be underneath the facts and figures of my own life.

I didn’t have to wait long. Silenced parts of myself bubbled right up in the language of myth.

Lordy, here we go again. I squirmed in my chair, thinking of all my laundry that really needed to be washed right now, and the dishes …

But since I’d been here before, this time I knew what to do:

Ignore my distracting chore list.

Shut up my protesting that this was crazy.

Lie down on my couch.

Listen.

Then dash to my computer and begin to write.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, a wild girl was born onto this planet. She was made of flesh and blood all right, but she was also made of fire and water.

I laughed. Maybe blasting through life with the power of a steam locomotive wasn’t the worst thing in the world. My myth continued.

Men drilled through the earth’s crust, through the hard shale and into the gas-filled rock. Black oil and bubbly gas burst through the earth’s surface, into the wild girl’s feet. Scorching, fiery black gold, red blood and shimmering gas bursting with the power of the Spirit shot through her from toe to head.

The Beverly Hillbillies TV show of my childhood had called oil “Texas tea,” and here it was flowing right through me. While I’d resisted my Texan origins in my fact-based life, in this story, being born on Texas soil sounded mighty fine. No wonder I’d struggled with feeling boiling mad—the miracle was that I hadn’t burnt to a crisp.

Luckily, however, as the earth’s flaming blood pumped into her veins, cool water fell into her eyes from the heavens above. This same water once filled the ancient seas. These rains filled her body, mixing with the earth’s oily blood in her veins. It was not a gentle mixing as steam poured out of her ears.

Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to soaking in the tub when I need to center myself. Or part of the reason Community Wholeness Venture’s foot washing ritual was so powerful for me. And why I loved the process of anointing the land with a different sort of oil and imagined it combining with the living water of Jesus.

As my myth unfolded, so did the extraordinary qualities of my steam girl self—I had eight eyes and was born riding high in my little red boat.

While she loves her own legend, this steamy, many-eyed girl wants to know about you. Not the boring resume stuff. Something juicy, too real for mere facts. A good story, a deep myth.

You think you don’t have one?

Nonsense.

Tell your skeptical mind to go outside to play and start listening.

Have your pen and notebook or keyboard ready, and hold on. It’s quite a ride to see yourself this way.

You just might discover some parts of yourself that you’ve tried so hard to change are the very parts that give you character. Within myth, quirks and foibles spice up life rather than spoil it.

As you explore, don’t forget to dive deeply into the mystery that is you. Let the fun begin.

I tell more of her/my fantastical story in Big Topics at Midnight. Or, if you want to other tasty morsels about this wild ride of waking up and more deeply engaging in life, explore, poke around my website. She’ll be there, along with Hectate and some ancestors showing up with words, videos and pictures.

February 3, 2014

Roots and Writing

It matters where my words take root.

I will write anywhere inspiration hits—on a street corner, in the bathroom or while riding (not driving) in a car. I regularly slip off to Alivar Coffeehouse a few blocks away to do a bit of editing or play with an idea. But when I’m writing about big topics dear to my heart, I need a fertile place where my words can take root.

Big Topics at Midnight was born on the road between Portland Library’s Writing Room, Suena’s Coffee Shop and my home desk. But she took root for six years in a bedroom-turned-writing-studio within Rosegate Condominium #18, where blue walls are covered with art and photographs, my laptop perches on a Value Village desk, a candle flickers at my side and the courtyard’s tulip magnolia moves gently in the wind outside my window.

When I first started writing, I was part of a small group of friends scattered across the country who dreamed about bold experiments in community and economic justice. One of those ideas manifested in the co-ownership of Condo #18 as a place of “Hospice-tality.”

Hospice-tality. Hospice and Hospitality. A welcoming condo that intentionally holds places/times of death, either physical dying or, more often, the crumbling of relationships, dreams, habits and assumptions—in a container of love and community. Jan came to calm her anxiety while simultaneously looking a job. Sally came after a beloved relationship shattered. Nothing like grief to water our souls—and my words—and send our roots down deep.

Our group’s dreams for justice, healing and community wove their way into the pages of Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself. As I dove into my past, I realized that some of my cherished memories needed to be grieved and buried.

For example, my pride in Midland High School’s ease of integration crashed when I realized that it had taken fourteen years and the threat of a federal lawsuit before the community obeyed Brown vs. Board of Education’s ruling. In addition, I was horrified to realize that the way desegregation was implemented abruptly closed Carver High School, robbing the black community of a beloved gathering place and bringing an end to decades of school traditions. Meanwhile, my historically white school’s “Midland Bulldogs” remained strong and vibrant. Condo 18 held me while I ranted at the system and mourned all I hadn’t noticed for so long.

In Condo 18, with pen and paper, I also awoke to a lifelong distrust of my innate feminine, intuitive wisdom and how I, along with much of America, had exalted an intellectual, strategic masculine approach as “the best way to do things.” I dusted off these newly discovered roots and began to notice how they had grounded my work even before I noticed them.

Sitting at the computer looking out my office window, I struggled with the ways that “Money [had] Made Howard [and me] Stupid.”^*Waking up to life as it was around class, gender and race disoriented me. I was grateful to be writing in Condo 18, a community space born from a shared commitment, one created to align heart and actions.

Including actions around economics. Money, I’d discovered, sometimes had prickly and convoluted roots.

Money was part of the rich soil of the Condo 18 experiment, as we sought to grow a new economic paradigm. Each of us who stepped into the experiment donated 10% of our savings, knowing that we would be equal owners even though our invested amounts were vastly different. Extra money was donated to other organizations or people doing exciting new projects rooted in economic justice. When it is time to sell Condo 18, the money will flow out into the world in some creative way.

From outside my window, the tulip magnolia waves to me. I wave back. She’s doing her work and I’m doing mine. I sit alone at the computer to write, but even here my solitude is held in community. In addition to the co-owners, members of my creative community have also filled my writing studio: Jen Violi, content editor/friend/word genius extraordinaire, Khara Scott-Bey, intuitive illustrator who drew the perfect image for each chapter and Ann Eames, copy editor/master at putting my spelling, grammar and tense quirks into finished words. My writing studio is full even when I am alone.

Just as Condo 18 itself pushes the edges of the cultural notion of independent ownership, my book doesn’t fit into “normal” categories either. It is a Social Change Memoir. Not pushing-the-blocks-around sort of social change, but root level change of the personal, institutional, national and global. Not just my memoir, but also the personal stories of many of my ancestors, the moon, Hectate and the Eight-eyed Steam Girl. Condo 18 and Big Topics at Midnight shoot down roots that refuse to be contained.

Big Topics. Big Change. Big awakenings. Writing Big Topics at Midnight demanded Big support. When the winds blew and threatened to knock me down, my roots held me firm.

I return to my desk, put my hands on the keyboard, plant my feet on the wooden floor and let the words flow. Condo 18 is the ground that supports my writing journey.

It matters where my words take root, and this is ground I can trust.

^* A chapter in my book Big Topics at Midnight, page 241.

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.

November 14, 2013

Listen Up, Honey-Bunchkins

I was stuck. Defeated. Hiding under Mom’s blue afghan.

Luckily I’d “met” a character that could give me just the shove I needed—Hectate, my own combination of the goddess Hecate and my wise inner guide with an attitude the size of Texas. Hectate, never one to mince words, demanded that I get up and do what was mine to do.

She had me put Helen Reddy’s All Time Greatest Hits in the CD player, crank up the volume and sing at the top of my lungs. Hectate wanted to “write” me a letter, so I sat at my computer, fingers poised over my computer keyboard, took a deep breath and waited. My fear and trembling disappeared as Hectate began to “dictate” this:

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Church night in the South

Listen up, Honey-bunchkins,

Your singing sounds great. How polite of you to close the windows first. Still afraid someone will hear you and Helen singing together? Being loud still too wild for you? …

You belted out “I Am Woman” while you danced with the vacuum cleaner as a young woman back in Boise land. Funny how your wildness came out a bit when you cleaned house.

Welcome home to the fullness of your life as a woman. It took you long enough. Fifty-two years old is no spring chicken. The power of the lie is so strong it is hard for women to break through much younger. Especially strong, intelligent women like you.

Like many women of your time, you’ve lived out a strange combination of falling asleep and feeling invincible. You thought you could do it alone, right? At times you almost sank from the weight of your strength. You tried to play by enough of the rules that you could sustain the illusion of your independence from things as messy as sexism and patriarchy. You got a little constipated trying to hold it all in while not noticing. …

$#@* invincibility and strength. They damn near drug you under a few times. …

This society does its little jig, pretending everything is just peachy for everyone. You are living in an insane world. That is not the whole picture, of course. Life’s beautiful, too. But it is the insane part that put you to sleep and is causing such havoc these days. Are you ready to wake up? Are you ready to open your eyes and see things as they really are? …

Time, it is a wasting. Midnight’s near, and it’s hard to see the way. But I need you human women to WAKE UP NOW. You must claim your wisdom and live it in the world. If women continue to remain silent, there is little hope for this little planet. …

You were created with just what you need to thrive, to live fully. You were not created lacking. Quit acting like it. Believe in your greatness, your magnificence and your power. Yes, most of the current world institutions embody a distorted power, dangerous “greatness.” $#@* that shit! You are talking about another kind of power. Don’t be so afraid. Live. NOW. …

If you try to hold back, I’ll drag this out of you. That will really hurt. So get on with it. Generations of women have your back and add their spirits to your breath.

Find that voice of yours, that WOMAN’S voice, and speak it. Living with only part of your wisdom is a luxury the world can no longer afford. None of us. Not men. Not women. Not trees or plants. Not rocks or stars. Not water or flame. Not air or animals or the cosmos. …

Amen, so be it, just do it, have fun along the way and all that. You are never alone. Don’t forget, you have a heavenly posse leading the way.

Blessings, honey-bunchkins, Hectate^*

While I still hide under Mom’s afghan now and then, humming along with Helen now and then helped me to remember Hectate’s straight-to-the-point guidance and put a little kick in my step.

Hectate has made it clear that she wants to share some of her wisdom with a larger audience. She will “take over” Nancy’s facebook author page for her own posts.

*Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself (Portland: Rosegate Press, 2012) page 264-266, slightly adapted

Drawing by Khara Scott-Bey, Illustration from Big Topics at Midnight.

October 14, 2013

Standing in the Gap … Together

I suppose we could stack one on top of each other, the way one piece of my collage illustrates, as one way to “stand in the gap” together. One house on top of another on top of another. It is an efficient use of ground space, even if climbing from one house to another is a bit daunting with my middle-aged knees.

Not to mention my fear of heights.

There are all sorts of gaps or crevasses that cut through our world. We are divided by the color of our skin, how much money we have in the bank and all sorts of stuff about our gender.

I can’t wiggle my nose and make these gaps go away, so I want to get inside them along with others to do the work of love, compassion, justice, equity, spiritual transformation—those things powerful enough to build something new, together.

However, I don’t usually think of standing in the gap together as a stacking game. If I stand on your shoulders and someone stands on mine, we will fill up the gap vertically, but we’ll also be exhausted in the process.

I often feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders without anyone perched up there. I don’t really want you up there, too.

I know that our world is set up to climb ladders. The ladder to success—until you hit the glass ceiling. Jacob’s ladder on the spiritual journey. We’ve tried to build buildings and corporations higher and higher, and our world groans under the weight.

That is not the world I want to help build. I’d rather move with circles or waves or flow. Something more curving, connecting and inclusive. Feminine.

If not one on top of the other, how shall we then stand?

In a circle? Standing side-by-side with linked arms, supporting each other? Is there a way we can share the burden and the gifts?

Playing with images to explore big topics may seem like child’s play, but don’t be fooled. Imagination holds the power to clarify our thinking and propel us to action.

Anyone want to stand in the gap with me?

Drawing by Khara Scott-Bey. Houses photo from my collage box. I explore more about “standing in the gap” in Big Topics at Midnight.

October 9, 2013

Swiss Cheese Woman

Before I can fully embrace the world’s diversity, I need to embrace myself in all of my diversity. Accepting who I am has been quite a journey. I stumble again and again. Below is an excerpt from Big Topics at Midnight where this question came into knife-sharp focus.

“I flew into Atlanta for the next session of my eighteen-month Be Present training on the issues of Race, Gender, Power & Class. Each time I arrived in Atlanta, Kate Lillis picked me up. On the drive across town, we’d catch up on our families and lives, continue to build our relatively new friendship and get to know each other. Just as we pulled up into her driveway, Kate turned and asked me, ‘Where did you grow up?’ ‘Texas,’ I snorted with disgust. The harsh tone of my voice surprised me, but I was too excited to be in Atlanta with Kate to give it any more thought. Until later.

Alone, snuggled under the covers in Kate and Lillie’s guest room, my body was tired, but my mind was wide-awake. I’d loved growing up in Texas, but my world expanded after I moved away at twenty-three. Year by year, I’d broadened my understanding of life. Simultaneously, I grew more self-conscious about my narrow childhood perspective, packaged in Texas-sized confidence.

Almost thirty years after I’d moved away from the land of my birth, under the covers in Kate’s home, I was horrified to realize I’d spent many of those years trying to cut out the Texan parts of me. Around midnight, I also recognized a larger pattern: I’d long been trying to extricate other parts of myself as well.

When I finally noticed that we had more money than many, I was embarrassed by my family’s upper-middle class and, later, upper class status. For a time, I wanted to give my family money away, not wanting to be wealthy in a world where so many had so little. Simultaneously, I wanted to keep all of the options that money gave me.

Likewise, I had recently realized how white my world had always been. As I heard story after story of experiences and perspectives of people with darker shades of skin, I wanted to rip off my white skin and the white-colored glasses that had kept me unaware of signs of racism during childhood and into my adult years.

The glow from the streetlight gave the room an eerie light as I considered other parts of myself that had faced the knife. It wasn’t easy for me to admit being a Christian, either. Jesus didn’t embarrass me, but far too many Christians did. Too often the radical heart of the faith was usurped by traditional US cultural values.

As a strong girl turned woman, I thought I’d avoided sexism. In the dark of night I realized that I’d been largely unaware of the ways I’d absorbed patriarchal beliefs throughout my life. I’d grown to respect my use of reason and logic—the skills honored in my family—and ignored my subtler intuition, gut and heart. I’d slipped unaware into the patriarchal way of valuing only one part of me. In addition, I was disgusted that it took over thirty years for me to discover how slowly liberation had come to my home state—married Texan women didn’t even have full legal rights until the late 1960s.

I felt full of holes, like a hunk of Swiss cheese. So much of who I was brought me shame. Projecting that onto Texas and onto the United States of America at the height of her world power, I tried to increase the distance between myself and the culturally affirmed values I no longer accepted.

Were these holes I’d cut out of myself destined to remain empty forever?”

No, I didn’t remain full of holes. Waking up not only extended the edges of my neighborhood, but it also helped me find my way back home to myself.

In January, I will return to a Be Present National Training Institute on Race, Gender, Power & Class, this time in California as one of the leadership team. This training has been key for me to find my way back home to myself and at home in the diverse world around me. I hope you’ll consider joining me.

*Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself (Portland: Rosegate Press, 2012) page 238, 239.