Category: Race

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A Vision Realized: Journey to a Vision

This blog started as a letter that took an unexpected turn. This is now the first in a blog series about my journey to a vision realized: the building of effective and sustainable partnerships across our human diversity right in the middle of this time of global divisions.  In this first blog of the series, I’m starting with my own journey from a spark of vision that stopped me in my tracks…and hasn’t dimmed for the intervening 36 years.

When I was around 30 I attended what I thought was  a simple weekend workshop sponsored by my church. By the I returned home, I’d caught sight of a vision that has illumined my path ever since. I saw myself, and you, as one part of our global family. I saw how the flow of money in my own life and in my nation’s commerce affects that global family. Given that, I understood that I had a responsibility to participate in money’s movement in a way that was in alignment with my love and respect for (global) family values and this earth, our fragile island home.  I saw how our global family and the flow of money are intimately woven into my faith. For me, life itself is a Spirit walk.

Khara Scott-Bey*

The vision was clear. The life I longed to live, the world I longed to be part of, was clear. But was it possible? Here? Now? Could I release my fears and my hyper-sense of responsibility and step into this vision? Would I be able to find others also longing to live in the midst of such an audacious vision? Was this possible in the middle of the beauty and mess, the love and the injustice that I could see inside myself and in the world around me?

My quest was to find answers to these questions.

It has been both a rocky and beautiful journey. Again and again, I slipped back into old habits of not trusting myself and going silent when I needed to speak. Again and again, in groups and organizations with beautiful missions and vision, I was disappointed when difficult times were met with old  patterns of traditional hierarchy or “best” (corporate) practices. I was afraid the beautiful vision both for myself and for community inside of organizations was impossible.

I was deep in this search in 2001 when my father died, and my half of my family’s financial inheritance flowed to me. Within 6 months of his death, I stepped into Be Present™ and Harvest Time (now called Wisdom & Money). In both organizations, I saw the alignment I was seeking in my own personal life embodied in an institution and a community that I hoped would support my vision of personal and cultural shift.

Could what I experienced in these two organizations be built on a foundation strong enough to hold the commitment to love and justice even in the hard times?

I stayed to see for myself.

Mind you, from many perspectives, these organizations were very different. Be Present was founded by an African American woman gathering with other Black women and girls while holding a vision that included everyone. By the time I stepped in, this work held EVERYONE—across diversity in age, race, class, gender, gender-identity.  For the first time in my life, I was in a community that looked like the world family I’d glimpsed at 30. Was it possible to build community across such vast diversity right in the middle of a world that was still divided? Could it hold when things got tough?

I stayed to see for myself.

Harvest Time/now called Wisdom & Money was founded by a white man who gathered together self-identified wealthy, and predominantly white, Christians. I stepped into this organization with a great deal of trust as Harvest Time was born out of the cross-class organization that hosted the retreat where I had my 30-year-old awakening vision. Harvest Time was formed to shift the focus of the ministry to people of wealth or from a culture of wealth.

I didn’t self-identify as wealthy until my father’s death and the subsequent inheritance. Since I’d had a powerful history with this organization, I immediately sought out Harvest Time to get the next level of support I needed to “engage with money as a doorway to spiritual transformation at the personal, communal and systemic levels.”** I knew that transformation of wealthy people like me was one part of a larger movement of economic justice that included everyone.

I stayed and watched and learned so much from both organizations.

Then a crisis hit at Harvest Time. The powerful vision remained, but the way forward was hard to see. I panicked, fearful that the powerful transformative work would be lost. I was afraid that yet another fabulous organization wouldn’t be able to stay within its beautiful vision in times of trouble.

But I’d glimpsed another possibility in my few years with Be Present. I knew there was a practice and support powerful enough to guide Harvest Time back into her own light. My mantra, that I repeated over and over again, was, “It doesn’t have to be this hard!”

Finally, Harvest Time reached out to Be Present, first as consultants and later as true partners. Be Present offered Harvest Time a missing practice—the Be Present Empowerment Model™. This model for personal and organizational effectiveness and sustainability helped Harvest Time/now Wisdom & Money navigate the crisis in a way that was in full integrity with the vision and mission. Instead of destroying, the crisis left us stronger.

Be Present found in Harvest Time/Wisdom & Money a partner organization audacious enough to dive right into the middle of wealth and faith and willing to stay in the journey with integrity.

My vision was not only possible,  but I am now living right in the middle of it.

The collaboration between these two organization has grown step by step. Together we participated in a 9-year process of working collaboratively with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to give away a family farm in Mississippi. Two years ago, we held a joint Board of Directors meeting working in partnership to design and carry out the agenda. Following the board meeting, we held a Transformative Philanthropy Workshop using practices from both organizations.

The journey of partnership between these two organizations has required a simultaneous journey inward. The one thing I bring to each organization and the partnership between them is myself. It is clear that this realized vision also requires me to wake up to, then shift, the ways I have been participating in the very injustice and disrespect that I seek to shift in the culture around me. A glimpse into that process will be the topic of the second in this Vision Realized blog series.

*All of these illustrations are by Khara Scott-Bey, and all but the first one are from Big Topics at Midnight.

**From Wisdom & Money’s Mission statement.

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Tongues of Fire

“They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.”1

Last Sunday was Pentecost, the day Christians celebrate the spark of the Holy Spirit descending from heaven to earth, setting the hearts of the people on fire with love.

These words could also describe the fires that have scorched the country these past few weeks. The long burning embers of hatred, arrogance and white supremacy. The ashes of death of so many innocent Black men and women. The righteous flames of anger, grief and heartbreak. The smoke of careful planning and destruction at the hands of a small group of provocateurs, often white supremacists. The flares of action for equality, justice and respect.

Pentecost, a season when the flames of love enliven hearts with the power of the Spirit, is a perfect time for a spiritual awakening and reckoning.

A national reckoning is absolutely needed, but we must start with our own hearts. My heart beats within me: a white-skinned, wealthy woman.

My open-hearted longing for justice is true. As are the shards of racial and class injustice that made their way into me, often unnoticed. Shards that lie in wait. Waiting until I am afraid or want something or am caught in a distorted sense of over-responsibility. In those moments, these shards too often grow hot and prompt me to act in ways that are contrary to my deepest values.

I grew up in a Euro-American culture built on and steeped in injustice—racism, classism, sexism. Part of the sophistication of cultural injustice is that the perspective of those of us upheld by systemic power (i.e. white skinned people like me) is affirmed as “normal.”

In Big Topics at Midnight I describe a racial awareness that shook me to the core:

“I loved singing Sweet Honey in the Rock’s ‘I Remember, I Believe’ at the top of my lungs when it played on the stereo. As I tried to come to terms with my slave-owner ancestors, I attempted to imagine how these women’s black-skinned ancestors had survived the brutality of slavery.

One afternoon as I sang along, my perspective flipped. I, Nancy Ann Mathys Thurston, didn’t know how my people survived slavery…

How was it possible for my ancestors to love their own children, enslave others’ children in their fields, and not suffer deep spiritual damage? 

What happened to the moral fiber of men who fought for our country’s freedom and then held human beings captive?…

What about me as a young person? How was I able to sing about God holding the whole world in his hands and often forget that the whole world included people who weren’t all white like me?

Had I survived racism?” 2

As I work for justice and equality, too often I’ve been oblivious to my whiteness.  Until I find shards of the very behavior that I abhor “out there” present within me.

I am not speaking abstractly.

For the last month, I’ve been in that tender practice of peering into a shard wound in myself. Despite my best intentions, my rugged responsibility and trying to be helpful resulted in behavior that looked similar to an in-charge wealthy white woman.

Was it?

I’m still not sure, yet I know it certainly looked that way.

Stopping to let that question sink in alerted me to the fact that my self-image is split in two. I see myself as a combination of my personality, family history and life experience and then, off to the side, the white and wealthy Nancy.

I’ve spent most of my adult life exploring the intersection of faith, money and the global community. I understand the intricacies and impact of wealth inequity, race inequity and gender inequality. I know the social analysis, history and current presence of injustice. I’ve made radical changes to bring alignment between my values, heart and my actions. I’ve worked tirelessly in two organizations—Be Present, Inc. and Wisdom & Money—aimed to bring transformation to big topics at the personal, communal and systemic levels.

And yet here I am. Burned by my own behavior. Segregated within myself. Noticing what I’d not seen before. Listening to all of my inner excuses and explanations about why I acted the way I did. Followed quickly by inner judgment and a sense of my inadequacy. Supported by friends who cared enough to ask me what was happening when my behavior was not consistent with my desire for Spirit-centered alignment, I was able to find the courage to look directly into my shard wound.

Naming what I see in myself is an important first step, but I must keep looking deeply at the shard and see where I, Nancy Ann Mathys Thurston, am in my unjust beliefs or behaviors. And then wait. Wait until I know for myself what is true and what I must do to remove the shard completely.

I’m waiting still. Emotions I hadn’t realized were present are now rising, often lurking just below the surface. I’m listening.

Slowly I am becoming one Nancy. I remember the steady flame of the Spirit in my life, the depth of my relationships and the power of my practices3—all I need to support the transformation I seek. In the midst of easing this shard out of my being, I am grateful that I can still catch a glimpse of what awaits on the other side of this time—a deeper and more settled embodiment of the justice that has long burned deep within my bones.

My granddaughter will be born in a month. My two-year-old grandson delights and exhausts me. These two are part of a generation born into a world where the flames of racism and classism are raging for all to see and where a tiny virus has stirred the coals of fear and profound unknowing.

It’s past time for love and justice to take the lead. In me. In my nation.

In a spirit of Pentecost, I embrace the Spirit’s tongue of fire to give me the energy to step outside generations of oppression and do the work I was born to do. Starting with myself. It is past time to walk the journey to open up and remove our personal and cultural shards around race, class and gender. For ourselves. For the children. For creation. For us all.

“Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them…

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old [women] will dream dreams.’ ”1

May it be so.

1 Acts, 2:2-3, 17. Verse 17 is a quote from the Old Testament prophet Joel.

2 Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself, page 251-252

3Most of the powerful practices that support this journey are central within Be Present, Inc. (primarily the Be Present Empowerment Model) and Wisdom & Money (in their core practices). There is more info in both of their websites and in “The Practices” tab on my webpage. I am so deeply grateful for the power of the support and guidance from these two organizations.

I am so grateful to feel the flaming power of the Spirit moving across our globe as millions of people rise together in the streets, in words, in inward transformation, in demanding law and policy changes, in continuing transformative work centered in justice, equity and love—in all of our human diversity and in all of the diversity in our ways of participating in building a world that respects and serves all of creation.

 

 

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Reopening to New Life: A Birthday Letter from the Heart

April 25, 2020

My Dear Danny,

Two years ago, I was snuggled into your guest bed with Jerry and Omar, your furry brothers, about to turn off the light and go to sleep when I got word that your birth was nearing. I quickly got dressed and hurried to the dreary maternity waiting room, unrolled my mother’s tea napkin that held my traveling altar: my tiny well-loved doll, the acorn baby Ann gave me and a rose crystal heart … and continued to wait.

I’d spent hours in that waiting room over the previous few days, but the first time I actually heard the soft bells was when they heralded your birth. Within a few minutes after the bells rang, the nurse came out to get me. When I walked into the room where your mother had worked so valiantly in your birthing, you were snugged on your daddy’s bare chest—my firstborn holding his firstborn. Soon it was my turn to cradle you, and my heart broke open as it had years before when I first held my newborn children.

Today you turn two years old. After playing with you two days a week for most of your life, Howard and I haven’t been physically with you for 6 weeks. The COVID-19 pandemic hit, and love asked us all to stay physically apart to keep its spread to a minimum. We’ve had some lovely “visits” electronically. Howard and I have made a few videos for you, read to you through the screen, dropped off little gifts for Easter. We’ve watched you jump off your couch, play with your truck collection, run around the “track” in your home, dig in the sandbox and snuggle with your mom and dad. You’ve grown and learned so many new things since we were last together.

Funny how we can be so far apart physically and yet still feel the strength of our connection and presence with each other.

I’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing over these weeks, looking back at pictures, talking with Howard about some of the fun and cute things you’ve done with us. Remembering the sweep of these last two years with you makes my heart dance.

I’ve also been thinking, yet again, about the world I want for you. In the span of these few weeks, our world has stopped in a way I never imagined was possible. This unasked for spread of one of nature’s viruses has brought separation, illness, death and a massive loss of jobs. The extent of that is reported daily in the newspapers and is felt personally, acutely, by millions. It’s heartbreaking.

Yet, in the midst of that, something else is afoot. The air and water quality have improved worldwide. Nature is healing herself rather quickly. Our deeply unjust, inequitable and broken systems have been stopped in their tracks.

Globally, we have been shaken to the core.

There is speculation about when we can return to “normal.”

I hope the answer to that is never.

Never for you. For your generation all around the world. For your parents’ millennial generation. For us all. My prayer is that we have the courage and vision to push aside the rubble of top-heavy social and economic “welfare” for “human” corporations1 and the debris of greed of money and power by increasingly few individuals who own more than many nations. Once that wreckage has been cleared, together we can build a world where you, Danny, and all of us can thrive. A world that supports all of creation to blossom together.

Danny, I know you LOVE scooping up rubble with your digger, dropping it into your dump truck as you focus on important construction work! You can lead the way.

In this time of abrupt slow down, we have a chance to become what was penned so long ago:

We hold these truths to be self-evident,

that all men [and women, girls and boys] are created equal,

that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,

that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I know you are more interested in exploring and playing than in all of these words. Your focus is rightly on running, hiding, digging, hugging, reading, exploring… That is the work that you are to do—your two-year-old unfettered expression of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is the responsibility of those of us who are adults now, especially those of us who are older and no longer raising little ones like you. I wrote Big Topics at Midnight because I longed for a more just and awake world for my grown children. Now as you are marking your second birthday on a planet stopped in her tracks, I want to again begin to find words to articulate the world I so long for your generation to grow up in.

Finding words to express that through my blog is my work of the next few months. But today I pause to CELEBRATE YOU, in all your wonderful uniqueness and in gratitude for all you’ve brought my grandmother’s heart. You are surrounded by a wide and powerful community of family and friends. My prayer for you is that you will continue to explore and express all the variety of feelings and senses and thoughts and longings that dance through that miraculous growing body of yours.

It is a wonderful world to explore. Happy Birthday.

May it also be a day of new birth for all of us who were born and live within “the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.”2

I love you, Gammie

  1. Legally, corporations have many of the same rights as a flesh and blood human person
  2. From the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer
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The Gospel According to Wild Women: Advent

This is the holiday season—Hanukkah, Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa—many different celebrations for many different folks. For me, this season is Advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas; a perfect time to proclaim the story of this season that has settled in my heart and bones.

This may be the season where Christmas songs jangle along at every store, but it is more rightly the season of a bold and wild woman.

Mary was no passive teenager.  She listened to the outrageous invitation by an angel, who then waited with bated breath for her answer.

She considered carefully the request to bear the infant Jesus, one knit of a pure union of the flesh and blood of a human and the breath and spark of the Spirit of God. Divine alchemy for all of creation.

Mary decided she was willing to break laws and protocol, risking shame and banishment.  Her YES took the courage of a powerful and grounded young woman, wise and courageous beyond her years.

Mary was grateful that the Angel sent her to a woman who could understand the magnitude of the earthquake that shook her life.  Someone else who recently had her own life turned upside down by an untimely pregnancy; Cousin Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, pregnant in her advanced years, knew and understood.  As soon as Mary arrived in her home, without saying a word, Elizabeth and the baby in her womb leaped with joy.

Mary, with the divine Word in her belly, preached the Good News.  Her words proclaimed a new way of ordering life on earth, a way that would bring a depth of vitality for everyone. But to those who were invested in things staying the same, those who wanted to hold on to their own power, her words would be heard as bad news.

These were dangerous words.  Traitorous words.  Mary, filled with rejoicing, breaks into her prophetic song:

God has shown strength;
scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
Bringing down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifting up the lowly;
filling the hungry with good things,
and sending the rich away empty. (Luke 1:51-53)

Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months before she returned to Joseph, a man also visited by angels and bold enough to say YES.  Tongues wagged around town at this scandalous couple.

Thirty-three years ago, I walked through advent with a pregnant belly, awaiting the birth of my daughter. She was filled to the brim with Spirit, one so fresh from heaven. At the same time, her unique body, just right for this world, was being knitted, one cell at a time safe under my heart.

While my belly stretched, she was preparing for her birth into this world that would be her home. An Earth so beautiful and varied beyond imagining: Land and sea. Light and dark. Insects and elephants. Neighbors nearby and around the globe.

I was excited to experience life alongside her curious eyes.

But more was required of me, mother of this child.

I knew that her body would be seen through the eyes of a culture that had expectations and assigned relative “value” based on details of her precious body – including the color of her skin and her gender. From my own experience, I also knew that shards of this crazy cultural injustice would weasel their way into her bones, tempting her to believe the lies.

Mary and her child Jesus of so long ago, pointed the way. Rejoice. Dance in God’s mercy. Love your neighbor. As yourself. Always remember the presence of God in our world and in each other. Live in the Kingdom of God, now, right here on earth as one part of the family of creation.

Advent: the season of wild women willing to take bold risks to carry the seeds of New Life.

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National Shadow and Me

One minute I’m holding my grandson, delighted by his giggles, and the next minute I find myself nauseated by the latest morsel of news. I love this country and delight in the daily pleasures and interactions of my life here. So much is beautiful. And yet, a dark and sinister shadow is also part of our national truth.

I love this planet and country too much to continue to remain silent. It’s not enough to roll my eyes and walk away from behavior that I know is disrespectful or unjust. Spewing out my righteous indignation in anger might feel good for a moment, but that rarely results in individual or structural root-level change.

My love requires me to fully step into my responsibility as a human being and a citizen, and to look directly into the nation’s shadow, which also means looking directly into the ways this shadow has landed in me.

Let’s start at the beginning. Our nation’s founding supported the buying, selling and brutal slave labor of Black skinned people, the theft of Native People’s land through forced migration and genocide, and the constricting of a woman’s place to wifely domestic duties. The only people considered citizens, and thus to have rights, were white men wealthy enough to own land.

Over the centuries, we have made progress addressing racism and sexism, but the deeply buried shards of domination remain. “Progress” has primarily involved inviting women and people of color into the status quo, requiring them to fit inside the old, patriarchal system.

That which remains unexamined in the shadows is dangerous.

In 1886, eighteen years after the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was enacted to address citizenship rights and equal protection of the law for newly freed slaves, this amendment was twisted to give those rights and protections to corporations. Jim Crow and a whole system of blatant racial discrimination replaced slavery for Blacks while full citizenship was granted to corporations. Our entrenched system of hierarchical power-over has a long history.

As I considered what else I should include on this page, I sifted through my long list of ways the United States has led through domination: Pollution and overuse of natural resources? The widening wealth gap? Unequal pay? Encouraging immigration for cheap labor—for example, building railroads (Chinese), agricultural labor (Mexican)—while simultaneously demonizing or incarcerating those who came here to work? The rising chaos and incivility in Washington DC? Sexual assault and ignoring women’s accounts?

A daunting list. I set down my pen and called my friend Alease.

Alease recounted a phone call she’d received from another friend that morning. Her friend pulled into her faculty parking spot at University of California and was immediately surrounded by two police cars, lights flashing. One of the three policemen accused her of illegally talking on the phone while driving (she was using her car’s Bluetooth until she’d stopped and turned off the car). If I was stopped by police, my heart would pound and my (white) hands would shake, afraid they might give me a ticket. But this professor’s skin was black, and she knew that far too many Black people pulled over for inconsequential infractions (or no infractions) were killed by police. I shuddered at the stark difference between our fears, based solely on the color of our skin.

That which remains unexamined in the shadows is dangerous.

I got off the phone with Alease and checked Facebook before preparing dinner. A good friend recounted her terror upon learning that a woman was kidnapped and raped nearby. She wrote that it brought back flashes of “when my own body was violated…and the shame so thick around that memory.” My heart pounded as I read her words. The fear of rape weaves its way into my daily decisions: Do I leave a window open on a hot night? Should I risk walking to a neighborhood gym before dawn? Did I remember to lock my car doors?

That which remains unexamined in the shadow is dangerous, at least partly because the toxic shards of US domination values are stuck deeply within us. Some are conscious, but more often they are hidden in our inner shadows, unseen but ready to pounce when feelings of fear or vulnerability arise.

Today. Not just in the past.

For white skinned people like me (or for men with violence against women), it is a grave error to blithely assume that these events are isolated occurrences, not part of a systemic problem.

In the journey toward justice we must always begin by looking inward: finding the shards of domination that are caught in each of us, and root them out. But we can’t stop there. Transformation requires that we live in alignment with our values right in the middle of this culture that is still riddled with injustice. Luckily, we don’t have to do this alone or unequipped. This is a spiritual journey we can walk together, armed with transformative practices.

There isn’t enough space here to write about these practices that have powerfully supported transformation personally as well as within family, community, national and our global family.

For more information about these check out my newly expanded website. Together, in little and big ways, we can each participate in building the world we want for all children and grandchildren.

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A 35-Year Legacy of Black Women’s Leadership

“We cannot leave ourselves out of the dynamic process of creating and sustaining change; we are and must recognize ourselves as a part of what is and must be changed. When we do, we can take responsibility and model a new way to foster tolerance, promote peace, and work toward social and economic justice.”

Lillie Pearl Allen

Sixteen years ago at my first Be Present Conference, I caught a glimpse of this connection between myself and the peace and justice that made my heart sing. Below is a reposting of a Be Present Blog, the first in a series highlighting the 35 year history of the Black Women who laid the foundation for Be Present, Inc., beginning at the beginning, with Lillie Pearl Allen:

 “My community activism emerged over 40 years ago from my own history and experiences. I was searching for the answers to the following questions: “How do I get to know the fullness of who I am? Not just someone’s best friend, caring mother or daughter of migrant farm workers. How do I thrive in this world and not just survive while living in a culture where people make assumptions about who I am based on my race, my gender, my class?

I understood that my personal well being is united to a collective commitment to dismantle all forms of oppression. I wanted to live beyond the constrictions of oppression and I wanted other people to live in that way, too. I needed to have relationships with other Black people that were not based on our hurt, but celebrated all of who we were. And I wanted to build partnerships with White people that were not based on distrust or guilt, but emerged from our conscious understanding and true action. Today I am motivated by the knowing that it is possible to live in the present moment without barrier or hesitation from any past or present oppression; and that collective action that truly reflects the diversity of our communities is possible.

My enduring passion and work is about connecting, growing and learning together. I like working with people committed to building authentic relationships and sharing our collective knowledge so that we may accelerate the shift for social justice. I enjoy hearing and sharing experiences about our lives and initiatives, challenges and opportunities; and developing partnerships to move forward on the identified strategies and actions – all in the context of love and wisdom. My life is testimony to the fact that change is possible and that it’s sustainable. As President Obama has stated, ‘Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.’

The social justice sector is on the verge of major change. We are in the midst of a significant transfer of leadership from one generation to another. Organizations striving to increase their effectiveness are searching for organizational practices on how to better partner with each other, as well as to develop sustainable solutions and alliances where cooperation and equity thrive. Shifting the political agenda and expanding the scope of social justice to be more participatory rests on how authentically we organize and work together across issues and constituencies. Building power depends on our collective abilities to unite a multitude of sectors and bring together coalitions, networks, and progressive funders at the local, state, and national levels.

I believe that creating partnerships that reflect values of mutual respect, trust, and authentic partnership is not only the right thing to do, it is critical for a stronger and more effective social justice movement. In the 35+ years that I have been doing this work, I have seen how the issues of race, gender, class, and power are woven through the fabric of our personal relationships, workplaces, organizations, and communities, and continue to have a critical impact on people’s lives. I believe that in order to create peace and justice for all people, it is all our responsibility to critically examine the impact of these interconnected issues. It is from this understanding that we can build better leadership models and create healthier systems that sustain us. We cannot leave ourselves out of the dynamic process of creating and sustaining change; we are and must recognize ourselves as a part of what is and must be changed. When we do, we can take responsibility and model a new way to foster tolerance, promote peace, and work toward social and economic justice.

The transformative leadership model that I created and has been used throughout the country – the Be Present Empowerment Model® – teaches how to create authentic and honest connection between individuals, between individuals and their organization, and between organizations and their coalition partners. It provides a comprehensive and expansive orientation to leadership development, one that is grounded in social justice principles and values. Through this work people are better able to see the connections between self-transformation and social transformation. As a result they become more effective in thinking creatively, collaborating with others, dealing positively with challenging issues, and creating lasting partnerships.”

-Thirty-five years ago, in 1983, Lillie Pearl Allen led the Black & Female: What is the Reality workshop at the first Black Women’s Health Conference. Over a thousand Black women and girls participated in this workshop. This gathering marked the beginning of a social movement, created a legacy of leadership for justice that is inclusive of all people, and laid the foundation for the 1992 incorporation of Be Present, Inc.  

 Be Present is in the 5th year of our Black & Female Leadership Initiative that addresses both the lack and, too often, distortion of the voices and visibility of Black women’s leadership in the literature, historical record and dialogue on social justice movement-building. It also highlights the process as well as the achievements of using a collective leadership approach in creating a diverse national network of activists successfully moving social justice agendas in the United States.

My husband Howard and I will be part of the diverse group of Be Present leaders at the National Black & Female Leadership Conference, open to everyone, and held June 21-24 in Dahlonega, GA. This Conference will highlight Black Women’s leadership in building inclusive movements for social justice–movements that include everyone. If you are interested in joining us in June, check out the link to the registration form. Our commitment to inclusion is sustained by all of us working together to raise the funds to ensure access to money is not a barrier to participation. I invite you to join me in making a donation to the Conference Scholarship fund.

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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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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.