Category: Race

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What Cannot be Found at Home

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When we surround ourselves with people just like ourselves, our world shrinks. Our options narrow.

Though life felt manageable when the world was tucked into my hands, too much was left out. I wanted a more spacious home, a world that stretched around the globe and across the generations.

On that expansive journey, I stepped outside of the confines of my white-skinned neighborhood and the American Dream of climbing the traditional ladder of success. I heard stories from perspectives I’d never considered. I saw injustice and compassion that had always been present outside of my field of vision. I discovered that wealth didn’t have to be soulless, that diversity enriched my life and that abundance could take on many forms.

This is the topic I explored in my latest YouTube video, posted on my website.

How big would you like your world to be?

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Please, Not Another War

“I hope we don’t go to war because of this.”

After the horror of the Boston marathon bombing, this fear of national retaliation hovered in many conversations last week.

It is hard enough to sort through the feelings about the death and injuries, but to simultaneously juggle the fear of war is too much.

It was a violent week.  Boston. West, Texas with the Fertilizer Plant fire. Corinth, Mississippi with the poison tainted letters mailed to President Obama and Senator Roger Wicker. The defeat of the gun control laws. Fifty killed on the streets of Baghdad last Monday. Nuclear plans afoot in North Korea. Violent deaths in Darfur, Nigeria and Iraq.

Many people rushed in to help in all of these situations.  Lives were saved even as others were lost.  Miracles and gifts amid the horror.

It is hard for a person or nation to hold so much grief and shock.  It is easier to turn to scapegoating or retaliation, dividing the world into “us” and “them,” “good guys” and “bad guys.”  Another option is to stay with the painful feelings that tragedies stir up in us, sinking into the reality that life is never really safe.

Unfortunately, being with our raging fears and vulnerability as they move through and out of our minds and bodies is a skill that we in the West have been slow to practice.

On the other side of our fear of the inevitability of death and the possibility of terror, is the possibility of cherishing each new day and our relationships with others.  In the midst of joy and woe, transformation is possible.

I pray, along with my daughter, Laura, and many others: I hope we don’t go to war because of this.

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I am Not That Girl Anymore, Except that I Am

He loves me photoShe loves me, she loves me not. Or, in this case, I love me, I love me not and I love you, I love you not.

Pulling petals off a flower in an attempt to answer such big questions may have been fine for me as a child, but once I became an adult I needed something more nuanced. I wanted to learn the fine art of seeing clearly with double vision—peering inside my own skin while simultaneously stepping outside of my experience and looking around.

Compassion was needed. Penetrating vision was required. Looking back. Looking inside. Looking around.

I couldn’t avoid the past,  my culture’s or mine, no matter how far I tried to run form it. When I stopped, I discovered that it was not only possible to own where I’d been personally and where we’d been as culture and then go somewhere new—it was also essential.

This exploration of seeing near and seeing far away at the same time is the subject of my second YouTube posted on my website.  What has been your experience with “double vision”?

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I Couldn’t Do It

I couldn’t follow their advice.

Yet the question kept coming, “Who is the target audience for your book and for your book events and workshops?” I was told it would be primarily middle-aged women like me. Probably white like me too.

Something inside me yelled, “NO.” That narrowness of audience would perpetuate the very problem I was working so hard to address.

If story is to have the power to change the world, it needs to be shared across the lines that have divided us—gender, skin color, class, religion and age, to name a few. How else are we going to know about a diversity of experiences in the reality of our world today if we don’t share our story, and listen to others’ stories, as broadly as possible?

It might be true that women would be more comfortable reading my book or engaging in conversations about it. Rather than an intellectual and at-a-distance analysis, I dove into creativity, play, other voices and deeply personal sharing. I had no interest in throwing out intellect and logic—that is found in my work also—but I was passionate about the need for us all to use a wide variety of tools and ways of knowing. Our off-balance world was built on the foundation of white patriarchy,  and it needs diversity if we are to survive, much less thrive.

My intended audience for Big Topics at Midnight is human beings on the planet today. Likewise, I want to read and listen and dance with a wide diversity of other people’s stories. We each hold a piece of the truth that is needed for the great turning.

Today I came back to what I always knew—this book was written for people. My lack of a narrow target audience may not help me to sell Big Topics at Midnight, but it is true to my heart and mind, and that is the only rulebook I want to follow.

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Not at Memoir

I didn’t want to write a memoir! I tried every other form I could, yet each one fell short. Stubbornly, I kept searching for anything-but-memoir.

I knew that an academic exploration of the big topics couldn’t bring the level of transformation I was seeking. I also knew that some of my experiences would be needed to illustrate my point. But surely, I told myself, essays sprinkled with a few stories would be enough.

In the end, memoir was the only structure strong enough to carry all that is held in Big Topics at Midnight. Ironically, it wasn’t just one memoir—my ancestors showed up wanted their stories included too.

Memoir kept my exploration personal. No generalities or “people should” or finger pointing. I had to keep diving back into my own life to wake up again and again to what I saw and didn’t see, what belief I assumed was true that was, in fact, true and what wasn’t. Little details of memories gave huge information—for instance noticing that the fact we had called our black maid “Mary” and not “Mrs. Henderson” said volumes from the lips of a good little girl who ALWAYS called adults by Mr. or Mz. (Texas slang for Mrs. or Miss.)

The more I saw of my life and my assumptions, and the more feelings that got stirred up, the more I had to stop and do my own inner work to bring my actions in line with my heart and values. I had to change.

I had to learn new tools to do this demanding work. I am skilled in the methods affirmed by school and home—logic, rational thought and hard work. Those were helpful, but proved woefully inadequate for the task of waking up to the ways race, class and gender had become tangled and divisive in my own mind and in the world around me. And the old ways were definitely inadequate in helping me to access my intuitive wisdom, learning to listen to my body, the earth under my feet, creativity or Spirit. I had to re-remember the more feminine ways of knowing that I had long ago judged as weak and tried to shove to the side.

Sometimes the very things I fight are the most valuable. When will I ever learn?

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Breaking Silence: A Time to Break Silence #6

The Big Topics at Midnight book event that was held January 13 in Oakland was to be focused around the two big anniversaries of that month—the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., fifty years after he proclaimed, “I Have a Dream,” and the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Then death crashed in. Twelve hours before the book reading, in the dark of night, a phone call came to Lillie Allen that her twenty-nine-year-old grandson, John Kelley, Jr., had been hit by a car and killed. Just five months after the death of his father.

Wails from grandmothers and mothers, sisters and brothers, friends and cousins reverberated. And the silencing of a life lost left behind both a heavy weight and a deep hollowness.

Dreams made and dreams shattered. The future remains unknown.

I do believe in the power and grace of what can grow out of ashes. But now the ashes are before me. I am left with King’s death, John, Jr.’s death and the recent deaths of many around the country and world.

My time pondering Dr. King in early January took me back to my favorite, and most demanding, speech of his—Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. His words, first heard by me decades after he spoke, woke me up to connections I hadn’t seen before.

That would have been enough. But then I found out that he was killed exactly a year after this speech. The King family and attorney tried for years to get all of the evidence surrounding his death heard in court, but to no avail. The state clung to the confession and ignored the recanting of James Earl Ray.

In December 1999, the evidence surrounding the King assignation was finally brought to trial in Memphis, TN. Not in a criminal trial—that permission was never granted—but in a civil suit. All of the evidence was presented, recorded and heard in a courtroom for the first time. The jury rendered a unanimous verdict: King’s death was the result of a conspiracy involving local, state and regional US Governmental agencies, the Mafia and Lloyd Jowers.

The evidence is available on line and in William Pepper’s book An Act of State.

The silence around the evidence and that decision was deafening. Few heard the trial had even happened.

I understand why. The verdict was too horrifying to contemplate.

I didn’t want to do a whole series on this speech of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and especially not to end up here. But his speech showed up in me in January. The words flowed. I was obedient. It is, indeed, a time to wake up and break silence.

Sixth and final blog in a series honoring *Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break Silence, Delivered April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City.

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The Clarion Call: A Time to Break Silence #5

So here we are. Things crumbling around us. Life spinning so quickly we can’t really catch up. Fear on the rise.

It is time to go for a walk, take a nap and stop for a cup of tea. We’ll get nowhere running around full of fear. But King ends his demanding speech with a clarion call, saying,

“Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons [and daughters] of God, and our brothers [and sisters] wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? … The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.*

Often I do “prefer it otherwise.” But here I am. I was born for such a moment as this. So were you. The task is clear. It is time to “rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.” Struggle and beauty. Hard and easy. All of it at the same time.

The time is now. We each get to choose in this “crucial moment of human history.”

With my knees shaking I say “YES” and take the first step. And then the next one. The odds look good when we all walk together.

*Fifth in a series honoring *Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break Silence, Delivered April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City. Next in the series is titled “Breaking Silence.”

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Sometimes Confession is the Best Response: A Time to Break Silence #4

I remember 1967. I was in seventh grade at San Jacinto Junior High School. Phones were still attached to the wall and only answered by people who were home when they rang.  Computers were huge and owned by big businesses. Schools were segregated. Protests felt like things that happened worlds away or on TV.

While I was captivated by the task of putting together a chicken skeleton for my biology experiment, Dr. Martin Luther King preached at Riverside Church, saying,

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin … the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.1

These words are particularly chilling to me.  If King thought we were a “thing-oriented society” in 1967, what would he think today?  The enormity of the task of undergoing a “radical revolution of values” seems hopeless.

I carried my heavy heart into church last Sunday where I was reminded that Lent starts this week, beginning with Ash Wednesday.  Since my first trip to Haiti in 1996, the Ash Wednesday liturgy has had a special place in my heart.  It is the only time when the Episcopal community asks for forgiveness of our cultural sins—sins such as values honoring “machines and computers, profit motives and property rights” more than people.

“We confess to you, Lord …our self-indulgent appetites and ways … our exploitation of other people … [and] 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 … 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. …”2

Breaking the silence about the ashes of our failures as a society, gives me the first stirring of hope that something new is possible.  Even now.

1. Fourth in a series honoring *Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break Silence, HYPERLINK Delivered April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City. Next in the series is titled, “The Clarion Call.”

2. “Ash Wednesday liturgy, in The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Seabury Press), 267-268

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Race, Class and Violence: A Time to Break Silence #3

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a leader in the non-violent civil rights movement. The racial fractures in our society were deep and obvious to anyone of color and to whites who could step away from the cultural norms and see the injustice and violence at the hands of white individuals, society and institutions. It was a big enough topic for one fight.

But intertwined with the racial injustice was the deep poverty that disproportionately affected people of color. Money and opportunities didn’t flow through the generations as they had in my white neighborhoods.

As King and other leaders of the civil rights movement began to teach non-violence to people working for racial justice, they came face to face with the multiple layers of violence inherent in the escalating Vietnam War.

In addition to noting that his own government, not the “oppressed in the ghettos,” was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” King said, “We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”*

While no one I knew went to fight in Vietnam, many without access to college deferments were sent off to war. As happened in World War II, black young men were sent around the globe to fight for liberties that they hadn’t found at home. As a result of the Vietnam War, money that had begun to flow into poverty programs was abruptly diverted to cover the costs of battle.

King saw the interconnectedness between racism, poverty and war, and “was compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.” He broke a silence that the people in political power did not want him to shatter.  He complicated the civil rights fight. He spoke the truth.

I wish I’d listened in 1967. But I hear these words loud and clear today. Race, class and national violence are big topics that still cut through our world.

It is time to wake up.

The hour is near midnight.

Alert, I listen for guidance about my next step. What are you hearing?

*Third in a series honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break Silence, Delivered April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City. The next in the series is titled, “Sometimes Confession is the Best Response.”

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A Time to Break Silence: Series on A Time to Break Silence #1

Fifty years ago this month Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of his dream, including that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” We are closer now, though we are still a long way from fully embodying this dream.

In the month of the anniversary of King’s birthday and this often quoted speech my thoughts, however, go to a different oration. One that I rarely hear quoted. While the words of King’s dream stirred my imagination, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence* shook me awake and brought me to my feet, breathless.

I was in junior high school when King delivered this speech at Riverside Church in New York City in 1967. King was talking about the war that spanned my growing up years, one that is history now. But his words reverberate with a truth that is as relevant and crucial today as it was forty-six years ago. King saw and proclaimed the complex web that connected economics, race and war.

In gratitude to King for his courage to speak, an act that flowed out of love for his country and all of his fellow citizens, I will focus the next few blogs on A Time to Break Silence.

What else can I do?  It is, indeed, a time to break silence.

*Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break Silence, Delivered April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

First in a six part series. The next in the series is titled “I Must Speak.”