“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.
