Reading Heather Cox Richardson on America’s ignoble new philosophy on international “diplomacy” — not! Read her every day, but please read this today to understand my comments below.
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Growing up during the Cold War, watching Congress and the Courts do their jobs, even when it meant accepting we could not tolerate the crimes of President Nixon, weeping when I saw the Berlin Wall fall, weeping again when I saw the first Black President, Barack Obama, take his sacred oath of office, knowing America to be at least in her best moments, a defender of others against tyranny and international criminals, a believer in justice for ALL and truth and freedom for ALL — I never in a million years would have believed what has happened and is happening in my country today, nor that any American, let alone so-called “Christian-Nationalist” American, would tolerate this for a minute after realizing what it is. We are literally letting an international law-breaking half-wit lead us. Seriously? Why? Because the elite oligarchy of business and political uber-greedy are happy with the complete lack of truth and justice and law and order and the chaos based on stupidity and false “doctrine”, and they are gaining more money — more money than any one would ever use in a million years. America has been inching toward this, yes, but this is an avalanche. Have we been perfect — even always good? No, of course not. But this? No. We have never been this. To live in a nation that sends its mockery of an army against its own civilians but will not send its well-funded and exceptional military resources to aid another democracy — we are no longer being run by Americans in our federal government; we are being run by the shysters, the Mob, and the Anti-Christs of this world. We are sending our greedy incompetents or our literally pardoned felons of international crimes to represent us in the world. Shame and sorrow. We can no longer claim to be that “shining city on a hill” when our government has decided to throw it all on the garbage heap to enhance their own warped greed and power-hungry narcissism. May Ukraine and Europe find the strength and will to fight evil. May small Americans use their voices and actions to stand up for what the dream of America is meant to be at its best. May we who believe Jesus had something to say about this be the compassionate political activist that He was. And shame on America. Perhaps through shame, we may still find our way forward to be that “one Nation under God” and that “shining city on a hill”. Meanwhile — My heart weeps for us all.
So, today my country makes history, yet again. This time, the history making event, is one of huge proportions, of criminality, of power abused, and the abuse of power revealed and charged.
Today, the purpose of the American judicial system is revealed for what it was, at its best, meant to achieve. No one is privileged under the rule of law, which is meant to be the same for every citizen of a democratic nation. It has rarely, rarely, rarely been in this country, or any country, but today it is. Today, my nation also takes seriously, and lets every citizen know, that espionage, is still a “thing”, and it is dangerous and it is punishable by the highest courts in the nation. There have been many who escape our laws, because they have enough money to do so. Today, at least for a while, we can believe that whether you are white or black, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, born here or born elsewhere and melded into the American quilt of
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore”; no matter what your last name is or how many buildings you may have it emblazoned on or spray painted on; that we, the American people, will assume you are innocent, but if you are proved guilty, you will be brought to justice, because we, the American people, deserve justice for all.
The last time I felt the kind of “we are making history” feeling, I have today, was when I got my first Covid shot, in a big tented parking lot at Cal Poly University, where nurses from all over the United States had been flown to various other locations, put up in hotels, away from their families, but dedicated to the cause of helping us fight the first world pandemic since the early 20th Century. Masked, and still afraid after months of fear, I felt so very brave. I felt that I was connected to the many Americans, not only getting a vaccine shot today to keep themselves and others safe and alive, but to the many Americans who had lived through rations during World Wars, who had fought for a cause other than oil or land, but for human rights and to defeat those nations who would abuse their power by making racism or greed an excuse for the horrors of war. I felt that as the smallest of all citizens in this nation, I was, by doing my part, a part of the Whole. I was making history.
And the time before that, when I, with very little hope that it could happen, experienced the pure elation of seeing history in the making, a night when I spontaneously wept with the joy of disbelief, was the night I gathered with my family, around our television set, and watched history being made with the announcement that my nation now had a Black President. I am not the one who has the right to enumerate my country’s sad history of racially motivated wrongs, (beginning with the genocide of First Nation peoples), but in this case, more specifically the enslavement and horrors inflicted upon African, i.e. Black slaves, and I can not speak to the heart-wrenching stories I read daily of the American racism that leads to the abuse of power, biased judicial rulings and imprisonments, and insane worship of an old document’s amendment to make excuses for the greed that rules our gun laws in this nation, of which Black citizens are most at risk for being the victims of. But I can speak to the moment, on November 4, 2008, when my four children, my husband and I, heard the most amazing thing, I never thought I would hear: The next President of The United States is Barack Obama. And I, as the most insignificant little person, in what was meant to be, “One Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”; I had one little vote to cast, and with that vote, I was part of an historical moment, that had never happened before.
Sometimes, the moment of making history in the world, is clouded and unseen. We may never have the privilege of knowing that what is happening today in our country, will have ramifications for good or evil, for better or worse. History is mostly hindsight, and it will be for others to write, as Charles Dickens once famously wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
There are many days, to quote another profound writer, I fear I am but one little ant, “living a quiet life of desperation”, and that we Americans will never turn the corner of helping our nation return to its once lofty goals, or that, God help us (literally) we humans will never manage to save our gasping for air, poor Mother Earth, or that people of good conscience will never humble themselves to understand what their God desires for them and all, “The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love” (Psalm 33:5). But today, there is, in the midst of so much darkness, light; in the midst of so much injustice, equality; in the midst of so much fear, hope. And I feel hope for my nation, and for all of us who foolishly believe that we need something we do not have when what we have is all we need — because we have each other, and we have the freedom, and the right, and the oh, so very important necessity to say:
“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary…. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…..He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good……And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” (from The Declaration of Independence, 1776)
History being made doesn’t always feel good. It certainly has never been, nor should it be, easy. But then, most good things, most right things, most important things, and all sacred things and sacred trusts, have never come easy, nor should they. For we humans are meant to understand that not only are we privileged with godlike rights on this Earth, but we are tasked with God-like responsibilities. We are created to be our best when we are creative, not destructive; when we are truthful, not deceptive; when we are united, not divided; when we are just, not unjust; and when we give up our prejudices, our covetousness, our fears, and our hatred, for the freedom of treating others, as we would require and wish all to be treated.
Today, is that paradigm of an historical moment that is both sad and happy, both shocking and reassuring, both frightening and hopeful. Today, I am a part of history. You are a part of history. And of course, once we realize we are alive to see history being made, all there is really left for us to do is ask ourselves, “What will we who are privileged to be alive today, leave for our children?” For history is never made to make a name for those alive in it, for all names are eventually forgotten in the tides of time and men. History-making is to make a future for the children, and the grandchildren, and the beautiful, beautiful planet on which we are privileged to come from and return to. For “from dust we are made, and to dust we will return.” But today, a little speck of history’s dust has landed upon my shoulders, and I shall hold it carefully, as a sacred trust of hope, that sometimes, the very present moment can assure us, that “it is well and all will be well.”
Pictures and a Story on The Way to Jury Duty in L.A.
by Jane Tawel
June 8, 2022
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I walked this route from Union Station, Downtown Los Angeles each morning to the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center. One morning I saw a thin, rather frantic young woman who had parked her shopping cart of belongings against the railings that are the only things protecting walkers from falling into the mass of cars on the freeway. She had a small bucket of red paint and she was painting something on the sidewalk. The next morning I found she had painted a love letter to some one named Amgtriky. I wondered what she had written but then covered over with a big red square. “I Love you Amgtriky you are my world.” I hope Amgtriky got the message and hope the frantic young woman gets the love she craves enough to risk arrest for defacing public property. Aren’t we all, in one way or another, trying to get our message out to the ones we call “our world”? Aren’t we all just living with our big red letters sloppily painted wherever we go in our hope that someone will answer back that we too are someone’s world?
Los Angeles
Taking the metro about an hour each morning and evening was an experience in itself. Union Station is a truly beautiful architectural gem, both inside and out.
Union Station L.A.
One morning I was going to stop at the restroom in Union Station before making my fifteen minute walk to the courthouse. The restroom was unavailable and there were about five or six cops and a couple station security guards swarming around the entrance to the women’s room. I never knew why but I found the paradox of what is shown in this picture quite a succinct comment on modern life. Outside the restroom is a “Lactation Pod” next to someone’s entire earthly belongings, carried around on a makeshift cart because they have no home. I wondered since the lactation pod didn’t seem to be all that practical or often used, if maybe we could give all the lactation pods to all the people who don’t have a home? We could call them “Humanity Matters Pods”.
Lactation Pod and Belongings, Union Station, L.A.
At lunch I would, for a brief hour, escape the horrible weight of being a judge of someone else’s life and a carrier of a lot of people’s pain, and I would eat my little cheese sandwich and apple in this park that sits in the middle of all the justice halls that a big city like Los Angeles needs. This playground was unavailable and yellow-taped off. I don’t know why but there weren’t many children around at that time of day anyway. I found myself singing to myself Cat Steven’s metaphoric and prescient tune, “Where Do the Children Play”.
City Hall Park, Los Angeles
During my lunch hour, the thing that always restored my joy was a group of men who played a pick-up soccer game in the park. They were also enjoying freedom from whatever jobs or lack of jobs they might have had to go back to. I imagined some of them may have been the police or public defenders or D.A.s who had a bit of anonymity and a bit of fun in otherwise hard, stressful days. I had a lot of respect for not just the people who make our American legal system still what has to be one of the best things about America and our wanna-be democracy, but for all the people I met in Los Angeles. I got lost my first day and I was a bit over-the-top freaked out about it and yet so many people would stop on the street and help me reorient or calm down or figure out where I needed to go (I got lost quite a few times). Strangers can be so very kind, even in a big city like L.A. and it made me hopeful to know that as Anne Frank said, “people are really good at heart” — or they want to be, if we maybe just let ourselves ask for help. It gave me such hope for the human race, that even though I didn’t get to see children playing in the park because the playground was shut down, I got to see grown men playing in the park each day, and as long as grown adults can still play, maybe we can all somehow stop all this ridiculous violence and sorrow.
City Hall Park with Soccer Game in distance, L.A.
Every evening, on the way to the metro at Union Station, I walked past homeless encampments. Every unhoused person I talked to was very nice, although there were a couple of them now and then who had just “lost it” and I guess I would be crazy loco if no one loved me enough, here in the richest nation on earth, to at least give me a roof over my head and maybe some meds I might need and some daily bread, I mean, food. I often saw the saints of the world out on the streets, like the mobile shower people who park their vans near the encampments so the homeless can take a shower and feel at least a little more human. Each day the metro took me past the Homeboys Industry Home and I saw a lot of care given to homeless folks by strangers and city cops and security guards. I think it’s time we took all the guns and bombs and weapons in the world (or at least in our nation) and turned them into homes.
L.A. Homeless Encampment overlooking the freewayL.A. Un-Housed People
Going downtown by myself every day and serving on a jury, felt like a very brave thing for little old, stuck in the mud me to do because I am pretty well sunk-in to my careful little, often anxious but small risk suburban life. I ended up feeling both much older and quite a bit younger and also hopeful that my life wasn’t really all that set yet, and I could still live a more helpful, kind, — adventurous — and useful,caring life. I realized it is now time to find a practical way to give more to people who need another pair of hands to help them out. I have been volunteering from a distance, literally during the Covid pandemic years, but always a bit distanced metaphorically in how I choose to care for the stranger, the orphan, the homeless, the prisoner,or the hurting. But during my two weeks of Jury Duty I had been forced to be “present”. Each morning when the court clerk would call my number and I answered “present”, was like a vision of a future where the Great Judge of All calls the roll call. I want to start waking up each day, and be able to say, “I’m present. I’m ready. What is it that The Universal Good would have me, little old me, do for someone else today?” Because you know what — most of the good that gets done in this world is being done by “little old me’s”. And seeing all the “little old me’s” of Los Angeles made me realize that if anyone is looking for Christ, or looking for Jesus to return, I can tell them where to find him — he is in the City of Los Angeles, in the homeless camps and prisons and court houses and parks and sidewalks. All we have to do is look for Christ and we will find that Christ is here because Christ is waiting to be us.
And I realized, although I didn’t want to do it, that Jury Duty had been a sobering, emotionally and spiritually exhausting gift from God. After seeing the world that lets a young man join a gang because he doesn’t have any real family to help him grow up strong and valued and loved, or a world where someone gets shot by a gun while going to the grocery because we have become so greedy and stupid that we worship guns instead of life, or a world that walks past people without homes while other people fly into space on their chump-change, or a world that has been so very, very gracious to me, such a lucky world for me to be born and raised and survive in, while other people get the short end of the whole deal, after seeing a world where bad decisions became a life of no return, and good decisions can get you in trouble or killed, and where everyone is seeking the same things but some people just have the odds stacked against them and no one is around to help them find their way–help them find The Way; in world where every one is throwing their red paint around hoping that someone believes in them and loves them enough to say, “You are my world” — in this time and place that I happen to find myself in, I realized I need some skin in the game. Because this game? This game of life can’t be played from the sidelines.
Every day I got to come home to a home and a family that loves me and feels loved and where I have more than enough food and clothes and places to keep my stuff. I got to come home to a garden, and not just any garden, but a garden my daughter had made for me to enjoy. I got to come home to roses and I could avoid the thorns or get a band aide if I pricked my finger on a thorn. I thought about the defendant in the trial who would have many years where he would never see a garden, let alone tend one. I thought about the families of the victims who would never have their son or daughter make them something beautiful, like my daughter made my garden for me. I thought about the homeless folks who didn’t have any where but a cold or hot sidewalk to lay their heads at night. I thought about the judges and detectives and cops and prosecutors and defense attorneys and courthouse guards who every day go back into the world hoping for justice and also, I hope, praying not to get so jaded or worn down that they give up caring. And after my journey in the City of Los Angeles, I am still asking to know a better answer to the question, “How Shall I Then Live?”
From the attached, well worth reading, short article by Elizabeth Bruenig: “In just societies, these debts do not exist. But in our society, charity must stand in for justice so long as the latter is in short supply.”
Here is hoping our most recent sobering reality-checks will help us strive strongly and purposefully for a more just society and also for a more charitable worldview no matter one’s religious leanings, perhaps, sadly, despite one’s religious leanings. There are many ways to do this, including the RIP Medical Debt charity this article is about. I also recommend The Bail Project, Fair Immigration Reform Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, and World Central Kitchen.
Yesterday, I read a great, helpful, and meaningful essay that was about Biden’s comments on blacks voting in the upcoming election, but the comment is very relevant for all of us who are not waking up black in America today. Something we need to take in as we speak and if we speak. And it was this: “The message may be right, but we are not the right messenger”.
You may philosophically be correct when you insist that “all lives matter”, but if you are just coming to that conclusion as a response, a rebuttal, or a pass card for your inaction or complacency, as a bait and switch to the idea that “black lives matter”, then you haven’t earned the right. You are changing the conversation because you feel uncomfortable with the reality.
If you have been out there in the trenches working for justice for people of color, acting to make changes in institutionalized racism, voting against people who are incapable of empathy or of upholding the values of the American Dream for all, or if you are truly living a life of servant-hood and service for people who have never had your advantages, then go for it. Speak away about “all lives”. If not, perhaps it is better to listen first to the experts and to ask yourself: Do I truly believe enough to take real action? Do I honestly believe that black people matter enough to stand up and stand with them? Have I tried to find out about the reasons black people feel the way they do? Do I believe they have a right to be angry, to be tired after years of fearfulness and racist policies and treatment, to be shocked at the violence allowed against them again and again and again, to be sorrowful, to feel helpless? Do I care enough to remember the times I have felt that way because of something in my own life, and take in the deep knowledge, that if I were black I would feel that way every day, year after year, century after century — what would THAT be like — to never believe my life mattered as much as someone else’s because I had black skin? Do I believe in the words of Jesus and the echoing message of John F. Kennedy that “to whom much is given, much is required”?
I have spent a lifetime in the lap of white privilege, so of course I have never had to say people my color matter. That is already a given in this country. It shouldn’t be so difficult for us to see that it has never been and still is not a given for people of color in America. I feel my own need to stand with, stand for not just “my black friends” but for all Black Americans, at this time and then to shut up and listen to their pain and to call out people for their acceptance of white privilege, and to call out racism, and to start finding real ways for me to get off my old white duff and DO SOMETHING.
I will not change the conversation by saying “all lives matter” because I live in a country that has never believed that is true. I will do my best to use my voice for the right fights at the right time. And as in any thing, I will listen to the experts before I chime in. I am so grateful that I have experts who are willing to speak truth to me and who know what they are talking about, because they have studied– day after day, taken life after taken life, fear and sorrow after more fears and sorrows — lessons learned the hard way in the hard halls of experience while being black in this world.
Are you listening to the experts on the black experience in America today? I pray to the God of all of us, that I will continue to speak, but that more importantly I will act for better justice and equality for black people. period. full stop. –in this, my nation, whose owing is way past due. #blacklivesmatter
Left Speechless but Speaking Out by a Humbled White Person
By Jane Tawel
June 1, 2020
George Floyd, 2020
And so it is, as we see that black lives still don’t matter to my people, the white people; that social justice still does not matter to my people, the people in power; that we are all for equality as long as my people don’t have to give-up any thing to make America a more equal playing field for people; and so it is we see that Langston Hughes was right all those years ago:
“What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?”
“Harlem” by Langston Hughes (1951)
(FILE – Protesters demonstrate against the death of George Floyd, a black man who was in police custody in Minneapolis, Friday, May 29, 2020, in New York. The massive protests sweeping across U.S. cities follow the police killing of a black man in Minnesota. AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
We see that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ever so right, was so right, when he wrote:
Let me say as I’ve always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. … But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. [Martin Luther King Jr., “The Other America”]
Years and years go by. . . deaths and deaths go by…. Are we really still surprised, when black people have to shout, still have to try to make themselves heard over our white complacency, still have to shock us as they cry out: “Can you hear me now?!”
We have failed to hear that we have not met our promises. People say, “oh but two wrongs don’t make a right”. But the question for me, a white woman grown up in America all these years, isn’t about being right – it is about being righteous. Righteous indignation is all very well for a white person, but righteous action is what is needed now. My intellectual assent to what black people are feeling, or doing is all very well, but that doesn’t help them two bits worth if I do not act on that assent. As it is said, “faith without works is dead”.
How dare we like spoiled children cry over our broken toys, more than we weep over the dead bodies of black boys and girls. How dare we demand self-righteously that the playground rules be changed to punish black people, and not ever demand just punishment for the white looters sitting in the halls of power, looting our democracy, looting our economy, looting our health system, looting the very foundations of any remaining morals this country might have tip-toed toward. The playground has never had fair rules for blacks and whites, because we white people hog all the swings and slides. How dare we continue to let people keep killing our citizens just because they are black and then complain that they don’t know how to control their anger. We dare because we are white. It is that horrifically simple.
And so I am left speechless in the flood of prophetic, condemning, heart-breaking, angry, fearful, mournful and sorrowful words and actions, protests and riots, preaching and venting — I read by and about and hear by and about black people in this nation. They are the stored words and feelings of centuries and they rise once more like a flood of tears that is never dammed.
And yet, though I do not have the right, I have not earned it as I should, I was not born black with so few other equal rights other than the right to speak up on this now –I must speak. I will not stay silent just because it is not “my fight”, for until we white people make it our fight, nothing will ever change, as we have seen. I will not condemn the reactions of people whose shoes I have never walked in. I have never been black. I can try my hardest to walk in those shoes, but it will be an exercise in moral thinking only, not moral action, unless I am truly walking with, standing up for, acting for people of color.
But I have spent a lifetime walking in a white person’s shoes, and so I get to decide what it means to “walk the walk and not just talk the talk”. I get to decide what I believe my own life is worth. Is my life merely worth the gathering of more stuff for me, the avoidance of conflicts that might be difficult, worth only the “niceness” of staying silent, and the ease of retiring into a life that was never all that hard to begin with? Or is my life worth more than that? Is my life worth believing that small people doing small things in the name of justice and truth and love, is the only real kind of life worth living?
So, I will speak when spoken to, and I will condemn and call out white people—my people–, no matter whether they are people I love or not. I will call-out white people who use racist language to defend their unease with black anger. I will call out those white folks who sit in judgement of others, while the giant planks in their own eyes prevent them from seeing their own sins against God and others. I will call out the white pastors and white Christians who claim their rights to practice their religion and earn their salaries are more important than the death tolls, the health, the salaries, the murders of black people in this country. I will call out those who listen but do not act. I will call myself out, first and foremost.
And I will not stay silent when I grope for the words I continue to try to say to my black fellow Americans, to my black brothers and sisters, and forgive me for using a phrase that has given so many white people like me a false sense of solidarity, to my black friends: Please forgive me. Please help me. Please.
I am so sorry. I am here and now accepting my own egregious culpability and the egregious culpability of my nation. I have tried to say many things during this time with words that will only remain pathetic if I don’t act. I speak as someone who has long believed in a world view that is only as good as it is acted upon. Unlike what you may be hearing from those who claim it today, the Judeo-Christian worldview is one of acting for love and truth and justice, against hatred and injustice and deceit. In fact, the only thing worth believing about God, Jesus or the Bible is that it doesn’t matter what we think, since in light of God we are all stupid. It doesn’t matter what we believe if it doesn’t change us. The only thing that matters is that we humans are meant – required –to act out goodness – goodness for the whole earth, the whole world, good hearts and minds that translate directly into wills of loving actions for the betterment of all, but especially for those who have less than we do. Period.
So here are some thoughts related to a few things my black connections, and other people of color, have been trying to help me with and that I have been struggling with. I don’t say that there are not white friends of mine who are also speaking out and speaking up and standing for, but they like I am, are the “roar of the crowd”; we are not the players who literally have skin in the game.
I have to start with my own worldview as shaped by American Christianity but which has drastically morphed in recent years, to something that I hope resembles more like what a real God, and real Savior, and a real Holy Book would teach. If you believe in the truths about justice in the Bible, and the idea of how the world is supposed to be as Jesus taught, as I do, then we know that accordingly, the nations are continually and will be in the future judged. Check out the books of Amos and Isaiah and the words of Jesus, if you don’t believe me. America will be judged, and I think God will start with what we — our whole nation of white, colonizing, slave owning, genocidal, violent and silent– people have done to people of color, indigenous peoples, and in this country, especially, to black people. It makes me tremble to hear people call this country “back to being” a Christian nation — it never was, never has been, never will be. Christianity is as Christianity DOES. As God has always called His people to do, we must decide “as for me and my house, who will I serve?” Will I serve the false idols of this nation, or serve the Lord? As all individuals from Abraham to Moses to Joshua to David to Jesus, we can choose to side with the power of a nation of kings who are not just, not truthful, not caring of the least of society, not “loving the whole world as God so loved the world”, a nation built on racism and greed. Or we can stand up and be counted. We can leave the Babylon of our false religion, we can stop wandering in the wilderness of our grumbling and greed, or we can leave the Promised Land to those willing to risk for it. But this is “religious” talk. What is happening in our country today is about humans, and humanity, no matter what your beliefs and disbeliefs.
The transgressions and consequences of racism and violence of our nation continues and I can not imagine if I were black and having to witness atrocity after atrocity. But until everyone who is not a person of color, accepts their own responsibility, either by commission or omission, we will not know how to change. I must accept my own shame — we carry the sins of our fathers and mothers generation after generation. I carry the stain of my own prejudices, spoken or “only” thought. I carry the heavy cost of my own laziness in not fighting for others, silence in the face of pure evil, and for not mourning with so many people of color who continue to mourn, and mourn, and mourn.
I have no substantial say in my nation except with my vote and my money, but I do have a say before my God and my brothers and sisters, and fellow humans, and even a voice that should be heard by those who do not believe as I do. Perhaps they cannot believe in my God because they have suffered at the hands of this white “christian” nation for so long – and that is on me.
I am angry, and I am sorrowful. And I am so, so sorry for everything. To claim it is not “my fault” may have philosophical credence but it has no bearing on what must change in my own heart, my own life, and in the hearts and lives of this nation.
And to those who would see me as a spiritual person, I repent. And I confess my own sins humbly with repentance, for my owns sins of both commission and omission, done and left undone. I honestly believe, that in this life and the next, God will weigh us all in the balance. I know I, too deserve to be judged, for my prejudices, my racism, my not being who God has called us to be, and I pray that I might understand the weight of these words: “Repent and be saved. I, Jesus, do not judge you — so go and sin no more.” And sinning no more in white America today, means that I am also being told: “Now get out there and do something about this as God has commanded you to do.”
To look at oneself in the mirror of truth is to face one’s own hypocrisy. Black people in this country are understandably incensed not only at the institutionalized racism of centuries, at police murders of black people, of white racists killing innocent black people and getting away with it in the courts meant to uphold our laws, but they are also angry at the blatant hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is the other monster head on the Hydra of white privilege, hatred, inequality, and greed that lives and is fed in America.
I am finding that hypocrisy is one of the most difficult things to call people out on. It makes sense, because hypocrisy is not only in the very foundations of our egos, but is a founding father of this nation and of the major religion we claim as “Christianity”. Our foolish lazy stance that we are merely called to a belief in the idea of democracy but not a fight for it, and our complacent belief that we need not do anything other than pray to earn God’s favor, has led us to jump off the cliff of reason and understanding, and into a raging tide-pool of hypocritical insanity-producing self-justification and destructive false mores and unsustainable values.
My heart breaks most of all at what people are doing and not doing in the name of God or Christ. A white pastor I know and whose church I once attended, posted the other day to all his followers that maybe we should stop speaking out on social media and stop speaking out in the streets, and try “listening”. Dear Lord, does this man not see his own complacent hypocrisy? Answer: no. The man has a cushy job in an all-white church with a house on a golf course (paid for in God-money) in a pretty much all white state – a place he fled to a few years back after Los Angeles got a bit too much for him. What black people is he “listening” to? I’ve tried calling him and others out before and they just delete or unfriend me. LOL! But isn’t it really the same for most of white people, we live in all white glass houses and throw rocks at the reactions of black people throwing rocks in riots?
Frankly, I’m always rather thankful when someone decides to “break up with me” over issues, because I feel I must be doing something, maybe even doing something right. Also, when someone unfriends or deletes me because they don’t like how angry I am, or my truth-telling, or my trying to discuss something I don’t agree with, then I get a little bit closer to understanding what is it to walk in the shoes of a person of color. To be shut down, to have no voice that is worth listening to, to be “listened to” and then ignored. I can pity these people who decide I am not worth it, who think God’s love is for being nice, that God’s command to love others as self, is for Sunday pew sitting, and not protest marching, tables turned over righteousness. I am aware that I am being “deleted”, being dismissed, being shunned or judged because I am in-your-face angry. I can almost imagine how angry I’d be if I were black. When white people get upset and angry with black people for demanding truth, demanding righteousness, demanding change in thinking and acting, for “calling out” and calling to account our wrongs, our deeply entrenched problems, our race issues, and our “Christian” failings, do we not see our own hypocrisy? Do black people also have prejudices, do they also make mistakes, do they also have to be accountable – why of course, but as a white woman, I take to heart these words from a person of color, Jesus Christ, who said “to whom much is given much will be required”. Mea culpa. Much is required of me and it’s time I started paying my dues, not just skimming off the top.
So we keep at it – all of us. Listening, yes, I am listening, but “faith without works is dead”. And listening without change and action is like watching a meal without eating it. It is like eating a communion wafer, the body of Christ given for us, without becoming the person of Christ, without acting out the life of Christ, suffering unto death for the love of others.
Ah, listening. Is the corona virus “listening” as more people of color die than white people do because of years of entrenched greed and racism and institutionalized inequality? Did the cops “listen” to any single one of the black men and women they have pulled over for being black, arrested for being black, killed for being black? Did they “listen” when they heard George Floyd cry, “I can’t breath”? Are our government leaders “listening”? Are schools and those who will educate the future “listening”? If they are truly listening, they will hear the thunder of the waves — the flood is here–and they –we– will all DO SOMETHING. It is not time to take cover, white folks, it is time to fix the broken dams.
Who do we admire, black and white folks alike? Gandhi? Mother Teresa? Abraham Lincoln? Martin Luther King, Jr.? Did they merely listen and then “pray” or “discuss” or “promise change for the future”? How about Jesus? Did Jesus just “listen”? Heck no, He led a one-man riot, he turned over the tables, folks. Jesus actually lived out his whole life as a single-handed protest against racism, injustice, and greed and pride. There was no one who understood better than The Son of God what having great power means and so he used it by laying it down for the least of the least in this world. There was no one who suffered more at the hands of conspiracy theories and racism and false religious leaders and persecution than the Son of God. How dare we treat him with such contempt today with our hypocrisy of inaction.
We have got to stop giving powerful or entitled people the “pass card” on their actions (or inactions) and for us white folks, we must stop giving people the green light on their hypocrisy. I confess humbly, that it is easy now at my age, with my color, in my place to speak out. Far too easy compared to George Floyd, a black man who cried, “I can’t breathe”. It’s kind of a relief that all the “Christian” places and the schools that I used to work for “let me go” for being a bit radical, a bit different, for speaking out, for questioning authority, for protesting. I’m not complaining as it has helped me understand prejudice more intimately. I don’t have to weigh any more who might read my posts and decide that students or other “Christians” “can’t handle” something or that hard truths are merely “opinions” that should be kept to oneself, or worst of all – that Jesus came to preach “why can’t we all just get along?”, which is the very last thing Jesus would have said.
What Jesus did say was, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.”Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” What Jesus did say was, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”
White folks, we keep “swallowing camels” and “straining out gnats”. And that is the truth we seem unable to “swallow”.
What students can’t handle – what young people today can not tolerate – what people who do not believe in the religions of today can not stomach, what people of color cannot swallow — is the broken world we are leaving them and the excuses we are still clinging to.
So, you are right, no matter how the words may come out, my friends, to call out and call to account each other and ourselves. We must all call-out folks, but let’s start with calling out our own folks. Let’s call out especially educators of young minds and hearts, especially white people, especially self-proclaimed religious people, especially powerful leaders, especially the “listeners” and not “doers”.
When there is a seismic earthquake going on in this country, a destruction of the very foundations of morality and democracy, then people can’t keep silent. We can’t just enjoy sharing recipes. It’s why it has all been a “recipe for disaster” — our complacent acceptance and our soul-destroying hypocrisy of those who are privileged to live white. The foundation is crumbling folks, don’t keep painting over the dirty walls.
I am calling out myself, because it has always been easier for me, a white woman, an American, a “Christian”, to speak out and speak up. It has always been easier for me to post and write things like this than it has been for a black person, a person of color, a Muslim or Jew, or an immigrant. I refuse to give myself a pass card, and don’t you either, my friend, “To those who have been given much, much will be required”.
Thank you to the black people, to all the people of color, in America today, throughout the world, in fact, who love me enough to speak out and to speak truth. Who care enough to believe that I can change. Thank you. Be brave, be safe.
Thank you to all the black and yes, white people who have been acting in ways seen and unseen for all these years to bring justice home to America in real ways. Be tireless in doing good, be hopeful.
I will continue to think and pray, listen and take in, and find ways to actually ACT, not just talk and write. I will keep listening and keep listening and never feel that it is my right as a white person to be tired of listening. I will mourn in anger and sorrow with black mothers and fathers and spouses and children and friends across this nation for the terrorism and tragedies that no one should have to endure time and time again.
And I will act, without knowing for certain whether it is the “right thing” to do, but with the hopeful assurance that it is the “righteous” thing to do.
~~ “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
(Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quoting the ancient prophet, Amos)
I am posting this every where I can think of in the hope that a lot of people will find energy to keep fighting other “bad things” in the world, even in this strange time of Corona Virus. I hope people of conscience will continue to be outraged about the racism and injustice that continue to spread like a deadly virus throughout America. I hope people will read much and do much. I hope when you read this, you will like I, try to find ways to stand up and stand with.
This is from my friend, Tamara Horton, about her thoughts today on being black in America:
“I am silent because I am always silenced by the violence that continues. The louder I get the more fear of violences creeps in. My fear for myself and my family is real. Everyday that my husband walks through the door unharmed is a blessing for real. Some in America do not walk around with this fear but I carry this burden it seems everywhere. Some want to argue this fear that I feel isn’t real. If they just took a moment to acknowledge the real, They too would tremble with fear. What’s interesting is they tell me it is me that they fear. I wonder why? A long time ago they made it clear that life, liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness was never for me for real (not here anyway). I pray that this fear would be shared for real. This burden is heavy and I can’t carry it myself on the real. Please stand with me and stand for me because I can’t stand the waves alone on the real.”
My friend, Tamara
I wrote the following in my own pathetic attempt to try to stand with and for Tamara and others who once again are carrying a burden they should not have to bear.
Dear Tamara, This is so tragically and beautifully said. I thank you for your willingness to open up your heart on this on a social platform. The fact that our country’s deeply embedded racism and treatment of people of color in this country as if they were still slaves, (or “illegal”) — still lesser because of their skin color is not just an historical shame as some would like to make it, but a current outrage and an eternal shame in the eyes of God.
I apologize for my own ignorant acceptance of my white privilege throughout my life. I can not imagine what it is like to see day after horribly unbelievable day, a person who is killed by a white man or a white policewoman or a gang of white thugs — killed just because of my skin color. I weep to think of you waiting at your home to see whether or not your husband will return home safely.
To see our prisons filled with people of color, while white privileged crooks go free at alarming rates; to see our country slide into an immoral pit where it is okay for white armed terrorists to protest the government’s desire to save their lives, while a black man who peacefully takes a knee in protest of the continued treatment of human beings is mocked and scorned; to deny black citizens the right to vote as if they were still slaves; and to think that we allow the institutionalized injustice against people of color to continue to effect the most basic rights of all human beings — no let’s say it — our immoral treatment and sanctioned racism — especially of black people — no let’s say it — especially of black men — this is our shame and if ever there were a reason for judgement against us, this is it.
I know, I know — I confess this is easy for me to say, which is why I say, thank you, Tamara Horton. Thank you to all those who are living with dignity and purpose, even while fearful of the cost of being black in America today. Thank you to all those who continue to speak out, even in discouragement, even in fear, for saying what costs you more every day than I will ever know. Please –Forgive me and continue to believe that you can help me do better.
Jane Tawel 