[blockquote type=”left”]”The religious institutions became comfort stations for scribes and publicans and pharisees. Far from curing the wound of racism, the white man’s Christianity has been its soothing bandage – a bandage masquerading as Sunday clothes, for the wearing of which one expects a certain moral credit.” – Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound[/blockquote] How do…
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loving others
An Integrated Life – The TL;DR Version
As Reconstruction ended, and the Great Migration was getting underway, white people collectively looked around and realized they weren’t alone. And they wanted to be. So they made it happen. A summary of the series looking at the book Sundown Towns by James Loewen, and also ideas for what you can do about it. Know…
Christians™ and the Love of Power
So it’s Pentecost. And I’m sitting at home listening to Breakeven, Bad Blood, and watching Birdman (which is a weird movie). I’m still alive but I’m barely breathing…. Still got scars on my back from your knife So don’t think it’s in the past, these kind of wounds they last and they last….
Solidarity and Poverty
[blockquote type=”center”]What does solidarity with the poor look like when you’re trying to avoid generational poverty?[/blockquote] This is a question I’ve been sitting with for awhile now. And I read this article earlier today that made me think some things. I was born in 1981, so I’m just barely a millennial, and my…
Deconstructing Christian Whiteness
A toddler builds a tower out of blocks. He knocks it down and starts again, examining the blocks as he builds. He examines the colors, shapes, sizes, as he builds his creation. How often do we kick down the towers we’ve built and look at the pieces? [line] Black voices surrounded me, singing words like…
Food as a Tool of Control
[blockquote type=”center”]”The royal policy is to accomplish a food monopoly. In that ancient world as in any contemporary world, food is a weapon and a tool of control.”(Journey to the Common Good 5)[/blockquote] Buffalo was the Native Americans’ main food source. So….I wonder what the empire of the United States did (and continues to do). “One…
Where White People Should Start
[blockquote type=”center”] I guess all we can really do toward racial reconciliation is work on our own selves, right? Prioritizing understanding over self-defense is a good first step (although a doozy). Being heard is THE prerequisite to healing conversations. If you try to understand me then I automatically want to try to understand you. Humility…
The First Thanksgiving – Fears, Power, and Privilege
“In New England no William Penn emerged to suggest that the English immigrants might live peaceably with the natives, on the divine theory that they, too, were children of the universal spirit…..There was simply not the confidence and wisdom and political skill to make one culture of two that were not that different.” –…
Day 28 – Tribes and Sides
Is the road to hell paved with a vivid imagination? I’m sitting here watching my kids dressed up in Halloween costumes, at our secular homeschool co-op, blending in with the other costumed kids. My oldest is reading Harry Potter next to me and I’m wondering if this was the slippery road to hell everyone said it…
Day 22 – Dancing On Fear
Bumped from the archives to continue the theme of fear – and wow. We’re coming up on the 25th anniversary this year. “The wall was an edifice of fear…For 28 years, East Germans could not even approach it. On Nov. 9, 1989, people danced on it — and the world looked different afterward” —…