After two weeks of really trying to listen to the voices of persons who are black, indigenous and people of color, as I outlined in my first and second posts on this subject, I’m going to step out with some trepidation to share a few of my own thoughts and experiences.
Not because it’s time to stop listening; it most assuredly is not that. But because at some point we are called to use our voices, and enter a conversation we’re nervous about having. I have to start somewhere.
Please don’t hesitate to call me on anything I say here that feels misplaced, inappropriate, or otherwise needs correcting. That’s the way conversation works, after all.
Here goes.
- I found myself weeping, repeatedly, as I read and listened to the voices I posted in my recent blogs. I don’t think I had seen the rage of my BIPOC siblings so clearly as I did in these snapshots. I learned a lot, that I think I should have known. Did know, mostly, but had kept at arm’s length.
- My posts here and on Facebook generated very little interaction. OK, “very little” is extremely generous. I had almost zero likes, comments, or other replies. A (white) friend told me, “I don’t think people know what to say. We’re afraid of saying something wrong.” That feels true to me. I hope it’s that, and not a lack of interest and engagement.
- I worried that some of you would be offended by the profanity that happened in some of the videos and articles I posted. I decided not to mention that in advance. I think of the well known sociologist and Christian leader, Tony Campolo, who famously started a sermon this way: “I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.” If the profanity bothered you, that’s totally worth examining, in the same way Campolo was saying. The evils those swear words describe must weigh more heavily on us than our pious reactions to the words used to describe such evil.
- Silence isn’t useful if it lasts forever. “WHITE SILENCE IS VIOLENCE” proclaimed my companion’s sign at the rally we attended a week ago. I appreciated the challenge that called me to be silent for a time, and amplify BIPOC voices. But that season passes and then it’s time to act on what we’ve heard.
I keep wondering–about my own self–the same question I heard a black clergy friend ask: “Why haven’t you already heard?” I feel like I’m hearing all this differently this time; I’m feeling changed into a “woke” anti-racist co-conspirator ally. But I’m not sure I haven’t been here before. My friend’s question is the right one. I’m afraid I’ve already heard, and then let my outrage dissipate into the cares and ambitions in which I was immersed, in which racial injustice was only a tiny sliver of a focus.
A few years ago I was at Richard Rohr’s “Conspire” conference in Albuquerque, where one of the speakers, Christena Cleveland, addressed that question. Ms. Cleveland is a black woman, a sociologist and author, addressing a mostly-white mostly-aging audience from around the world in the wake of yet another round of racial and gun violence. She said, “White people ask me all the time, ‘Is there a place for us in fighting racism?'”
Ms. Cleveland said she would tell us what our place is, but first she surveyed what is not our place, like trying to talk our black friends out of their experiences or their feelings about what had happened. Or responding to their stories with a rush to clarify, “Oh, I’m not that kind of white person.” I don’t remember if she used the term “white fragility,” but it’s what she was describing. How often have we as white people entered into these conversations and then become the one who needs to be reassured, or who changes the subject, or simply walks away?
As her talk continued, we slightly chastened white people sat eagerly in long rows of identical conference chairs, leaning toward Ms. Cleveland’s conclusion. “OK, we won’t do those things, but still, Christena, tell us, what is our place?” She finally reached her point with these words:
So, you want to know what your place is? I’ll tell you what it is. It’s last. Your place is to sit and listen, and listen some more, and keep listening until their pain becomes your pain.
–Christena Cleveland, Conspire conference, Albuquerque, NM, July 2016
Those words bored their way into me with the clarity of absolute truth. I have never forgotten that moment, all the way down to where I was sitting! It was a powerful moment in an amazing presentation.
I don’t think I realized then that I hadn’t let that happen; I hadn’t listened that far. I can’t say for sure that I have, even now. But this period of listening, and weeping, and listening some more has moved me closer.
I said last week that these questions are connected with my book, #Foolish Church, and the ways that we do or do not allow people to bring their whole selves to church, their pain and their joy, fully authentic and nothing that “we” require to be hidden in order to be accepted. White people sometimes try to reassure persons of color, “I don’t see skin color; I just see people.” Our BIPOC friends will respond, “If you don’t see color, you don’t see me.” If we don’t see color, we are leaving out a whole range of life experiences that are related to color, and asking people to fit into some kind of one-size-fits-all container. We don’t! Whether it’s because of race or incarceration or addiction or trauma, or for any number of different reasons, we all need different containers! The church that makes that possible, for one another, will be the church that can fully see, fully love, and allow authentic relationships to be at the center of our life together.
My #FoolishChurch perspective offers me one important edit to what I heard Christena Cleveland say that day in Albuquerque. Here it is: I don’t want us just to hear one another’s pain. (I’ve been following Ms. Cleveland since then, including as a supporter of her work via Patreon, and I’m certain she wouldn’t either.) As we listen and learn and amplify voices of our friends who are black, indigenous, and people of color, we’re going to see them as so much more than victims of our racist system. We will also be reminded of the extraordinary gifts, dignity, and humanity of people we have (to varying degrees) missed knowing.
As I said in my book Foolish Church,
We have been impoverished by the absence of people and by the suppression of experiences that, when admitted and valued, will make the church more fully the rich and diverse community that we were always meant to be, more fully the body of Christ.
Foolish Church, p. 95 (2019),
As we feel one another’s pain, we will persistently find our place in changing the conditions that create it. And along the way I pray that we’ll build rich, authentic, and full relationships with one another, in and beyond the church foolish enough to make room for that to happen.
Photo by Elliot Sloman on Unsplash
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