2025.09.28 ARE YOU RACIST? Spiritual Lemons, blog post, Lyn G. Brakeman

 Racist? Not me! Many cry out. There is no racism advocated in the Bible, after all! Or is there?

Focus a bit more closely on the particulars, then wonder again. Sometimes an extraordinary truth smacks you upside the head like the proverbial rake and forces you to draw back and forward all at once—startled and intrigued?  

In the early 1960s, my small daughter was standing up on the back seat (pre-seatbelt time) of our car. I was driving up the street to deliver a mis-delivered package to the neighbor’s house. I parked, ran up to their door and rang the bell. The door was opened by their live-in Black maid. My daughter loudly exclaimed: “What was that?” I was shocked that my little girl had made such a racist statement. 

She wasn’t racist, but we lived in an all-white town—neighborhood, schools, churches, stores. Our small daughter had never seen a Black person before. Thus was born my own shocking personal question: Is it toxic, that is soul-poisoning, to live all the time in an all-white society, a blinding blizzard, a whiteout? Would it not be equally blinding for Black people to live in a blackout?

From neither perspective could anyone see the world or themselves accurately. Blizzard and Blackout are equally blinding and binding to ALL races, ALL cultures, ALL creativity, and ALL religions. Shocked, I wrote the painful truth about my own slow awakening to this blindness, AND about the value of being clear-eyed and open-hearted toward the whole world, not just those who looked like me. I invited divine help into this process along the way at every turn, using loud little words like HELP!

Is racism real, or is it some high falutin ideal? Is it inborn? Could someone be racist without even knowing it?  Are we trained by circumstances, or, like my daughter’s innocence, simply exposed to it, shocked by it, wounded by it?  I strongly and increasingly believe that Racism is a symptom!  It is NOT inborn. We learn it as a way to survive, perhaps thrive. Survive what?  I leave that to each and all of you. 

*  *  *  *

Divinity created the whole schlmiel—and with it enough common sense and freedom to CHOOSE love everywhere towards everyone/everything all the time, including yourself—not hate. 

God did NOT CREATE racism—only FREEDOM.    

2021.08.29 My "Racism"—Part Twenty-One, Saint/Sinners

Mark’s gospel reminds us that any and all gifts—sacramental liturgies, music, scriptures, even personal gifts within our own flesh, we receive from God. The paradox is this: gifts we praise the most we must give away in order to retain their deepest value. We can experience God’s gifts yet we cannot own, control, or possess them. 

I can’t help but notice, as I think about my own racism, that many women I’ve followed and admired are women of color or lesbians—or at least women who barked at the edges of tradition and made their way from the “outback” of religious tradition into the center where they continue to ruffle the feathers of patriarchy in the church. They are gifted prophets, prophets of transformation, my chosen prophets, ancient and modern, few of them white, all of them healers of my natural, learned, and inherited racism, all of them saints and sinners.   

  *  *  *  *  

Who is not a saint and a sinner?  Ask anyone to tell the truth about both, and you’ll get some kind of definitional sleight of mind, or else denial, usually of the saint category, or, as a last resort, a humble nod and shrug, feigning modest sainthood. No haloes appear. Could it be that sin makes a better God-story? 

Scene LVIII.  Mary Virgin, Mother of the Church, Theotokos

One of the most famous and ill-reputed female heroes of the biblical and church tradition is Mary, the mother of Jesus. She has many names, most of them honorific. Mary was a real woman, a woman who “miraculously” found herself with child, aka pregnant, while she was “betrothed”— engaged, not yet wed. She didn’t lie about it, but listened to God’s voice guiding, not condemning, her from within. Nevertheless, the Church, in its embarrassment at scriptural transparency, elevated her to a place of great esteem, made her a virgin blessed forever, and virtually eliminated any masculine role for both conception AND parenting—unless you want to put faith in God as both sperm donor AND Heavenly Father forever.  

See how patriarchal religious politics accomplished and set in cement the following sins: 

-impugned the female body as a conception machine

-settled on Mary Magdalene as the scapegoat, creating The Magdalene Syndrome, the ugly, unjust brush with which many women are tarred—some innocent and some errant and unforgiven. (see Spiritual Lemons blog post, 8/1/21) 

-enslaved sexual activity within marriage

-put celibacy on a moral high holy ground

-made marriage a sacrament, not of blessing but of control 

-outlawed divorce, birth control and abortion, further imprisoning women

-contributed to poverty, overpopulation, despair, and crime

-made sure Divinity was advertised as transcendent, almighty, and masculine

-locked the image of God into parenting titles 

Women today, and historically, including my own grandmothers, have empowered themselves to change patriarchy in church and state by asserting their gifts, offering their bodies and their voices. They continue to be silenced and abused for their efforts, but they do not stop. I long for the day when the church will let Mary step off her pedestal, relinquish her virginal holiness, and preach her Magnificat to churches and seminaries.  

Scene LIX. My Grandmothers

Eleanor Sampson Gillespie, my paternal grandmother whom I called Grahmmy, gave up her aspirations to be an opera singer in order to get married and have children. She boasted long and often about being one of the first women in her family to graduate from college, in this case Vassar, class of “aughty-aught” (that’s 1900). She fulfilled her “assigned” vocation well with six children, four sons and two daughters, all of whom called her Ma. My dad, Scottishly named McDonald, was #5, sandwiched between two sisters, not always comfortably. Ma was an imposing presence, pigeon-chested like any proper diva would be. She had a beautiful singing voice, and most evenings after dinner she would assemble her “boys” gathering them around the piano to sing. She sang along with gusto. A family “opera.” 

Marguerite Gordon Hall Adams, my maternal grandmother whom I called Ga, and occasionally Goggie or Gagarrhea, if I was angry, defied her family and eloped with her beloved when she was eighteen. Ga grew us in Medford Massachusetts, born into a well-to-do family and living in a large house, let’s say small mansion. She met and fell in love with a man by the name of Avon Franklin Adams, an impresario who imported musical talent from Europe to this country, specifically to New York City, quite bereft in the 1920s of classical musicians. He brought violinist Jascha Heifitz and Alma Gluck, soprano and concert singer, to name just two—both Jewish.  

A.F. Adams’s Jewish identity horrified the Hall family. So the young couple eloped! They were married in Manhattan at the non-denominational Church of the Strangers, established in 1868 by the Rev. Charles Alexander Force Deems. He was a Methodist elder who moved to New York City from North Carolina to pastor the Church of the Strangers on January 1, ’91 (that’s 1891).  

I can’t tell you how fascinating my research was to establish my grandfather’s Jewishness, and therefore my own. He died when my mother was just twelve. She was the youngest child of four, born in1912 when Ga was forty-five, and her father’s favorite. It was apparently mutual, yet she kept the secret of his Jewishness for reasons of her own at which I could only guess. I wish I could have met him. I remain proud of my heritage. 

Scene LX My First Patient in Alcohol/Drug Rehabilitation. 

My experience in parish ministry was, frankly, exhausting. I had trained in and worked in chaplaincy ministry in two general hospitals and one drug/alcohol rehabilitation hospital  in Connecticut. To be a chaplain is a gift I give wherever I am. 

Chaplaincy is a more expansive ministry than parish ministry. A chaplain does not have to comply with, rely on, or “sell”, any one set of religious principles. There are many people who are hospitalized and in need of someone to listen to all their fears, pains, and the deep needs of their souls. They may want to talk to a pastor of their religious preference, and yet many simply long for a listening and compassionate ear, perhaps a prayer or a blessing if this is what they wish. Chaplains by intention transcend religious boundaries. They may have their personal commitments, but they do not wear these on their sleeves. This was especially important with the addiction population, some of whom were openly hostile to religion while their recovery program required that they at least remain open to the idea of a power greater than themselves to support them in their quest for sobriety. 

The first patient assigned to my counsel and care at the treatment center was a young black woman I will call Rochelle. I went to meet her in the detoxification unit and she screamed at me: “Get the hell outta here, you fucking white religious freak!” I was terrified and split. My supervisor was sympathetic but would not change the patient assignment. I would be Rochelle’s counselor for four weeks. Four!  I needed a higher power more than Rochelle! 

I wondered if there was a trigger, other than the pangs of detoxification, for Rochellles’ hostile outburst. As I wondered I fingered the small gold cross I wore around my neck. Bingo! She had probably reacted to the Jesus image. It was a gift to me from my second husband and I still treasure it because it has no corpus on the tiny cross but simply an empty space. That said a lot to me about God’s desire to free us from suffering and pain, not to impose it. We did enough of that all by ourselves. I resolved never again to wear that cross while I worked at this treatment center. My resolve failed. 

I’m not sure exactly how this happened, but I remember wallowing in the Serenity Prayer, the prayer recovering people often use at their meetings. 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference. AMEN

While I focused on the serenity to accept what I couldn’t change, that is, Rochelle’s animosity toward me, I could stop wearing my cross. I could make myself look completely neutral and safe. I could. But I didn’t. 

When Rochelle was discharged from the detox unit and released into the ongoing program of education and counseling support to help her sustain sobriety, she came to my office. I had my cross on. God, grant me the serenity just to shut up about our first meeting. I did. Rochelle poured out her story to me and I listened with compassion. Whew! I had gotten away with the cross. But just as Rochelle was getting ready to leave the session, she pointed to my cross;. “Oh, that is such a beautiful little cross, so small and is it empty?”  “Would you like to see it close up,” I offered. She did. I removed the cross and handed it to her. She held it and fingered it briefly. I resisted a tiny temptation to give it to her, thank God. She returned it to me with a big grin and a thanks. I did not resist the temptation to consider myself a hot shot chaplain, but I did remember to fondle my small cross and thank Jesus for his corpuscular “absence” from it.  

2021.07.25 Sneaky Creepy

There’s a familiar story from Mark’s gospel. The fishermen disciples of Jesus were in a boat fishing in the wee hours of the morning. They struggled against fierce winds and waters. When they saw Jesus skimming the surf they thought it was a ghost and were “terrified.”  They knew better. Jesus said, “Calm yourselves. It’s me.”  Then he got into their boat, and the wind died down. They were stunned and incredulous, despite everything they had been taught. “Their minds were closed.”  (Mark 6:52, The Inclusive Bible)

Their minds were closed. How easily and quickly our good intentions snap shut when we see something completely out of our ordinary line of thinking. I so want to be open-minded, anti-racist, yet it doesn’t take much to close my mind. People who are too afraid to be vaccinated close my mind, for example. Arguing is ineffective. Listening and following the precautions is effective.

Racist attitudes are not alway overt. In fact, like bacteria, according to my pulmonologist, they are tiny and can sneak quietly into any vulnerable scenario and raise bacterial hell—disease, social or individual, biological or societal, artistic or legal.  

I felt like those disciples when I read this tragic wee story. I decided it wasn’t true—just a poem not even by a celebrity author. Yet it would not leave me alone.  It sat on my desk staring at me until I paid attention. 

Dance Amari

for Amari Diaw

Amari Diaw was four years old in 2003 when she faced being banned from her dance school recital in New Bedford, Massachusetts, because she wore her hair in braids that could not be “slicked back and pulled into a bun.”

Do not untie your hair Amari. Do not,

For perfect plies and pirouettes, turn

From native locks or wish for whiteness.

Kick up your thick-boned legs

In cultured protestation

Avoid unbraided simulation

Take first position

Stand on pointed principles

Deconstruct the dance politic.

Do not untie your hair Amari. D not,

For perfect plies and pirouettes, turn

From native locks or wish for whiteness.

Kick up your thick-boned legs

In cultured protestation

Avoid unbraided simulation

Take first position

Stand on pointed principles

Deconstruct the dance politic. 

This poem was written by poet Rhonda Ward, former poet laureate of New London, Connecticut. It was published in Poet’s Corner in the Hartford Courant, 6/20/21. Here is a portrait of the poet.

 

I was stunned, shocked, nauseous, appalled, and weepy when I read this out loud three times, before I copied it down. Four years old—a little child with balletic dreams like so many small girls in tutus entertain. What is free of ugly bias? What is sacred? Who is untouched? What beauty can survive? There’s a “dance politic"?

One of my granddaughters participates in a dance company in her town. She is now one of the stars and a very fine dancer, however her very first recital at age four paralyzed her with terror, probably at the sight of an audience. She stood frozen in space and time, unable to dance what she had so well rehearsed. Frozen.

Do you know what spiritual paralysis is? It’s what you feel when your are suddenly excluded from participation in a group you love because of something you cannot help, something endemic to your nature, something you were born with, something you love, something you fear. It’s what I felt when I at last digested this story and let it into my heart/soul. 

People will naturally ask: what happened? Outcome is not the point. What happened is the point. What happened is itself the answer, is itself the answer.  

All I know is that when the souls of little ones or adults freeze, God thaws all souls, that they may act together to deconstruct dance politic and its many, many siblings. Thawing hurts. So does opening your mind, and so does closing your mind. 

Walking on water might be easier, eh? 

2021.07.04 My "Racism"—Brief Anecdotal History. Part Nineteen. Formative Influences

It’s called Independence Day, isn’t it? Historically, it meant America’s Declaration of Independence—freedom from British rule.  Well, okay, and we have not lived out our precious independence in equitable ways, now have we? You could call it white independence, or wealthy white independence. I have discovered that one’s personal independence is something that comes with courage and creativity and grit and education and experimentation—plus sweet accidentally perceived divine grace. It comes with the help of many others, faith in God, and Love, and it can take years. It’s worth some strife to get it spread out right. 

Scene LVI. Reading Rita

I had read the autobiographical novel by Rita Mae Brown Rubyfruit Jungle published in 1973.  Brown, born in 1944 to an unwed teenage mother who left her at an orphanage from which a cousin of her mother rescued Rita and raised her in Pennsylvania and Florida. 

She hitchhiked to New York City in the 1960s and got advanced degrees in Classics and English at NYU. Brown was also a writer who used her gift, not as a political act, but rather to eschew the label of “lesbian”. Labeling confines and defines and separates—a very common but ungodly practice.   

When I read Rubyfruit Jungle I was initially amazed at such transparent candor, then wowed by the sex a woman could experience—all by herself if she so desired or even with another woman.  I tried it all, and WOW. Masturbation and a sexual experience with a lesbian seminarian friend awakened me to my own sexual power—not simply to “fight” for feminist causes or to procreate, but to relish and cherish my own body—to its fullest., for its own sake. It also taught me never to condemn the sexual preferences of others—sexism. 

Scene LVII. Toni

Getting to know Toni Morrison, nee Chloe Ardelia Wofford in 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, happened to me through reading her novel Beloved published in 1988, the year I was ordained priest, although I didn’t read it until the early 1990s. Morrison converted to Roman Catholicism at age 12, the very year my parents moved me out of my city into a suburb. I too would dabble in Roman Catholicism, seeing the liturgy as embodied, mystical, and inclusive. Morrison added Anthony, hence Toni, to her name, choosing St. Anthony of Padua as her baptismal name.  

“Toni” of Padua (1195-1231) was a Portuguese Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, noted for his knowledge of scripture, powerful preaching, and devotion to the poor and the sick. He is the patron saint of lost things, including causes and respect. 

This saint was a nerd—studied and read and wrote a lot.  So did Toni Morrison. So did I. Words fueled my life engine—soul motors.  

When Morrison was young she had an argument with a little black girl about whether there was a real God or not. “I said there was, and she said there wasn’t and she had proof: she had prayed for, and not been given, blue eyes. I just remember listening to her and imagining her with blue eyes, and it was a grotesque thing. She had these high cheek bones and these great big slanted dark eyes, and all I remember thinking was that if she had blue eyes she would be horrible.” (Anecdote taken from Hilton Als July 27, 2020, New Yorker profile of Morrison, “Ghosts In the House.”)  

In and through Morrison’s writing I felt liberated—also frightened. The energy that surged through her words and characters flew into me like a sharp arrow piercing my soul. Morrison’s language itself set me on fire for words. The story of Beloved, about a runaway slave who murders her child rather than allow it to be captured, chilled me to the bone. It stung me with the memory of Carol Lee and my first racist decision as a teen, caused me to wonder if God had murdered Jesus, and jolted me into realizing that my parents’ decision to move to the white suburbs from my beloved city was not, as my adolescent ego had imagined, to ruin my life. It was racist—fleeing the Puerto Rican influx. 

But it was Morrison’s language itself that healed my horror, and taught me to appreciate my own female flesh and fall more deeply in love with the religious idea of Incarnation. Flesh was suddenly a verb.

“In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. and all your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver--love it, love it and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.” 

This is what I look like in Black mirrors. Godde, help me to flesh myself in Your mirror. 

My "Racism"—Brief Anecdotal History. Part Thirteen. Choices.

My very first choice was at three when I left my parents to their own cocktail hour and went off on my own to meet God with my reckless imagination. Whether that choice could be considered free I can’t say, except that it felt free to me. Looking back, I’d like to say I had good emotional intelligence, yet honestly it was more likely impulsive, childish creativity writ large—accidental grace. Is there any other kind of grace?

My first morality-laden choice had been choosing my own pleasure against loyalty to my black friend Carol Lee. The burning memory of it still stings. Whether I called it racist or not didn’t matter. My conscience did. Carol Lee and I were different—not just because of our skin color but because of my choice—my choice.

My early experience set me up for knowing that choice was an intimate part of life and that it would always be impure.

Scene XXXIV. Why?

I was nearing forty. I’d made made choices about marriage and children. These might not have been perfectly timed, but I had no regrets as I watched the children I adored and admired grow and thrive. They were my greatest pleasure. But something was missing. I didn’t know what exactly. I sat in my kitchen conjuring up fake images of myself as a domestic wonder-mother when an interruptive question—the kind only God-from-within could inflict—broke into my reverie.  

Why are you doing this?  

I sat down at the kitchen table, rested my bowed head on my crossed arms and sobbed—sobbed.
Why was I doing this?  Truly, madly, deeply why?

Scene XXXV. Leap

As I sat in my tears I made a choice to answer the question—truthfully. What was missing from the lovely picture was me. Yes, me. I leapt first into a part-time job as a local weekly newspaper reporter.
I faithfully reported on the most boring of town meetings. I was a stringer, paid by the column inch, so I made my articles as long as I dared. Soon I leapt into writing features, then editing.  

I listened carefully to the instructions from the hang-gliding teacher. He strapped me into my glider wings. I took a deep breath, swallowed my fear, and leapt off a mountain top, well, really a ridge. Lifted and held by puffs of wind, I was airborne—a soundless plane. The thrill was—forgive me—godlike. I looked down and saw the world, my world. I wanted it all. All. I wrote it all.

Choice by choice, I devoured my freedom—moving, leap by leap, away from traditional and expected roles. I could blame the 70s or Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, but that would be cheap grace. I took it anyway. I would deal with the sin of my profound selfishness in time and through tears. My four children were too young for this loss, for my leaps, for my evenings meetings, for too much maternal abandonment—paternal too.

I got involved with the local church and took on leadership roles. I eyed the altar territory with something akin to lust. I wanted to stand up front. I wanted to be a woman-in-the-flesh up front and not a statue draped with sorrowful looks and roses. I also leapt from the Republican party to the Democratic—away from my parensts'  party to one of my own, one I thought more in line with the  kind of values and choices I thought Jesus would make.  I was sure Jesus would ordain me if he were a bishop—or still enfleshed, or not Jewish.  
 
In 1977,  just after the Episcopal Church had voted—not by a landslide—that women could be ordained priests, I made application to get into the ordination process in Connecticut. The Bishop of Connecticut had voted against the ordination of women priests—unbeknownst to yours truly who had an outsized idea that the Church was the Body of Christ, therefore apolitical. My application was rejected, mostly because I had “2.24-too-many children”, and I couldn’t be a mother and a priest. “Dual vocation” they said. No mention of men and fathers, of course.

I leaped into God-school anyway. Anyone could get a theological education, the bishop had said. I applied for a student loan—something I thought carried great authority. Paying it back I’d worry about later. The second I came onto the campus of Yale Divinity School for my interview, I gazed at the very Protestant chapel keeping watch over the quadrangle of buildings, went to sit in its emptiness, and filled it with my prayers. My heart soared. I leaped into seminary education in the autumn of 1978.

In March, 1979, my youngest sister died unexpectedly at 34 after surgery for congenital aneurysms in her brain, leaving her husband and three young children. Her death precipitated severe asthma in me. There is nothing like not breathing well to make one feel like death. I never thought this was divine judgment or punishment. I did feel a terror I hadn’t known before—and again the pain of  betrayal. On medical advice, I found a new home for my second daughter Jill’s two cats. Fear-based choices never work well.

There was probably no better place for me to be than studying the Old Testament, not a single word of which was free of anguish, pain, grief, sin, and relational turmoil—all of which God created, absorbed, healed, frowned at, and and wept for. Sin and mayhem were as omnipresent as divine love no matter what. I chose it all.

Scene XXXVI.  Free?

All my choices, my leaps, shaped me, hurt me, hurt others, helped me grow, helped others grow, required amends—and forgiveness.

I was dimly—gradually, painfully— learning that most of my personal big choices could be followed, because I was white, privileged, and moneyed.

My freedom was not bound by poverty, class, or the color of my skin, although I knew the pain of being restricted because of my gender. White freedom of choice looked free, but it was racist. It was embedded in a context of racial injustice. Others, chiefly blacks, couldn’t make the choices I could. There wasn’t room for their freedom in American society. Black people and others did not have the same access to the famous and, to my mind questionable, “American dream” as whites did—even though such freedom was preached. A racist set-up if ever there ever was one.

My choices were made in a racist context and therefore indirectly partook of racism. My racism was getting clear enough not to surround it with quotation marks.  All it needed was to be fleshed out.

 

We Voted. WE.

WE, this United States of America,  just voted on its next President, former vice president Joe Biden. We have voted in record numbers—yes, to a man, no, to another man/incumbent; yes, to a Democrat, no to a Republican; yes to the first woman/first black/first daughter of immigrants as vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, no, to an arch-conservative evangelical Christian vice-president/incumbent; yes, to a measured inclusive style of leadership, no to an authoritarian leader of excess. The voting went smoothly and deliberately. Every single vote was counted with care, efficiency, and I’d say with love for democratic process.

This is a lot of change at once—qualitative change. It’s easy to analyze the many whys and evaluate the numbers according to partisan politics and differing cultures. It’s easy to observe all the celebratory festivities on television screens, and easy to feel the general mood of those gathered to celebrate—HAPPY, simply happy. Fringes of discontent were likely present but went unnoticed. It is less easy to discern the larger picture—the deeper meaning of this historic vote—after all the minute statistical details that have provided exactitude are cleared away.

President-elect Joe Biden praised the cheering crowds, saying, as former President Obama did, “Yes, we can!” He added his hope for America now: “Lead by the power of our example not by the example of our power.”  

Further: We are the united States, not the red and blue states. Let us put away harsh rhetoric, marshal the forces of decency. Everyone needs a fair shot, just a fair shot. Let the moral arc of the universe move towards justice. It is now a time to heal, to mend, to love, as the biblical Ecclesiastes says.  Biden promised to be a unifier. He has the experience, the intelligence, the character and the personality to keep that promise. Specific plans are in the works to create teamwork and conversation.  This man knows how to cross the aisles. Good thing, because this was a close election in which Republicans did well and Democrats did well. Good for the whole.

Some of my own thoughts about broader, deeper meanings, especially those with racial implications:  
    -Partisanship itself is racist, because whites historically identify with one party, Republican, and blacks with the other, Democrat. I am not a blue person, and my favorite color is red. Blacks voted in high numbers this year. HOPE.
    -Whites are blind to the racial implications of party politics, mostly because they are concerned with what is happening with their money, taxes, and their classist lifestyle, safely bound to “whiteism”. Paying taxes is one way I contribute to that “fair shot” for all .
    -COVID is also racially tinged, mostly because black people suffer more from poverty and limited access to adequate healthcare benefits or good insurance benefits. This President-elect will immediately set up a diverse task force  just to focus on the best ways to eliminate a killer virus that knows no politics, no race, no gender, no creed.  
    -Reliance by the media on polls that assess political opinion and predict outcomes can also be racially tinged, because white college educated people respond to polls bringing their own biases, and black people are often not poll-responsive. Poll-driven statistics demand instant responses i.e., pick a detail, ask a question, and then expect a brief response.
    -American culture, it has been said, is anti-intellectual. This doesn’t mean that people are not intelligent, but that they are conditioned—by advertising, social media, i-phones, and many social media devices that provide instant stimulation and instant communications—to expect, if not demand, instantaneity. Deep and broad thinking accompanied by much conversation, listening, and exchange of ideas, is not a high cultural value. We live in a Skinnerian world of stimulus and response.
    -Religious fundamentalism contributes to this mindset. It is very selective about which texts one should live by in order to please God—and the local congregation. It discourages individual spirituality and exploration of biblical texts through prayer and the gentle guidance of spiritual direction.

The late Dorothy Day (1897-1980), convert to Roman Catholicism, activist, and founder of The Catholic Worker Movement, speaks of a politics for going forward in this Beatitude Kingdom we here call the United States of America. Day in 1934.

 

“What we would like to do is change the world — make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute — the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words — we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

Dorothy Day admired America's efforts to take responsibility through the government, but ultimately felt that charitable works were personal decisions that needed the warmth of an individual. I’d say we need the best of both at work together. Day said: “My strength returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the Psalms.”

So does my own. Today’s morning prayer Psalm 96 (translated by Pamela Greenberg) begins:

“Sing out to God a new song
sing to God, all the earth.

And ends:

You will judge all people of the world justly,
all nations with steadfast truth.

By this I remember to honor each day with a new song—or mood—and to remember that there is only ONE JUST JUDGE—and it’s not me, or you, or even us.

2020.10.25 Scared Sinless

We "Whities" seized dominance with vigor, vengeance, veracity
We consumed everything within our reaches—and more.
We—voraciously and stingily— gobbled up
    all land
    all healthcare
    all money
    all goodly resources
    all power—and made it male
           
At first our status gave us
    pride, joy, glory
Then denial, ignorance, lassitude.

Now we are dying
    in droves,
        droves.

The Beauty of the Earth
    dims
    blurs
    dwindles.

We are quick to say wild animals—some human—have invaded,
        BUT
It is we—we—who have invaded their living space. We. Us.

We are scared to death
    ashen.
On knees we pray, and pray, with all that makes quiver our minds.

There is only one solution—one.
    Forgiveness?
    Too slippy slippery

No, we must actually love our neighbors as ourselves.

This cannot be lame lip service, a nod to Biblical aspirations.
    NO.
It must run deep into the veins of our heart.
We must get to know, not just love, our neighbors.

Known and unknown,
    always the one commandment.
        
Bidden or not, neighbors are here.

Moses legislated the politics
Jesus summarized the vision
Paul made it unconditional
Parental figures taught the young
   repeatedly taught and told and taught
the only one—just one behavior
    crucial
        necessary
            indispensable
            
               SHARE.

2020.07.19 My "Racism"—Brief Ancdotal History, Part Six. Privilege?

Scene XV. Racism—A Discernment

I know it’s unfair to write about my racism without acknowledging that it came about largely because of the absence of Blacks, coupled with the piercing, indelible, unshakeable memory of my childhood friendship with one black girl, Carol Lee. It was that friendship, and the shame I felt when I chose to have my beach club party without her because the beach club barred blacks, that let me know there even was such a thing as racism—a phenomenon I did not know how to name, but whose impact stayed with me. I chose from privilege rather than from heart.

I do not say: “My best friend is black”—as if that assertion proved anything. One of my best friends really was black. Our connection happened over a few summers, and I haven’t seen Carol Lee  in over 70 years. I tried to work Google-magic to find her and did find one image I thought might be my Carol Lee—in an obituary, alas. Nevertheless, my Carol Lee memory became a benchmark strong enough to serve as a plumb line against which I measured, and measure, my felt racism.

My “Racism” has quotation marks around racism, because I’m writing about my discernment process over some 80 years. My scenarios are wisps of personal memory that structure the grid of my learnings—bits and pieces that unfold in answer to my question: I’m not racist—or am I?  I do not yet know the answer.

I intersperse some contemporary wisdom on the subject, everything in the context of my own direct experience.  Racism is word that in 2020 is headlined all over the world and laid at our national doorstep as a call, I’d say from God, to examine and change our personal and national addiction to its practice. It’s time.  

In 2019, I heard African-American, Isabelle Wilkerson, the author of The Warmth of Other Suns, speak about the great migration of southern blacks to urban areas of the North and West, I was spellbound by the memoir-like flavor of her historical study. A whole people were forced to move en masse, because, although emancipated, they were denied adequate access to resources necessary for thriving in America.

The New York Times Magazine (7/19/2020) published Wilkerson’s article, “America’s Enduring Caste System” in which she imaged caste as the usher’s flashlight in a darkened theater silently guiding us to our assigned seats—assigned, but who bought the tickets?  This is caste, not racism, according to Wilderson who writes: “The instinctive desire to reject the very idea of current discrimination on the basis of a chemical compound in the skin is an unconscious admission of the absurdity of race as a concept. With no universally agreed upon definition, we might see racism as a continuum rather than an absolute.”  (Italics mine.)

Anyone who has ever been in high school knows what caste feels like. Everyone is ranked. Everyone is hurt. No one forgets. It is the field in which the seeds of racism, and all other -isms, take root and grow.

Scene XVI. Dominus Flevit 

One makes forced choices when trapped in a radically caste-enclosed and unjust system. I thought of Jesus, how he sweated and wept and groaned before he decided to head to Jerusalem to challenge the system of injustice that trapped his people. He shed tears over Jerusalem when he got there, telling his followers that the things that made for peace and justice and love were “hidden from their eyes.” Many thing were hid from my eyes. I too know so little, so very little about so many things. I was no Jesus. I had no larger vision. All I had was my ignorance, twinges of conscience, and a few tears of my own.

There is a church in Jerusalem marking the site where Jesus wept about all this systemic ignorance and the impending destruction of the Temple. There wasn’t much he could do—not much at all. The church is shaped like a teardrop. When I saw it in 2012, I wept for all I did not know, had not known, still don’t know. The church is called Dominus Flevit (The Lord Wept). It means a lot to me.

 

Scene XVII. A Wound of Privilege

I went to Smith College, partly because I was NOT going to go to Vassar like my maternal grandmother who’d graduated in the “class of aughty-aught".  Also, because I loved Smith’s campus and living in houses—no dorms and no sororities with all that sisterly pain. Mostly, however, because my best friend, Annie, was going there too.

I knew it was a privilege to go to Smith, not because I knew I was privileged, but because my father groaned out loud about the “astronomical”tuition which in 1956 was absurdly low—below $10,000 in today's dollars.

Annie had to leave Smith after one year. Her scholarship money dwindled, and her father couldn’t afford to pay the tuition. Our hearts were broken. Impulsively, I told her my father would pay her room and board, but she said her father would be too proud to accept. We both were right.

Annie went on to graduate from the University of Connecticut with honors. We stayed friends of course, but there was an almost indiscernible crack inside me, like a slight fracture in a bone. What was it? Guilt? It was the fissure of privilege. I could spell that word correctly, but now I was learning to feel its power—the power to rent asunder, to hurt when it was supposed to help.

Despite my father’s money worries, we had wealth—not vast amounts of money but wealth, that invisible security blanket enjoyed by some and not others. It had to do with family security; it had to do with neighborhood, class and family assets; it had to do with privilege and the cruel habit of ranking that limited opportunity. It had to do with the same thing that forced those southern blacks to flee in order to survive. It had to do with something a friend recently said in the midst of her own severe lack of resources: “I’m super scared, but I know I’ll be okay because I have family with money to help—if I get less proud.”  

I had wealth and Annie didn’t. The wealth gap had nothing to do with what I’d been brought up to value: work hard and you’ll get ahead. Oh no you won’t! Annie’s father had worked and struggled all his life. He was bright, had a PhD, and was principal of a school. My father worked on Madison Avenue, a business executive. I was learning about classism, a first cousin to racism, fertilizer of privilege, pollinator of all -isms.

Annie and I were white, yet our friendship was wounded by my privilege. We cried so hard—so very hard—when Annie left Smith and I stayed. My privilege bought me rank and a great education, but it sure did not buy me peace of mind, and it sure didn’t make me feel good. 

At Smith I met my first Jew. I didn’t know what a Jew was. Now that is an hilarious statement. Really! It sounds absurdly anti-semitic now, but I didn’t know what that was. I’d heard of the Holocaust, but not really, if you know what I mean. As with Blacks, there were no Jews in my suburban town.

My sheltered ignorance was appalling, not my fault, and painful anyway. White as I was, I didn’t connect it with my privilege—yet.

I chose academics to make my mark. It did pay off. I studied like a fiend, got good grades, earned graduate degrees, and felt smarter than I really was. Okay, that’s not fair to me, but in college I didn’t yet know how to be fair to myself.

2020.07.05 My "Racism"—A Brief Anecdotal History, Part Four. America?

We weren’t Catholic. I knew that because my mother said Catholics weren’t really American. Who was American? Was Carol Lee? Did she feel not American?  Is racism an American problem? 

July 4th was Independence Day. Americans were celebrating—with flag-waving and fireworks—our independence, our formation as a nation, a democracy.  How ironic it is for me to be writing about my own racism in 2020 when “Independence” the very definition of  our “dream” is NOT fully enjoyed by every American. I have no choice but to observe my world today and reflect on it in the light of my experience.  Am I American?


Scene X.  Phineas, Hairy Legs, and Mr. Fitz

There is probably no culture more cruel and life-threatening than that of a junior high school bus—that long orange monster that rolls around town and picks up strays who gather at a designated SCHOOL BUS STOP.

Unless you were totally normal you were a target for torturous humor. For girls, normal meant cute, perky, flirty, in a cashmere sweater with obvious upper body endowments and a waist, ripe for “slutdom”. For boys, normal meant swaggering and strutting and punching as if they had something no one else did, panting to create “sluts”.

I shifted from side to side, pulling at my skirt or trying to puff up my hair without upsetting the overweight pile of books shoulder-strapped together and poised on one hip.

Phineas failed the normalcy profile—catastrophically. He didn’t strut, he galumphed. He played the violin which he carried with him onto the bus. He wore thick glasses. He was borderline obese. Every day when Phineas thudded onto the bus the boys cooed and wooed him to the back of the bus where they’d gathered for the massacre. They forced  Phineas down onto the floor. They took his violin, removed it from its case and played it till it squeaked in protest; they called him names; they spit on him, and removed his glasses; they held him down so he could not get off at his stop. Every day he walked home. Phineas, to his eternal junior high school shame, cried.

I will never forget Phineas. I felt nauseous. I cried. I prayed. I said nothing. I was learning to be a coward. I tried recently to look him up on Google, which despite its near-divine status, failed on Phineas. Please God, let him have lost weight, ditched his Mayflower-like family name, wear contact lenses, and be a brilliant violinist in some symphony orchestra. 

There was a female version of this horror show. She was overweight like Phineas but with a “normal” name—until she earned the nickname of “Hairy Legs”.  Girls are just as mean as boys but less physical. We relentlessly teased her, because her unshaved legs were, well, totally abnormal. She said that her mother wouldn’t let her shave her legs, and back then girls did not wear pants. I cursed her mother.

She suffered for something she could do nothing about. This made me think, once again, of Carol Lee. This bullying behavior was racist BUT all these students were white. And so was I.

The school bus driver, Mr. Fitz, was the owner of the bus franchise, Fitzgeralds. He was obese, so fat that there was no space between the lower edge of the steering wheel and his paunch. I stared at him to see if I could somehow get him to stop the boys and rescue Phineas. He did nothing. In fact, once I saw him smirking. He could have at least intervened to make sure Phineas got off at his stop.

I felt tortured myself. My way of dealing with my horror was to demand that my mother drive me to school. I would never ride the bus again—never.

These people were all white just like everyone else in Darien, but I was beginning to wonder if racist behavior had broad applications. White-Against-White?  I wished I could talk with Carol Lee about all this.


Scene XI. Gunnar Myrdal

Throughout junior and senior high school there was a required course called Problems of Democracy. Some schools called it Civics. It was to help students understand how our government was structured, how it worked—or didn’t. Our teacher was Mr. Beckwith. I liked him, and I liked the course. I don’t remember what texts we read, but I do remember that Mr. Beckwith talked a lot, in just about every class, about this one book by Gunnar Myrdal. It was on racism. Why was he teaching that when we all were white, and the book was not the assigned reading for the class? Were we even a race? Of course none of us read it, but I have never forgotten that name: Gunnar Myrdal.

I looked up Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987). He was a sociologist and economist and a Swedish Nobel laureate, a professor at Stockholm University in Sweden, and, according to record, openly anti-Nazi. Myrdal’s major work was An American Dilemma. The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, published in 1944. Here is Gunnar Myrdal at about the time he published the book I never read.

Myrdal's book was a study of race relations in America. The “dilemma” was the perceived conflict between high ideals embodied in what Myrdal called the “American Creed” on the one hand and poor performance on the other. Democracy in America was unable to put its human rights ideals into practice for African Americans, one tenth of our population. Myrdal had planned a similar study on gender inequality, but he couldn’t get funding for it.

If Mr. Beckwith was so hot for this book why wasn’t it on the curriculum? 

I was learning about censorship in school curricula. People behind closed doors decided what texts students could read, and believe me the lily white town where I lived would not want to stir up trouble. Taxes fund public education. White people pay high taxes. Money controls learning, controls what is taught and how. I learn best when I’m stirred up. I felt sorry for Mr. Beckwith.

I learned something, a take-away they now call it, from Myrdal’s thesis: when I don’t perform well it’s usually because I don’t like what I’m doing. I’m not invested in the endeavor. America wasn’t invested in its own “dream.”  Was I?  Was I American?  Am I?  Was the Bible?

I don’t know. I didn’t know then either.  First I’d get a boyfriend, handsome if possible.

To be continued.