My Journey Toward Racial Justice

My Journey Toward Racial Justice

Written By: Kenton Self

My grandmother could put a popsicle stick in the ground and in time it would grow popsicles.

Well, not quite, but she did have quite the green thumb, so as the grandson of Mamie Wagliardo, I spent a lot of time with her digging in the dirt. One of the lessons she instilled in me is that if you want to get the dandelion out of the yard, you can’t just break it off at the stem, you have to pull it from the roots.

Pulling dandelions takes a certain skill that one does not acquire on the first attempt. If the ground is too hard, it has to be softened. It’s frankly a whole lot easier to break the stem. When the yard is freshly mowed you can’t see a solitary dandelion that was cut off at the same height as the grass around it. You can pretend it’s gone. But it’s still there. Give it time, and those roots will eventually pop up another ugly dandelion.

The Journey Toward Racial Justice is an initiative of the North Texas council of the UMC.  It  was created in order to “create disciples of Jesus Christ who are courageously anti-racist in a broken and hurting world.” AUMC is committed to getting this initiative off the ground and to pilot the program. We are developing the program as we go through it. We are working out the kinks. No, not the kinks in the program (well, we ARE working out the kinks in the program, but that’s not the point of this) We are working out the kinks in ourselves.

I grew up in Dallas. My family has been in this city for generations. When I was going into the sixth grade, Dallas ISD started a desegregation process that bussed students from minority schools to white schools. A lot of my peers moved out of the district that summer.

We didn’t. We stayed.

It was messy. I didn’t have a mindset that welcomed people that didn’t look like me. I told jokes that were inappropriate. I harbored resentment against classmates of color who exhibited talents and intelligence I didn’t have. The roots were deep. The ground around the dandelion was hard. 

Over time, I was able to see the ugliness that I carried and of the system of racism I lived in. I’ve seen how my friends of color had to (and still have to) navigate the world by different rules than I  was afforded by my white privilege. I wanted to be a part of the solution. In my attempts to do better I have seen a bunch of ugly broken dandelion stems in my right hand. I have done well at keeping the grass mowed. But dandelion roots run deep.

There is a lot to say about the Journey to Racial Justice program. The reading, the conversation, the invaluable partnership with Hamilton Park UMC, the events... We are doing a lot to help soften the ground. One moment in particular, though, stands out for me.

We recently took a tour of Dallas that highlighted the “Hidden History” of race. There were 90 of us in two buses from both Arapaho and Hamilton Park, sitting together and hearing stories many of us had never heard before. The last stop, though, was a story I knew. The last stop was Forest Avenue/James Madison High School. It’s an ugly episode within Dallas' racial past, when African-Americans began moving into a predominantly white neighborhood around Fair Park. (This article  tells the story of the school.)

When my mom was a girl, her family lived in that neighborhood. My uncle and aunt graduated from that high school.  My aunt still has vivid memories of living there and she has shared them with me often. When our tour stopped in front of that building, I felt a connection to the story, to the neighborhood, to the history, and to the system of supremacy that still inhabits that area and our whole city.

We have a long way to go. We have a lot of work to dismantle the system. It takes time and intention to soften the ground and pull the dandelions out. It takes active listening to the stories of others. The Journey to Racial Justice offers us an opportunity to move the story forward. I’m thankful to be a part of it.

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Healed People Heal People

Healed People Heal People

By Lindsay O’Connor

Father Richard Rohr says that great love and great suffering are avenues for transformation. Nowhere in my life have the two been more entwined than in motherhood. They arrived on my doorstep like a whirlwind pulling me in and catching me up in a disorienting swirl of joy and pain. I came to the end of myself as I faced how little control I had over my body, my feelings, my mental health, my schedule, and the tiny lives that began (and one that ended) within my very own body. The chaotic, messy, holy intersection of shame and motherhood is where God met me. 

In his book Abba’s Child, Brennan Manning talks about “the imposter,” also known as the “false self.” The imposter is made up of the parts of ourselves of which we are ashamed. I saw myself in Manning’s story of realizing that he had been projecting his negative feelings about himself onto God. He suggests that we bring our whole selves—including our imposter— before God. The imposter needs to be loved, not condemned, in order to be healed.

I was first introduced to this idea when I was in the throes of new motherhood, grappling with the shame I had attached to my anxiety and postpartum depression. Timidly at first, when I began to notice the parts of myself I wish I could change, I practiced bringing my whole self to God. I expected to be reprimanded and corrected, but that was not my experience at all.

When I sat quietly before God, opening up my whole self, I found myself held in perfect Love. I felt waves of compassion and healing wash over me. Instead of trying to fix me, God seemed to want to envelop me in Love—in God’s very Self. When I am sad, angry, jealous, or afraid, sometimes God’s comforting, strengthening presence is palpable. Other times, I sense God gently asking me a question, inviting me to discover the root causes of my feelings instead of trying to push them away. 

I became more aware of the shame that had plagued me and had intensified in the midst of my mental health struggles. For years, I had felt like something was missing in my relationship with God. Finally, I began to develop the intimacy with God for which I had been striving. I discovered that surrender and vulnerability, not striving for perfection, drew me in closer. I learned to expect grace and compassion, in place of condemnation, from my Creator.

As my relationship with God began to heal, so did my relationship with my self. I started questioning the old ways I had understood the Bible and Christianity that were not aligned with the breathtaking beauty and compassionate Love that I was getting to know through personal experience. God modeled nonjudgmental curiosity and compassion toward me that I have been practicing extending to myself. When uncomfortable feelings arise, I pause to notice them and let myself become curious about their origins. Often, when I unearth the answer, the result is deeper self-compassion that allows me to ask for the real healing that I need.

The process of healing is on-going, but occasionally, I see guideposts that illuminate how I have changed. In the midst of this reorienting season, we made the difficult decision to leave our church home of ten years. One Sunday morning, I found myself at a new church, scrolling through my phone instead of listening to the sermon. Frustrated with myself for not paying attention, I focused back in on the pastor’s words. I heard him describing the crucifixion of Jesus in horrifying detail. A large portion of the sermon emphasized how undeserving we are of Jesus’ sacrifice. I kept finding myself distracted, when I realized that I was trying to cope with mounting anxiety. As the shame-based preaching reached a crescendo, my anxiety continued to rise until the thought sprung to the forefront of my mind: I can’t be here. 

Sitting and listening to that sermon felt like voluntarily re-entering a jail cell from which I had been released. I breathed in the fresh air of my newfound belovedness and knew that I could not go back.

Shame—the feeling that we are unworthy of love and connection with God and others— is so intolerable, it sends us into self-protection mode. Scripture says that we will know things by their fruit, and the rotten fruit of shame manifests as behaviors that are destructive to our relationships with God, others, ourselves, and creation.

The healing I have experienced in my relationship with God and with my self impacts my relationships with others. When my worthiness is no longer on the line, I can be more honest and vulnerable with others while maintaining healthier boundaries. I started intentionally seeking to learn from people whose life experiences are vastly different from my own. God has been leading me into the difficult, healing work of racial reconciliation. Reckoning with my own biases and complicity in systems of oppression is uncomfortable, but when I am anchored in my unconditional belovedness, I can take an honest look at the parts of myself and our society that I haven’t wanted to see. Only then can I enter into true repentance and restoration with others. 

The process has no finish line, but the fruit is abundant. I now see that God’s image bearers are so diverse because we all represent various glorious aspects of who God is. To know others—to really get to know people of all races, ethnicities, ages, gender identities, and abilities—is to know God more fully and truly. 

I believe that all good and holy work begins with the work of becoming more firmly rooted in our identity as beloved children of God. When we begin to get flashes of understanding of how lavishly we are loved, we can start to imagine what it might look like to extend that same love and grace to others and to all of creation. If the saying “Hurting people hurt people” is true, so too is the idea that healed people heal the world. In the words of William Blake, “…we are put on this earth a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love.” May we enter into the difficult, holy work of allowing God to heal us so that we might be agents of healing in a hurting world.

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About The Author:

Lindsay is a writer, mother, former teacher, and contemplative wannabe. Her writing centers on cultivating well-being in relationship to God, self, and others, with particular focus on shame resilience and racial justice. She works for a non-profit that assists with spiritual development and Enneagram work. She can usually be found with her nose in a book.

Fostering Diverse Conversations

AUMC Interview: Markus Lloyd from Threaded

Are you looking for a way to start a discussion about race, but not sure how to gather a mix of races, creeds, and nationalities to the table? Consider learning more about Threaded (www.wearethreaded.org), a program that helps foster communication and discussion in diverse small groups, among other events. Pastor Cathy sits on the Leadership Board for this group, and interviewed Executive Director Markus Lloyd this week. Have a listen, and look for upcoming information about events offered at Arapaho, joining with individuals from local Hispanic, Asian American, and Black church communities. For more information, email cathy@arapahoumc.org