Sending you each so much love as we navigate this particularly important - and hopefully - tipping point in history. I do not sense this is the moment to share my particular framing of reality, as a white person. So I'm using the platform I have here this month to pass on some specific resources that have been passed on to me... to listen, learn, be challenged, show up, hold safe space for and love in more meaningful ways.
If you want to have a conversation about this, and/or if you have witnessed blindspots in me, I'm here and open to hear and grow.
Let us not rush to the language of healing, before understanding the fullness of the injury & the depth of the wound.⠀⠀⠀
Let us not rush to offer a band aid, when the gaping wound requires surgery & complete reconstruction.⠀
Let us not offer false equivalencies, thereby diminishing the particular pain being felt in a particular circumstance in a particular historical moment.
Let us not speak of reconciliation without speaking of reparations & restoration, or how we can repair the breach & how we can restore the loss.
Let us not rush past the loss of this mother’s child, this father’s child…someone’s beloved son.
Let us not value property over people; let us not protect material objects while human lives hang in the balance.
Let us not value a false peace over a righteous justice.
Let us not be afraid to sit with the ugliness, the messiness, & the pain that is life in community together.
Let us not offer clichés to the grieving, those whose hearts are being torn asunder.
Instead…
Let us mourn black & brown men & women, those killed extra judicially every 28 hours.
Let us weep at a criminal justice system, which is neither blind nor just.
Let us call for the mourning men & the wailing women, those willing to rend their garments of privilege & ease, & sit in the ashes of this nation’s original sin.
Let us be silent when we don’t know what to say.
Let us be humble & listen to the pain, rage, & grief pouring from the lips of our neighbors & friends.
Let us decrease, so that our brothers & sisters who live on the underside of history may increase.
Let us pray with our eyes open & our feet firmly planted on the ground.
Let us listen to the shattering glass & let us smell the purifying fires, for it is the language of the unheard.
God, in your mercy…⠀⠀
Show me my own complicity in injustice.
Convict me for my indifference.
Forgive me when I have remained silent.
Equip me with a zeal for righteousness.⠀⠀⠀⠀
Never let me grow accustomed or
acclimated to unrighteousness.
*My yoga teacher colleague, Saeeda Hafiz (many of you on this list that have taken classes with her over the years) released this book. Buy your copy here.
“In this memoir of upward mobility through the unexpected route of yoga, a young African American woman signs up for lessons in yoga and clean eating as a sign that she has now entered the middle class. The Healing is Saeeda Hafiz’s personal, painfully honest account of facing the inner demons fed by the domestic violence, addiction, and poverty she witnessed as a child.”
*Joel St. Julien, just released his latest album "Moral Monsters" today and all the proceeds from album sales today will go to BEAM, a nonprofit serving mental and emotional needs of Black people. Buy it here - today if you can! I've been listening to it all morning, and it's lovely. Joel produced my 2011 album and is a genius of experimental sound. Here's the quote which his album was named for:
"I'm terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country. These people have deluded themselves for so long that they really don't think I'm human. I base this on their conduct, not on what they say. And this means that they have become, in themselves, moral monsters." - James Baldwin
SOME NOTES
This is by no means an exhaustive list. I am just passing on a few highlights of things that have been passed on to me and I've found helpful and/or compelled to donate to or purchase in support of dismantling white supremacy and amplifying black voices. If you want to talk more specifically any of the books, courses, organizations listed here, and/or send along other resources that aren't, feel free.
An additional note if you are reading this and also white:
It's okay to be uncomfortable, not know what to do or say, or feel inadequate. Listen and learn.
It's okay to honor your need for rest and integration and not to engage with everything on this or any list at one time. Rest, digest and show up resourced.
Spiritual bypassing and performative allyship are direct roadblocks to true healing.
Take a breath, move... feel the feels... acknowledge our privilege - including what we see and all the privilege that remains, by it's nature, unseen... own our shadows and blindspots... resource ourselves... welcome the knowing we have more to learn regardless of how much work we've done... get curious about defenses... keep showing up and learn how to do better, fail better and love better.
