Race and Religion: This Isn't a Liberal Arts Class, but I am Trying to Learn Here

We don't tend to hear very much from people who are unsure anymore.  Who don't sound and look like they know exactly what they are doing. I suspect we mostly hear from people who are faking their certainty or are too certain for their own good.  Sometimes I get worried that I get into this lecturing mode in my writing too.  Which doesn't really reflect me, because I  connect most deeply with reading, listening to and watching stories about people who are unsure and are finding their way.  So today, I am going to write a little bit about a place I am finding my way.

I think this is going to be a blog about my spiritual path and how it relates to racism.  Let's get started and see where this goes.

I don't know how to talk about racism.  I don't feel like an expert or academic when it comes to race or ending racism.  I do have a gut feeling that the degradation of human beings by other human beings is a cancer on the whole of humanity.  I do know that I was in an emotionally abusive relationship and I see many parallels between the way that relationship functioned and the way white people and people of color function together here in the United States.  I do believe - again this is a gut instinct, an intuition - that healing race relations is integral to healing the world and the earth.  It is part of us, right here, right now, trying to leave the world a healthier, more whole and beautiful place than when we got here.  

Two weeks ago at the Unitarian Universalist church I attend, a guest speaker gave the sermon for Earth Day.  Reverend Daniel Gould, from Missouri Faith Voices, spoke about the joy that is being a member of this human family and our love and care for our Earth, our home, and as he said, "She is groaning."  She needs our love and attention and we must  join together for that mission.  As an African American minister, he was welcomed in particular.  Our mostly white church strives toward social justice and racial equity, but the congregation does not look very diverse.  I noticed a couple of other newer faces in the crowd that day, also people of color - friends of this minister who had come to listen to and support him.

If you read my blog regularly, you know that since my divorce, I've been re-examining my church home.  I've wondered if I would find something deeper for me in a church that might be more 'traditional' in theology.  I have a minister friend who buzzes in my ear that knowing God particularly through the Bible is an important, disciplined part of really knowing God.  (I have a drill sergeant part of my personality that believes that discipline is like really important.  But I also think that part of my personality can get out of balance.  How confusing!)

At any rate, as part of that process, I have been to a variety of churches, including a few mostly African American church services.  During the time I worked in hospice, I also attended several funerals at black churches in North St. Louis City and County.  To me, there is often a different poetry in the sermons I hear in churches with black ministers.  I like that poetry.  It makes me want to cry with joy and understanding.  Is that weird?  I can't describe it fully.  That is a poetry I heard two Sunday's ago from Rev. Gould.  To write this blog, I Googled 'African American religious oratory style' and found many articles explaining the tradition and style.  Here's one The Front Porch Blog

So this week I felt energized about things happening at my church and instead of dabbling in another church's service, I went back to my usual.  I sat in the back row and sat alone, having come in kind of late.  I noticed one black lady sitting on the left aisle several rows ahead of me.  She sat alone.  I was sitting alone too.  Many thoughts went through my mind - I thought about what it must feel like to her to be one of only two or three people of color in this room.  I considered my desire to just sit alone at church and soak in a message.  I wondered what brought her here.  I thought that if I go sit by her, maybe she'll think I'm weird or overeager.  I reflected on the spiritual practice of welcome.  I thought mostly that my greatest wish for my church home (aside from being endowed with millions of dollars) in the past four years has been that we can be in fellowship with people of color, so that our Sunday mornings reflect the healing through friendship and relationship that I feel is key to healing racism.

So I moved my seat.  I sat down by this lady I didn't know.  And we extended the hand of fellowship at that time of the service.  But, after the service I made myself overcome that little shyness that I have (believe it or not, I have shyness sometimes), and I asked her about herself.  I shared that I'd been on a spiritual check-in since my divorce a little while ago.  She shared that she was on that some journey - she'd been divorced a year ago and was checking out new churches and seeing what was the best fit for her.  She'd been one of the ladies I saw sitting in the congregation on Earth Day to support her friend, Rev. Gould.  We talked about places we'd visited and we talked about fellowship, and we talked about some of our own questions and thoughts about race and religion.  Don't get me wrong - it's wasn't super deep, but it was a connection.  And I really regret not getting her number, because I bet we would have fun visiting churches together.

Growing up in St. Louis, we never talked too much about race in my family other than to say racism was wrong and my mother in particular gave us many messages about empathy.  Imagining what it would be like to get on a bus in St. Louis City when it was still dark and being 'bussed' through an hour of traffic to get to a white school far from your neighborhood and home.

There are other parts of my background that maybe factor in to why and how this just feels, by intuition, like these two things are intertwined in my life.  Maybe it's that I went to college in the South.  Maybe it's poetry.  Maybe it's a knowing of personal injustice from my own life experiences.  Maybe it's being a social worker.  Maybe it's something beyond what I can know with my brain and see and feel.

I'm just going with it.

I've been reading books and seeing movies and listening to podcasts written by African American artists.  Recently I've read The Hate U Give and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and next on my list is Their Eyes Were Watching God.  I saw Get Out and Black Panther in the past month or two.   I am sharing this, not to say, "I am doing something so right," but I am a person who believes in the power of stories and I hope that by reading stories from a different perspective, I can more deeply understand another person or people's perspective.

At this moment, I don't have a big life lesson to share with you about all of this.  This is a snapshot of something I am doing.  I don't have answers to either how to end racism or where my church exploration or spiritual searching will end up.

I am sharing this in part to 'practice what I preach'  (maybe I should have been a minister?) - meaning in this case that it's ok to not know exactly what I'm doing and I would like to encourage you to explore places in your life that you are leaning, but you don't know exactly what you're doing either.

When I don't know exactly what I'm doing, I check in with myself in a couple of ways...I ask myself if my gut instinct or intuition is leading me in a certain direction or to take a 'next step.'  I also talk with people I respect and care about to check in.  I think I'm a pretty good communicator, so I try to communicate honestly where I'm at.  I try to be open to what happens next, where the next step leads me.

Maybe writing this is a step - maybe it inches me closer to something I don't even know what it is yet. 

Maybe it's time to shut up now.  There's so much talking in this world.  The next step I know is trying to listen.