Seeing Color

 When George Floyd was so tragically murdered in May 2020 at the hands of his local law enforcement, turning the spotlight yet again on the hideous history of racism in our country, I heard over and over the phrase, “But I don’t see color.”

It is, in many ways, a hopeful sentiment and, on some level, one to be respected. Of course we are to afford one another equal treatment, regardless of color of one’s skin. Isn’t that what Martin Luther King, Jr. longed for? That one day his children would not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character.

But the problem is that when we say, “I don’t see color,” what we are really saying is, “I don’t see YOU.”

We cannot divorce a person’s color(or gender or ethnic identity) from the experiences that have formed them. It is naive, at best.

When I say that I don’t see color, then I say that I don’t see that you are Black. And if I say I don’t see that you are Black, then I am free to dismiss your life experience, your culture, your world. I can live in my vacuum, seeing things only from my perspective, without ever having to step into your shoes and see through your eyes.

Which got me thinking about DEI...

This is one of the reasons that embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion is so important.

What if…what if DEI is less about giving someone an opportunity and more about recognizing that that person brings something valuable to the table that we don’t have.

When we think of DEI we think of us doing them a favor, with us being the dominant demographic. The one with the power. In our country with our culture and our history, "us" has been the white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied person.

We think that we are being nice and lowering the bar so that those who don’t fit the mold can have a chance. And I’m sure that perhaps that has happened in some instances because sometimes somebody does need a more gradual entrance ramp, sometimes literally.

But I have also heard that DEI hires have to work harder. And I can certainly see this being the case what with perceptions and all. (I certainly know how hard it can be for a woman to be heard and taken seriously in a space dominated by men.)

But, what if….what if there’s more to DEI. What if the real point of DEI has less to do with giving the marginalized a chance and more to do with welcoming and embracing and even needing what they bring to the table.

You may see yourself as a hero for opening the job to a minority, but without the viewpoint of that particular person, your team might be handicapped.

If every employee within a workplace, be it military or civilian, is of the same demographic…white, straight, male…it is likely that each employee is bringing a very similar life experience to the table. One that may be shared by other straight, white men but one very foreign to the rest of the population.

A home inspector once told me about a situation where he and a pest inspector were in a very tight crawlspace under a house. They were both looking for signs of pest damage, mold, or anything else of particular concern. Because the space was so tight, they could look ahead at the floor joists in front of you, but couldn’t look behind them to see the other side of the joists. So the inspector crawled through the space clockwise and the pest inspector crawled counterclockwise and that way they were able to inspect both sides of the floor joists.

We need people who have seen life from a different perspective. We need people who have experienced life crawling counterclockwise, if you will.

If you think about it, the whole anti-DEI thing is pretty arrogant. You are saying, “I don’t need that perspective.”

Yes, you do. We all do. We all need the perspective of someone not like us. And that starts with seeing that they are not like us (seeing their color) and valuing that.

Wendell Berry said, “You have to be able to imagine lives that are not yours.”

What better way to do that than to give them a seat at the table.

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Room to Breathe

A while back, I’m not sure how much of a while back, whether it was before or after Helene, but a while back my husband came home from the grocery store with food and milk and something else: a plant.

It was a small plant in a small plastic pot. I set it in the window where it sat over the winter, surviving frigid blasts through our poorly insulated windows and stretches of drought from my own negligence. It sat and it grew, a little, but not much.

Last month I decided to move it outside. I pulled out a large, clay pot that already had old soil in it and plunked the plant down in the crumbly dirt. Within a couple of weeks it had grown three times in size. I was stunned. Not that it grew, but that it grew so much.

Who knew that a little plastic pot could be so limiting?

Maybe I did.

I know what it’s like to be in an environment, a system, that supports me and holds me up but also holds me back and doesn’t allow me to grow.

Some people like rigid rules and structure that tells them what to do and when to do it, what to believe and just when your belief has slid off the edge into unacceptable (if not heresy). They like a world filled with black and white, yes and no, good and bad. Where there is a right and there is a wrong and it is up to you to tow the right line. It is a life of calculus, an engineer’s dream. Fit inside the formula and it works. Get one digit off and the whole house of cards comes down.

But while bridges and skyscrapers and rockets to the moon rely on precision in both calculation and application, plants are different. And people are different. Well, at least, I’m different.

Throw a formula at me and I panic. Expect precision, perfection, and performance out of me and I crumble. Stifle me with a strident set of “shoulds” and I wither and die.

A few years ago, after decades within the conservative evangelical church, I articulated this: that I think I might actually do better somewhere with looser rules and expectations and beliefs, where I am free to add the structure I need to my relationship with God without the suffocating blanket of somebody else’s definition of “right” and without the expectation that I can and should have all the answers.

For the past two years I have been in that place of freedom. I got here the hard way but perhaps, for me, the only way. I got here through pain. Then again, not many of us leave faith communities for the sheer fun of it.

But it has been good. So good. God is no longer The Great ‘You Must’ in the sky. He’s bigger and wider and broader and totally capable of handling me with all my questions and pathologies and doubts and insecurities and quirky ideas and maybe even turn all those things into something good, something useful, maybe even something beautiful.

I finally have the space to grow at my own pace and into my own person.

I have room to breathe.

Here's hoping that my growth can be as fruitful as that of my little plant who just needed a bigger pot to thrive.

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It's Getting Personal

 It's getting personal, people.

So far, as I have watched in horror the dismantling of the democracy we’ve known for 250 years, it has been as someone who isn’t directly affected. Not yet, anyway. And, as I’ve said before, l don’t have personal expertise or experience in foreign policy or economics or budgetary cuts or the rule of law.

But with the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, we are now moving into my territory. Things are getting personal.

I’m deeply concerned that a man with no medical training and with a penchant for pseudoscience is in charge of our nation’s health.

I’ve read the Executive Order “Establishing The President’s Make America Healthy Again Commision” and, quite frankly, there is language in that order that is alarming. In Section 5, the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment, paragraph (iii) states: “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs;”

Assess the prevalence of and THREAT. It’s the word threat that is alarming. It is the fact that the use of medications for the management of mental health conditions and neurodivergence is of such concern that it is put into an executive order. And it is coming at the hands of a man who claims that SSRIs are “more addictive than heroin.”

I’ve been watching this administration for 31 days now. Navigating complex issues and gray areas is not their forte. Or their MO. They take a scorched earth approach to pretty much everything they touch. Black and white. All or nothing. And they don’t back down.

So when I see various psych meds being mentioned as a potential threat I know what is likely coming. A vilification of psych med use and a potential ban altogether (I'll talk about the implication for us adults in another post).

And this is where I can talk with confidence from experience. I say this as a person who, at age 11 was diagnosed with anxiety and depression (and would have been diagnosed with OCD had it been a diagnosis in 1975). I say this as a person who was put on her first antidepressant at age 12.

I say this as the mother whose various children struggled with anxiety, depression. OCD, and ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder. I say this as the mother who had to fight to get them help. I say this as the mother who regrets not fighting harder. I say this as the mother who did too little, too late. I say this as the mother who saw the vast difference an SSRI made in one child’s ability to “unstick” from an obsession and the way a stimulant enabled another child to focus in school and quit believing himself to be stupid.

I say this as the grandmother of a child with an anxiety disorder, ADHD, and dyslexia and a heap of trauma and all the complexities that go with that.

I know meds are considered bad. I know that Big Pharma is the boogie man that we all love to hate. But there is a time and a place for medication.

Psych meds are a tool, not the only tool, but sometimes a necessary tool, when addressing mental health challenges. Sure, it would be great if kids got therapy of various and all sorts. But have you ever had to find a therapist for a child? The process is long and hard and maddening and so damn expensive, even if you have insurance. (In some areas, a therapist who works with children is nonexistent.) It can take months to get in with a therapist only to discover she is going out on maternity leave. Or moving away. Or will no longer take your insurance. The good ones are "no longer accepting clients."

Have the use of these meds increased over the years? Absolutely! But so has the diagnosis of various mental health conditions, thanks to our better understanding of the brain and neurodivergence and how these conditions present themselves (especially in females). And I am thankful for this. In the “good old days” so many of these kids would have been labeled as bad or disobedient or rebellious or just plain weird. Today we know better.

So, should RFK, Jr. and his posse decide that children should no longer be prescribed SSRIs, stimulants, and the like, what are we going to do?

How are we going to support these kids who are anxious or depressed or obsessing or so scattered mentally that they can’t focus on school? How are we going to let them know that they aren’t broken? How are we going to accommodate them?

And how are we going to support their parents? Because it is a hard, HARD road. No parent should be scorned for getting their child the help that’s needed. And no parent should be villainized for having a child who needs help in the first place.

I had so hoped this younger generation would not have to suffer the stigma of mental health conditions. I’m afraid they will. Perhaps worse.

Medication is a tool. Sometimes a good tool. Sometimes the ONLY tool available. Taking that away is going to cause a lot of harm.

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On Suffering and Entitlement

 Over the past few months I’ve had a nagging thought that has gradually taken shape and come to fruition at a time when I have desperately needed it. 

It all started back when Helene blasted her way through our community and so many of us were just in this space of getting through to the next thing. And it made sense. There is certainly part of a natural disaster that really is nothing short of survival, hoping upon hope that things will indeed get better. 

And yet I realized how often we are holding out and holding on for dear life. Take parenthood, for instance. We hold on in the newborn stage, hoping upon hope that one day we’ll sleep again. Then we get to toddlers and can’t imagine being able to grocery shop in peace, minus the adorable octopus of a child who makes mad grabs at anything within reach. Eventually we get to adolescence, that stage where we truly think that there is such a thing as Death by Parenthood and they tell us that we just have to make it until they are out the door. And then, per one local rector, we receive this little nugget of parenthood wisdom: “The first forty years are the hardest.” 

Do we ever get there? 

We are so often holding out for better days ahead, just white knuckling our way through. But those better days are not a guarantee. Sometimes one kind of hard replaces another. And sometimes it just lands on top of the already hard and we start dealing with layer upon layer of hard, an existential parfait of life’s little and big challenges.

So a while back I realized that maybe, just maybe, we would be better off accepting the hard as the normal and not some blip on the radar that will disappear when the life we want, the life we think we are owed, shows up. 

Last month I listened to Kate Bowler’s interview with Rev. Sam Wells, vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. He talks of his mother’s very hard life, as a refugee of the Holocaust, as a mother who lost two children shortly after birth, and then as a woman battled cancer for 14 years before her death at age 53. 

As Kate spoke with him she said: “...I realized that so much of your tenderness in your personality comes from this place of knowing where I don’t have to explain to you that sometimes life is difficult and people go through personal tragedy because it’s a part, it’s life woven into who you are.”

His response was what got me: “..I think when people approach something like suffering… it’s all about what you think the normal story is…I’m firmly convinced we live our lives in stories and the story of suffering for somebody who thinks they are born with some sort of entitlement to a life of a certain security and well-being and health and modest success…If that’s their implied story, then suffering is made of up of why me? This is a terrible scar…So the default in our household was never, you know, why doesn’t it work out for us?”

The word ‘entitlement’ stuck with me. 

One definition of entitlement from Oxford Languages is “the belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.” 

Fast forward to the election, the inauguration, and the past two weeks of executive order upon executive order and news stories and developments coming so fast it’s like trying to drink out of a fire hose to keep up. And everywhere I see the dismantling of our national government and the very real possibility of the loss of our democracy, our freedom, and life as we know it. 

And part of me, at times all of me, wants to panic or cry or flee the country altogether. But there’s another thought that comes to mind. 

Who am I to believe that I am entitled to a life free of suffering and oppression? 

Well, let me backtrack…I would be the first to say that there is certainly a lot of suffering that can and does happen within the bounds of a free society and I have had my share (and probably written about it ad nauseam). And I will also be the first to say we should do everything in our power to protect our free society and fight oppression in any and all forms. 

But I also recognize that I have not experienced oppression the way so many have throughout the whole of human history. I have not personally encountered pogroms or massacres, slavery or feudalism. I have not had to watch my own husband or son go off to war or had my home burned by the enemy forces. I have not, as some of Matt’s ancestors did, buried nine of my twelve children before they reached adulthood. And I have not, as all four of my great grandmothers did, died prematurely due to lack of vaccines or basic antibiotics. I, and those I know and love, have not spent time in prison for my political or theological beliefs and I have not been attacked for the color of my skin. 

I have not had to run. I have not had to hide. And while I certainly know what it is like to be dismissed and ignored, patronized and even scorned because of my gender; I am a white, Anglo-Saxon (with some German, Dutch, and a hair of some other things mixed in for variety’s sake), Protestant, middle-class, straight, educated person, I have never been discriminated against based on my color, ethnicity, education, orientation,  or socioeconomic status.   

Perhaps it has all been too easy. Perhaps we are about to learn what so many others throughout time have known, that there are no guarantees on freedom or safety. That at any time and in any place we could come face to face with oppression. Maybe it is time for us to learn the lessons that our Black brothers and sisters have learned, passed down, generation to generation, from their ancestors in shackles at the hands of mine, or at least those who looked like me. Maybe it is time to learn from my Jewish brothers and sisters, who learned from their parents and grandparent, great grandparents and aunts and uncles what it is like to be in hiding, to depend on the kindness of neighbors for a hope of safety and a life ahead. Maybe it is time to learn from my indigenous brothers and sisters what it is like to have what is rightfully theirs taken from them, and done so, as it often was, in the name of God. 

Maybe it is time to stop hoping for better days to come and start embracing the days that are now. Maybe the good days made us lazy and entitled, leaving us with the expectation that life owed us something. Maybe the good times led to too much independence from each other and reliance on all the things that our driven, white, middle class, American culture values: money, stuff, success, and a house worthy of HGTV. 

So this is what I’m thinking: We aren’t guaranteed anything. We shouldn’t be surprised when the hard times come.

Should we do what we can when we can to push back against oppression and seek to have a free and just society for all? 

ABSOLUTELY!

But there may be times when all we see is the hard and in that hard we are called, per Micah 6:8,  to do the most basic of things: Do justice. Love mercy. And walk humbly with our God. 

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Patience with Mess

 It has been 82 days since the worst storm to hit Western North Carolina in recorded history roared through our lives, dumping upwards of 30+ inches of rain in some areas, causing rivers and creeks to leap their banks and engulf houses and business and roads and bridges, triggering over 2000 landslides, and damaging or destroying an estimated 40% of the trees in Buncombe County alone. It left a mess. A devastating mess.

Word on the street is that only 5% of the debris has been picked up so far. The entire cleanup will likely take years. 

The reality is that there is mess and there will be mess. For a long time. 

It can be hard to look at mess. We equate mess with laziness or poverty or litter bugs. We equate it with people who don’t care and even assume that messiness is somehow a measure of the character of a people. So when that mess is staring us in the face, we want it gone. Now. 

Mess is the unfortunate reality of an event that has wrought destruction. 

The reality is that the aftermath of natural disasters isn’t all that different from the aftermath of the more personal ones. 

Traumatic events leave a field of debris that can be very hard to absorb and process. 

We want to rush past the mess. We want the cleanup to be simple, efficient, and in our time frame. We don’t want to see it any more. 

The loss of a loved one. The death of a marriage. The betrayal of a friend. The fracturing of a family. The loss of a job or a home or an entire community. Innocence taken before its time. Trust obliterated by the one you thought was trustworthy. The shattering of a dream. The list could go on.

In natural disasters there is debris. Lots of it. Debris that can take years or decades to clean up. Debris caught in trees and lodged into riverbanks of our lives. The entire landscape is often changed forever. Landslides scour the earth to the bedrock. Rivers change course. Ancient groves of trees are leveled. 

If a single storm can do this much damage to a world made of stone and earth and wood and all that has been built upon it, how much more can this storm or any storm, physical or relational or emotional, do to us humans who are made of flesh and bone and often the tenderest of hearts. 

If the physical world cannot endure a torrent of wind and rain without sustaining jaw-dropping, life altering damage, why do we think that our emotional worlds, our very souls can absorb a traumatic event and bounce back, neat and tidy, in record time. 

And why do we rush our friends and family, our coworkers and neighbors, to clean up themselves on our timetable  so we don’t have to look at their mess?

 It’s natural to want it all fixed now. But it won’t be. It can’t be. 

Our towns, our houses, our landscapes, our relationships, our hearts will all take time to heal from whatever devastation has come their way. 

Let’s be patient with each other. And with ourselves. 

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The Love of Systems

Jesus Christ did not die for our systems; he died for broken human beings who he longs to make whole so they bear his likeness. - Diane Langberg in When the Church Harms God's People

We humans love our systems. And systems can be good and necessary. But any system, even a system set up to do good and even holy things, can, over time become a distorted and even hideous version of what it set out to be. And then there are some systems, we discover in our horror, that have some pretty crappy roots to begin with.

We humans love our systems. They bring us a sense of order. If we make our way up the ladder, our systems bring us a sense of pride and accomplishment. They give us a purpose. They make statements and if we agree with those statements we feel like we belong. And if we agree with those statements then we are 'right' and those who don't agree are 'wrong.'

Our world needs order and systems bring that order into being. It is only natural that we look to those systems to make our churches function. It is only natural that we look to those systems to link arms with those who share our beliefs and then figure out how to govern churches and their members.

But we have a problem when the system itself is king. We have a problem when the system no longer looks out for the best interest of those within it. We have a problem when the system no longer looks like Jesus.

Part of my spiritual journey over the past 10 years has been grappling with the failure of these systems. I've been in three different churches in three different denominations and in all three I saw the system, the agenda, the 'way we do things' bring unspeakable harm to the humans seeking fellowship and a shepherd. And in all three situations I tried to seek some level of accountability and in all three situations was met with silence. (Maybe I'm the wrong gender to get the job done.)

I don't know what to do with this.

People say to me 'no church is perfect' and 'we're all sinners, after all' and things like that. And to that I will say that that is no excuse for harming those within your care and often harming them IN THE NAME OF GOD.

So it was with great relief that I read Langberg's words this morning. It isn't just me. She, perhaps that woman I respect more than any other, she sees it, too. And she is calling it out.

When we pledge our loyalty to any person or any system we are in danger of running roughshod over another human being created in the image of God. And there is nothing like Jesus about that.

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Lean In

I have tried, for the most part, to avoid political posting on Facebook. I have friends across the spectrum. I am not one to debate or argue. But there does come a time to speak.

This election came at a hard time anyway. Or perhaps it was an easier time. After all, I was already in disaster mode.

This is the second major disaster I have experienced in 6 weeks time. I live in Swannanoa, NC, one of the epicenters of destruction from Hurricane Helene. My life and my family and my community and my livelihood have all been significantly impacted. I was just starting to come out of the post-disaster fog when came the election.

I will be totally honest here. I do not want to endanger my relationship with those who voted differently, but the reality is that I'm horrified. I am so afraid for what this means for the dignity and safety of women, the Black community, the LGBTQ population, and immigrants. I am afraid for what this means for healthcare. I am afraid for what this means for the freedom to disagree with power without consequences. I know this means that this could be the end of our country as we know it.

And yet, as I have seen with a natural disaster and I am experiencing yet again with the horror of this election, communal trauma is so different from personal trauma. In a disaster, the entire community is experiencing this together. And with this election, you have pretty much half the country in collective horror over the results.

That "me, too" is so key.

I believe the isolating factor of abuse is by far the most painful. This is why the "don't talk" rule within churches is damaging. And think of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (look up ACE score). These are all personal. They are often secret. And they are all coated in shame. The child is powerless and alone.

Powerless and alone. This is the essence of trauma.

Here we are with a disaster. A national disaster. A disaster for women. For the LGBTQ community. For the Black community and people of all colors other than white. For immigrants.

We may feel powerless. We may BE powerless. But we are not alone. We are in this disaster TOGETHER. And we must stick together.

A part of me wants to give into fear and run down the rabbit trail of the worst case scenarios (and I have a very good Worst Case Scenario generator in my head). But another part of me knows that there is way too much work to do.

A few days ago I wrote a post about my need to not look away from the destruction in my community. After that, a friend shared a phrase she heard. "We can look away or we can lean in."

Let us take some time to grieve. But then we have a job to do. We need to, we must, lean in.

We lean in and listen to those who are afraid.

We lean in and defend those who are oppressed.

We lean in and offer light and hope to those flattened by despair.

We lean in and include those who are cast out.

We lean in and treat with dignity those who are marginalized.

We lean in and speak words of truth and courage in the face of tyranny.

We lean in and love in a country being led by hate.

We lean in and make friends and neighbors of those who are called the enemy.

Come on, people, we've got work to do.

We lean in and do justice.

We lean in and love mercy.

We lean in and walk humbly with our God.

(Micah 6:8)

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