Prayer of a Weary Black Woman

Last year, I had a chance to contribute to a collection of prayers written by a diverse group of Christian women. Curated by Sarah Bessey, A Rhythm of Prayer debuted earlier this year and made bestseller lists in Canada and the United States.

It is a strongly worded prayer. Modeled after the imprecatory psalms, it begins, “Dear God, please help me to hate White people.” Since it’s already circulating online, I’m including the full text below. I urge you to purchase the book as well.

Let me share a bit of background about the prayer. I wrote it in a heated moment. A White person – someone whom I would have called a friend – dropped the N-word in a casual conversation. Notice that I didn’t write it out. That’s because I don’t. I don’t say it either, especially not with a hard -er. The word is traumatic for me. I am a lifelong southerner who is only one generation removed from sharecropping. My family history is full of racial trauma. When my paternal grandfather was 7, he and his father ran away from the White South Carolina farmer for whom they sharecropped. This would have been around 1915, fifty years after the end of slavery, and they had to escape under the cover of darkness because sharecropping was just another form of slavery. Later, his family would be the second Black family to move onto his street; his children would integrate their high schools, putting their educations in the hands of racist White teachers who did not honor their potential. And that’s just one side of my family; my maternal side has similar stories, including the murder of a family member who was a civil rights activist. The N-word is not a word we use because it is a word that comes with memory, painful and traumatic memory.

So I was hella triggered when that person used the N-word. And I was already past deadline for my contribution. I could have done a lot with that rage. I could have sought vengeance, maybe putting the person on social media blast in order to try to ruin their reputation. But I didn’t. I took my rage to God as the psalmists and the prophets did before me.

I didn’t even ask God to take revenge on my enemies as the psalmists often did. I took my anger to God. I owned it. I was truthful to God about what I was struggling with, because I believe that the God who knows us intimately can handle anything we bring. I raged against the different types of White Christians who make the journey toward racial justice so hard.

But then, as the imprecatory psalms often do, I turned it. I prayed for God not to let anger and hatred overwhelm me. I asked to be able to continue to love those who hate me. I prayed to remain true to the biblical mandate for peace, justice and reconciliation even when I have very little hope of its possibility.

This is the one of the images that conservative sites are circulating.

A few days ago, a Virginia pastor decided to post multiple screenshots of my prayer on Twitter, saying, “This kind of thinking is a direct result of CRT and is completely anti-biblical.” CRT is a reference to critical race theory, which conservatives have been attacking for months. Since then, his followers and other conservatives have targeted me for attack, harassing me through email, phone, and social media. In addition, they have bombarded my institution. Multiple conservative media outlets have picked up the story.

The “critics” – a word I use lightly since this is not good-faith engagement – are willfully misinterpreting the prayer (and also critical race theory), to an extent that can only be explained by hermeneutical incompetence or willful maliciousness. This is part of a pattern of abusive behavior that is being waged largely against Black women scholars and clergy who do intersectional justice work.

In all truth, my familial and personal experiences of racism have given me thousands, maybe even millions, of reasons to hate White people. It could easily be seen as justified. And I could find biblical precedent for it.

But dammit if God hasn’t given me a different spirit, one that insists on looking for goodness and possibility, one that holds holy rage and holy hope together. Many Black women can connect to that prayer, especially those of us who labor for justice within and beyond the church. Loving people who are committed to hating us – to disenfranchising us, incarcerating us, and abusing us in myriad other ways – is hard. And still, we persist.

The prayer is below.

Prayer-weary-black-womanDownload

Resurrecting Self-Care Day 3

It’s odd when you think about it. Self-care should be the most natural thing in the world. We should be innately inclined to devoting a significant part of our time and energy to sustaining our lives – taking the time to prep, cook, and eat nutritious meals; moving our bodies in ways that challenge and restore us; getting good sleep; spending time with people who we love and who love us; spending time in prayer and meditation; and experiencing joy and pleasure.

Instead, we find ourselves fighting to carve out space and time to sustain our own lives! This is not an accident. It’s the product of living in a hyper-capitalist society built on a slave economy, where people were reduced to commodities to be exploited. This economy teaches all of us, but especially BIPOC and women, that our worth is dependent upon our productivity. It teaches us to prioritize our jobs, roles, and responsibilities over ourselves. This might make sense if most of our responsibilities were related to people who love and support us in return. But nope, capitalism devalues that, too. It teaches us to dedicate ourselves to corporate entities – corporations, universities, and yes, even churches. Even stay-at-home parents are taught to think of themselves as primarily supporting the productivity of their wage-earning partner.

Making the commitment to self-care forces a radical shift in our priorities, one that subverts the logic of capitalism. This is what Audre Lorde meant when she wrote, “I had to examine, in my dreams as well as in my immune-function tests, the devastating effects of overextension. Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference. Necessary for me as cutting down on sugar. Crucial. Physically. Psychically. Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

It is a lesson that Lorde realized after cancer had spread through her body. It was then that she realized that, because we were never meant to survive, health and survival was itself an act of defiance. Overextending ourselves, in contrast, is giving in to the logics of the capitalist empire.

Today, think about what it might mean to think of self-care as a subversive act. What messages might you be subverting in your own context? How would this benefit you and the people you care about?

Why Women of Color in Christian Social Justice Need a Retreat, and How Others Can Support

On November 14, 2015, the Christian Community Development Association will host its first (but hopefully not its last) post-conference retreat for Women of Color. A few months ago, I wrote about the need for the retreat. For 24 hours, African-, Asian-, Indigenous-, and Latina-American Christian women who are engaged in social justice, community development, and reconciliation ministry will gather together for fellowship and renewal. For some of us, it will be the first time that women of color gather across racial/ethnic lines to discuss our common needs and interests, as well as the impediments to our solidarity.

Many of us spend the vast majority of our days as racial-gender outliers. We are used to being one of few people of color in white-dominant circles, one of few women in male-dominant arenas. And we are almost always the first or only woman of color. We are the marginalized among the marginalized. We are used to walking on eggshells, filtering our words and behaviors so as not to make waves, having our opinions discounted even as people affirm how important it is for us to be present. Being a woman of color in evangelical social justice organizations is akin being a three-dimensional creature trying to live in a two-dimensional world. We’re constantly flattening ourselves. Next week, we get to take a big inhale and puff up again.

There has been some pushback. It has been outweighed, however, by the outpouring of support that we have received from White women and brothers of all races who have supported us. Several have donated scholarship funds to pay for the registration of women who want and need to be at the retreat, but who cannot afford it. Some have volunteered to handle registration and logistics to free the steering committee and women of color on the CCDA staff to attend – rather than work – the retreat. Others have spread the word about the retreat to the women in their ministries and encouraged them to attend.

We still have people asking how they can help. Below are a few suggestions.

Pray for us. Pray that the women who need to be part of this healing, safe space will get the support that they need to attend. Pray for the speakers, worship team, steering committee, and CCDA staff who will be supporting us, even as they are worn out from an already full conference schedule. Pray that the Holy Spirit will show up and do her work, that she will meet each participant where we are and give us what we need to continue.

Provide financial support. There is a waiting list of women who would like to attend but who cannot afford the registration fee ($79) or the additional hotel stay ($149). Many women of color do CCD ministry on a volunteer or part-time basis with organizations who cannot afford to pay for their attendance at the conference or the retreat. You can donate to the retreat online. Be sure to check the box at the bottom stating, “I’m donating to a specific event” and enter “WoC Retreat.” You can also call the CCDA office at 773-475-7370.

Do some self-examination. Examine your own relationships and organizations to determine how they can be more hospitable to women of color’s three-dimensional existence. Reflect upon your vision of indigenous leadership development and how dimensions of race, gender, and power may be at play. Did you think the indigeous leaders would all be male or perhaps assume that the development would be done by Whites?

Educate yourself on the needs and experiences of women of color in social justice ministry. Learn how our needs differ from those of white women and men of color. If you’re attending CCDA, go to workshops and plenaries that feature women of color talking about our experiences. There are plenty of opportunities this year, with speakers such as Alexia Salvaterria, Christena Cleveland, Rahiel Tesfamariam, Sonia Stewart, Sandra Van Opostal, Q Nellum, and Catherine Gilliard, among others. There are workshops on women’s leadership development as well as upon issues that disproportionately impact women of color, including domestic violence, human trafficking, and trauma. There is a Wednesday night art and jazz session featuring Shanequa Gay, who uses art to address issues of race, gender, and justice. On Thursday at 1:30pm, I’ll be teaching a workshop on the StrongBlackWoman. Buy and read books by and about women of color. The more you learn, the more you will understand the need for the retreat. If you still don’t understand, it’s because you haven’t learned enough, you haven’t listened enough.

Spread the word. Tell other women of color about the retreat. Ask friends and colleagues to support the retreat. Direct them to this article as well as other blogs by women of color.

Riding the Reconciliation Roller-Coaster

During my first year as a parent, I often marveled at how quickly my newborn could cycle through emotions, and how easily I was carried along the same journey. One second he would be cooing contentedly; then out of nowhere he would start crying. At times he’d be inconsolable, prompting me to burst into tears along with him. And suddenly we’d be back to happiness, both of us smiling and giggling. The entire range of emotions sometimes happened within five minutes.

The journey of racial reconciliation is a lot like that. In rapid succession, we celebrate signs of the hope of reconciliation and lament the continuing evidence of racism. We even do both at once. The emotional roller-coaster can be draining.

At this moment, I am feeling the fatigue. I am tired of the reconciliation roller-coaster. This past week has had some incredible highs. On Sunday, The Nett Church held its first preview service. I’m the discipleship pastor for this new worship community that is trying to become beloved community. It was refreshing and inspiring to be able to name that openly in the context of worship and to invite others to join us on the journey.

There’s also my ongoing racial reconciliation course. Each week I am energized by my students and their openness to engaging a difficult subject in a different way. I am grateful for their willingness to journey with a professor who is, as Dr. Gardner C. Taylor would put it, complicit in the brokenness against which she preaches. I am excited by their affirmations of the significance of the course and their grappling with how to extend their learning beyond the classroom.

If racial reconciliation were simply about focusing upon and healing past divisions, I could probably bask in the promise and possibility of these experiences. I wouldn’t have to also confront the fear and anger that comes from passing the full-size confederate flag that a neighbor (about 1/4 mile down the road) posted at the edge of their front lawn last week. Technically, it’s the old Georgia flag, which pisses me off even more because if they’re gonna make a statement, they should just do it.

Nor would I have to keep getting angry with white people – especially so-called liberals – telling me that I don’t know when I’m experiencing racism: the neighbors who told me it wasn’t about race last year when a white man aggressively tailed and photographed an African American woman visiting my home for the first time on the very same block where the flag now stands; the psychology colleagues who insisted that “You speak English very well” is not an example of a racial microaggression in last week’s continuing education workshop on diversity.

Sometimes I wish I could utter the prayer of Gethsemane: Lord, if it be thy will, take this desire for reconciliation from me. But having been seduced into God’s mission of reconciliation, I could not, even if I wanted to. So I keep pressing forward, training my gaze to focus on the visible signs of hope as I endure the pain of the struggle.

And when that fails, it’s time to get a massage.

A Lament for #KellyGissandaner

Photo credit: Ann Borden, Emory Photo Video

At 12:21am on Wednesday, September 30, the state of Georgia put Kelly Gissandaner to death via lethal injection. It was the third time that Gissandaner’s execution had been scheduled, the others having been delayed. Like many others, I’d hoped for a clemency decision by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. When that failed, I prayed for a last-minute intervention by Governor Nathan Deal. Neither happened.

State execution by any means is fundamentally incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When it comes to issues of divine retribution, justice, and forgiveness, many Christians are incredibly egocentric. When we aggrieve others, we lean on texts such as Romans 3:23: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We even get extrabiblical: “God knows my heart.” But when it comes to the sins of others, especially those sins that we cannot imagine ourselves committing, suddenly God’s forgiveness and mercy has limits. It becomes a purely eschatological reality. But God’s forgiveness is not just about us and the people we love. God’s gift of life is not restricted to the innocent, to unborn babies. What does it cost us to care for the lives of those who are like us, those who are innocent? As Jesus teaches us, even sinners can do that (Luke 6:32-36).

The Gospel calls us to extraordinary –indeed, seemingly impossible– grace toward sinners like Kelly. I admit, it would be comforting to believe that the folks who hurt me will get their “eye for an eye” comeuppance. But Jesus turns that law upon its head:

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”  They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin” (John 8:3-11 NIV).

Last night, the state of Georgia stoned a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery, a woman who had conspired with her lover to kill her husband. There is no doubt that she had done wickedness. There is also no doubt that, at some point during her 17 years in prison, she heard the voice of Jesus saying, “Go now and leave your life of sin.” Those who encountered her in prison provide many testimonies of her obedience to that voice and her impact upon their lives.

Three times the people of Georgia were given a chance to examine ourselves and put down our stones. May God have mercy upon us for our disobedience.