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| Rev. Roz on the spiritual front-lines in Detroit |
Rev. Roz zoomed into our digital church service from Detroit a few weeks ago to bear witness to what's been going on in the Brightmoor neighborhood of Detroit where she serves as a community pastor and the executive director of Brightmoor Connection Food Pantry. Joblessness. Illegal home foreclosures. Water shut-offs. Infant mortality. Rev. Roz was describing life before the pandemic. It's only gotten worse, with high rates of Covid-19 and a city leadership lagging (and lying) about restoring running water to long-time, low-income residents. There is a re-connection fee and Rev. Roz has raised more than $25,000 to help her neighbors pay.
The day after Rev. Roz joined us on that Zoom call, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis. Since those traumatic nine minutes were caught on video and went viral, and Floyd's South Minneapolis community flooded the streets to demand justice denied, once again - sparking the largest mass national & global Uprising for Black lives in history - us white folks have been coming out of our caves. Driven by curiosity and compassion and guilt and horror, many of us desperately want to learn and change. Transformation is hard, uncomfortable work, especially when it comes to racism--which has been lodged in us for generations. White people have been conditioned to be clueless about how it works. And now: it's like we are cramming for a test. Yes: we are stunned that anti-racism is trending. We also know how this works: most will return to "normal" very soon. Anti-racist work requires a marathon mentality and, in our quest for love and good deeds, it's easy to get caught up in a sprint. We will need to pace ourselves to be in it for the long haul. Grace, tenderness and nurture are spiritual supplements that will help us stay in it when we are uncomfortable, confused and exhausted.
Over the past few months, we've played around with parables for the pandemic that wise elders, movement leaders, and co-conspirators like Detroit-based Will See and Indian author & activist Arundhati Roy have put forth. The quarantine is like a cocoon time, protecting us for our spiritual metamorphosis. The novel coronavirus is like a portal, pulling ourselves into a future of justice, dignity and liberty for all. It's also like an MRI, exposing all the broken bones of American society. The shootings of unarmed Black folks like Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd have been the rule, not the exception in this American life. Lynchings did not stop in the early 20th century. They simply took on different forms that resulted in even more justification than before.
The senseless killings of unarmed Black people magnifies the senseless treatment of Black communities as a whole. Mass incarceration and pared-down education and unfunded health, housing and transit and so much more. And now: Black people are three times more likely than white folks to contract the coronavirus. This has everything to do with systemic racism, not poor choices of individuals. Black communities are disproportionately singled out for the stripping of access to health care, nutritious food and clean air and water which create pre-existing conditions that are a death sentence if Covid-19 is contracted. Black people, in order to survive, are also disproportionately forced into unsafe and unsanitary jobs.
The protests erupting in Minneapolis and elsewhere are an invitation for the rest of us to protest too. We don't need to set fires or break glass to get the attention of those in power (from parents to pastors to Presidents to all those "creating protocol"). We can grieve. We can lament. We can put up boundaries. We can boycott. We can make demands. We can refuse to look away from the horror. We can keep learning and exposing the hidden realities that subsidize our lives. We can take our cues from Black, Indigenous and Immigrant people. This will be uncomfortable and inconvenient for many of us.
We are preparing for far more pain in the coming weeks. Here in Central Oregon, social distancing is being shunned for "normal life." An outbreak is inevitable. The cooling caution and root-deepening empathy of Winter is giving way to a bright Summer of new possibility, but also more comfort-and-convenience-driven-entitlement. At the same time, many of us are also feeling and experiencing a profound soul harvest. People are waking up to the injustice and oppression. Feeling the pain and suffering and choosing to respond with open-heartedness, repentance, soul-searching and emotional expressiveness instead of indifference, cynicism, despair or apathy. A movement is building. We sense there is a real soul capacity for sacrifice and this is going to grow in the weeks to come.
It's getting hot out there, but the cooling balm of ongoing belovedness-weaving will prevail. We simply cannot return to normal. Hope and love--in organizing, marching, making demands, putting lives on the line, sacrificing, loving each other, refusing to stay silent in the face of white supremacy, weaving Beloved Community, and committing to inventoried, dedicated, ongoing learning and practice along the Way--are leading us elsewhere. May we never underrate these forces--especially when its all we have.
So many friends have reached out for reading recommendations.
Here are a few of our anti-racist favorites at the moment:
Michelle Alexander's New York Times column from last week.
A piece on the difference between performative empathy and re-distributing power.
Ta-Nehisi Coates' LONG article on reparations. Really, it is required reading. And they have an audio version (90 minutes!).
A letter to President Obama (responding to his advocacy for police "reform") on why defunding the police is so important.
A post from our former neighbor in Detroit (a trauma therapist) on the role of shame and trauma in our spiritual work on racism.
Celebrating Casey's Bday early May!!
One of our last Lamont-Airey germ community
(non-socially-distanced) hurrahs in Milo's Backyard,
before his Dad had to go back to working from the office.
Sportin' this year's Pete De Mott Peace Trot shirt.
Our dear friend Cait De Mott Grady's family organizes a Peace Trot in Ithaca, NY
every year on Father's Day,
in honor of her Dad Peter (1/6/47 - 2/19/09).
This year was its 11th run, and on account of the pandemic,
it morphed into "run your own" from wherever you are.
.We plan to get in our 5k, in honor of Peter,
as well as both our own Dads,
sometime this week!
After an early life serving in the military during Vietnam,
Peter became a committed nonviolent disobedient resister to the U.S. war machine in the late 70's.
Here is what he wrote of this complete life course about face:
“My experience in the military convinced me of the futility of war and of the sad misallocation of resources which war making requires. In 1979 I joined the Catholic Worker movement and began to work nonviolently for justice and peace by addressing some of the root causes of poverty, unemployment and homelessness. It is the responsibility of each and every one of us to nonviolently confront our leaders who break the law with impunity, through their use of lies, deceptions and forgeries to promote and prosecute war. The law should promote life and the well being of everyone and should preserve and protect the earth and its creatures.”
Our friends,
collaborators in hosting socially distanced Lectio Divina circles around the camp fire,
and "new" neighbors (since April 1st):
The Detweiliers.
The Detweiler family keeps us entertained from our quarantine,
always a new project going on just outside our window!
We get front row seats to watch Kyle put all 3 boys to work:
building tree houses and bike pump parks,
and operating all sorts of heavy machinery...
at just 2 years old, we're pretty sure
Hank's already more skilled with a chainsaw than Tommy ;)
Pictured above: Amanda and Hankie (2),
consenting to a photo op,
after showing off his twirling skills in the day's chosen attire:
rainbow pj's and pink tutu! xo
Ever-expanding altar:
With so much to hold these days,
we have taken to placing many specific objects on our altar,
either from or representing loved ones across the country.
The range of peril and promise,
both personal and political,
being held and navigated by so many of us
often feels too great for words.
We trust these elements,
made of earth,
to hold all the many intentions, intercessions, and groanings...
for more Life, Love and Liberation to flow.
View from Tommy's "office."
Ponderosa, juniper, tree swallow, and red robin "co-workers,"
along Towarnehiooks,
make for a happier Airey household
during pandemic and quarantine.
Since we started finding separate office spaces and work rhythms,
(about 2 months ago)
Kardia Kaiomené headquarters has been running
far more fruitfully and efficiently!
We are such gloriously different creatures,
and freedom to operate by our distinctive:
lights, cues, rhythms, temperaments, and structures
has also deepened our gratitude and appreciation for one another's respective:
works, callings, and wonderfully unique and vital
ways of being in the world.
We are grateful and poignantly aware of the holding of this watershed,
loving neighbors and community, near and far,
and all the innumerable supports that make it possible for us to keep
navigating, metabolizing, and co-laboring,
in the small-yet-vital part that is ours to play,
in the globe-spanning, ongoing work of co-laboring and groaning
toward a more just and livable world.
For everyone.
May it be so.
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