Below is a letter I shared with my Quaker meeting list serv this week — on the occasion of continued conversation about Black Lives Matter signage and steps moving forward. Someone wrote me later to say she had spent the morning dancing with her rage, resentment, and despair about racism. So I rename the post in her honor. Dance on!
Waiting Worship…By Email?!
Dear F/friends,
I love you all very much, even when I don’t enjoy your company as individuals or a group. It’s hard being around real people in deep, vulnerable ways sometimes. Love is messy and complicated and includes wounds, unintentional though they may be; that’s part of getting close to other people. Mending and re-membering ourselves, day after day, moment after moment, email after email, is simply part of what it means to be in community. It doesn’t mean we’ve failed. It means we’ve begun. Step in. With love. We can do this, Friends. I promise.
I want to encourage us to think of Bull City Quakers as — yes — a form of waiting worship. Hear what is offered as gifts from the souls of others, even when you are afraid, angry, or sad. Trust the process that each person follows to post here. Trust them to be whole in their own journey. Tend to yourself. Release expectations about how someone else “should” behave — or how their words make you feel. Your feelings are not a cause for complaint against someone else. They are simply what you feel. Acknowledge those feelings. Give them a home in your body. Be gentle with them. Befriend them, even the “icky” ones. You need them. They are part of you. They are part of your healing, whatever form is needed for you right now. Let them in. Your emotions are yours to embrace, and hold close, and be tender with.
When you feel moved to speak by a powerful emotion, consider whether you could be projecting that emotion onto on others. Give it some time. Get to know it deeply in your own body. Make friends with it. Settle yourself. Settle your body, your breathing. Give it some more time. (There are exercises to teach you to do these steps if you need them.) Then, trust yourself. Trust Spirit. Step in. Join the dance….
Acknowledge that we are all human, and make mistakes. Let it go. Breathe in, breathe out. If you find yourself judging the words of someone else as “a mistake,” let – it – go.
If you want to go deeper into someone else’s words — that don’t make sense to you — or if you are open to hearing them in a new way — try sitting with this list of cultural characteristics from Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones:
Consider whether a sense of urgency, fear of open conflict, the belief there is only right one way…the list goes on…might be at the root of your discomfort. Lean into discomfort. It is healthy. It presages change. We need change. The world is changing around us. To enter this change, we need new tools, new ways of breathing, being, living in our hearts and minds and bodies.
As someone said to me recently, “Remember your mind is not your friend. It is programmed to keep you alive. It is reactive.” Calm it down. Breathe into your heart. Find your emotions in your body. Trust. Each Other.
In the small-online memorial for Ted Purcell this weekend (we got cut off from the worship station, but we kept going anyway…) I found myself led to speak to the manner in which Ted and Julie both refused the norms of getting older, withdrawing into themselves, isolating themselves, withdrawing into Ted’s dementia. They stayed fully engaged, often at great cost — they chose life, engagement. Can we choose that too?
Yes, you are going to be uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean stop talking. It means start forgiving. Everyone. Including yourself. You are not right. No one is “right.” Only Spirit has the answers — and get this — the beauty of our faith tradition is, We Don’t Know What’s Coming Next. Our job is to welcome it. That’s right, welcome the unknown. It’s needed. It’s imperative. It’s coming whether we want it or not.
Hint: If you read a report and it feels uncomfortable to you, pause. Put yourself, insofar as you are able, in the shoes of a person with a different racial heritage than yourself. Would you feel safe at DFM right now? You are not the point. (I am speaking to my white brothers and sisters right now.) You are not the point. Care for the vulnerable is the point. Imagine what it could take to re-orient our meeting — completely upside-down if need be — to make it feel absolutely, 100% gorgeous to a Black person. That’s the invitation. We’re not there yet, Friends. Are we getting there? I believe so. I trust we will make it. But we need every single one of us to get there. We need to turn toward each other, lean into our discomfort, time and time again. Let’s come together. It’s messy, it’s powerful, but we can be brave, I know it — and, big secret here — it can even be fun and playful. For real.
I want to come together joyfully, playfully to engage in change. That means letting go of a lot of norms. That means becoming much more comfortable with conflict and reconciliation. That means trusting each other at a heart level. Let’s begin. We’re made for this moment. We can do it. Lean in.
With love, and thanks for listening!
Kirsten
PS: Start with gratitude.
Kirsten Bohl: Nature, Play, Magic 