Who speaks for Ferguson?
Plaidshoes, a twenty-year resident of the St. Louis area, is frustrated by opinionated outsiders and “agitators.”
I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to hear people pontificating on the circumstances of Ferguson when they don’t even live in the area. Ferguson, and the St. Louis metro area as a whole, is complicated. I have lived here twenty years and I am sure I don’t have a full grasp of all the nuances, especially in terms of race and class. . . . We aren’t going to get the answers with everyone distorting the truth—especially from those who aren’t from the area. I can only pray that the agitators back down so that the true work of justice can begin. (Everyday Unitarian, August 20)
Kim Hampton, with a longer family history in St. Louis, disagrees with Plaidshoes.
White Ferguson is living their life as if nothing has really changed all that much. . . . So while I understand Plaidshoes’ wish that the ‘agitators’ (a loaded term) would stop stirring up things, from my side of the divide, without those agitators Michael Brown would have been just another black kid who got killed by the police for doing nothing other than being black in a public space. (East of Midnight, August 20)
The Rev. Susan Maginn has deep family roots in the Ferguson area.
Here we are, all of us, the whole nation, the whole world looking at Ferguson, Missouri and feeling these questions arise that really have no answer. Are the decades and centuries of racial injustice just too heavy to completely heal? Are the echoes of ancestral sins so painfully loud that the best we can do is to move away from each other, to live in different parts of town, to steal from each other, to imprison and kill each other. . . ?
We look at Ferguson today and we see how real and unsettling these questions are. We see how easy it is for most of us white people to just move away from these questions if we want to. But not today. Even if you have never stepped foot in Missouri, for today at least, Ferguson is your messy ancestral home too. (Quest for Meaning, August 15)
Liz James admits that she understands “nothing about what it’s like to be a black person on the streets of Ferguson.”
Privilege does not call me to try to switch roles and become like the oppressed. That doesn’t work, and also it seems to me that the main point of that would be to make myself feel like a better person. When I say I don’t know what I am talking about, I don’t mean that I should feel bad for that. I mean that I should recognize it, so that I will channel my rage, guilt, frustration, and sadness in the right ways. Into learning about the things that I have realized I don’t know.
We are not called to become guilt-ridden. We are called to become useful. (Rebel with a Labelmaker, August 21)
We will never get used to it
Lena Gardner writes that she will never “get used to” the stress of police harassment.
Someone on Facebook said they are just so tired of hearing Black people ‘complain’ about the police. There are many responses one could have to that, but my response is this: We will never get used to it. We will never get used to the police killing our children when the police could make another choice that would mean life instead of death. (Spirit, Soul and Journeying, August 18)
Karen Johnston takes “the Ferguson challenge”—talking to an African-American taxi driver about “what life is really like in this country from the lived experience of a person of color.” (irrevspeckay, August 21)
The big picture
Kim Hampton looks at Ferguson in light of the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac.
Slavery created a dynamic in this country that not enough people want to recognize. Just like Hagar and Ishmael there is the misuse and abuse of black bodies and then the discarding of them as if they were the problem.
America, like Abraham, sacrificed one child for another. And just like Abraham, America has to live with the consequences of that decision. (East of Midnight, August 19)
Doug Muder provides an overview of the subtle (and not-so-subtle) forms of racism at work in Ferguson.
“This is a test,” Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said. But it’s not just the people of Ferguson or the police or Nixon himself who are being tested this week. It’s all of us. As we watch events unfold, in how many ways do they just look different because of race? How hard is it to back up, re-examine our initial framing, and ask ourselves what we’d be thinking if race were not a factor? (The Weekly Sift, August 18)
The Rev. Peter Boulatta calls Ferguson an American intifada.
To be sure, it is not a perfect analogy, but the sight of popular civilian protests facing off against an army firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowds, training their automatic weapons on civilians as they patrolled the streets in helmets and camouflage, seemed apropos. (Held in the Light, August 20)
Enough already
The Rev. Theresa Novak, tired of preventable pain, says, “Enough already.”
Everyone must die
Pain is part of life
We can’t do much
About earthquakes
And only some about disease
But we are here
To make it better
Not worse
Enough already (Sermons, Poetry, and Other Musings, August 18)
The Rev. Dawn Cooley struggles with feeling powerless about Ferguson.
So many of us are hurting, overwhelmed by the issues going on in Ferguson and elsewhere around the country. We may want to just ignore it, but since it is not going away, we get drawn in.
Our pain is a testament to our interconnection. We hurt, seeing and hearing about these events, because we know we are connected to those who are suffering, in Ferguson and beyond. We have an innate capacity for compassion, to want to reduce suffering if we can. And right now, many of us feel impotent. “What can I do about it?” we may ask ourselves. (Speaking of, August 20)
The Rev. Dr. David Breeden tends to be cynical about change, but hopes smart phones might make a difference.
The new technology brought about the Arab Spring, and it might—it could—begin to dismantle the current US system of black oppression.
Violence against this systematic oppression is not the answer. Neither is a brief paroxysm of national outrage. The violence will stop only when we the people catch the acts and put them on television and across the web. . . .I can’t speak for the people across the river in Missouri, but this white guy, a descendent of Confederates and white supremacists, would like to see an end to the violence and oppression. (Quest for Meaning, August 21)
Faces of depression
Liz James joins the conversation about mental health, hoping that her story helps to decrease stigma.
Mental health ebbs and flows. We do not heal from what is wrong in order to become amazing, talented, happy creatures. There are all these stories of terrible pain and they are carried by people who are so awe inspiring in their skill, generosity, and general awesomeness. And that kind of makes the world a swirling tragedy, but it also kind of makes it filled to the brim with crazy punch drunk un-suppressible hope.
I am both.
I am guessing you are too.
The world is a miracle that way. (Rebel with a Labelmaker, August 18)
The Rev. Marilyn Sewell acknowledges her struggle with depression, and describes how depression feels.
We go through the day encased in a bubble, untouched by the life moving all around us. Ordinary sadness can be punctured by beauty, grief by hope. But depression disallows the small joys that coax others into wanting to get up another day. We can describe the sunset, but we can’t experience the sunset. We know people care, but no one can reach us. We are outcast, forsaken, a canker sore on the body of the community. We just want the pain to end. (HuffPo Religion, August 18)
Relentless usefulness, radical love
The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Landrum hopes that the UUA will re-envision Donald Skinner’s goal of being “relentlessly useful.”
Create branding, yes, but create the websites, the newsletters, the pamphlets, the print ads, the Facebook photos for us to use it on. Help our churches by doing payroll for us and free us up from the back-office work, much like you help us with our endowments with the Common Endowment Fund. Free up our congregations to do what they do best. (The Lively Tradition, August 16)
Justin Almeida feels called by faith, vocation, and impending fatherhood to learn “radical love.”
My first child will be born around Christmas this year. My partner and I didn’t know if we could conceive. Now a baby is around the corner and the world is suddenly smaller because it is filled with baby-potential. And just like I would hate to have somebody come over with a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and dog hair everywhere, I am ashamed at the state of my world for which responsibility will fall on my child. The only way my son/daughter is going to succeed where my generation has failed is if I can teach them radically hard love, and I can’t teach something I haven’t experienced. (What’s My Age Again?, August 18)