family
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What makes someone a human?
Rather than seek to deny the humanity of gay people and trans people, what about using your religion to help you decide to know more about them so that you can love them better?
- American Exceptionalism, Black Lives Matter, Celebrate Recovery, faith, family, history, justice, Life Recovery Skills, racism, remodeling
On Deconstruction
For the vast, vast majority of people, “deconstruction” is a good thing. Deconstruction can result in something far different and, in my opinion, far better than, white Evangelical Christianity.
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This Do
There is nothing that white American Christians have or want as human beings that our Black brothers and sisters do not want.
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Carefully Taught, Thoroughly Educated
You’ve Got to Be Taught You’ve got to be taught To hate and fear, You’ve got to be taught From year to year, It’s got to be drummed In your dear little ear You’ve got to be carefully taught. You’ve got to be taught to be afraid.Of people whose eyes are oddly made,And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,You’ve got to be carefully taught. You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,Before you are six or seven or eight,To hate all the people your relatives hate,You’ve got to be carefully taught!(RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN “SOUTH PACIFIC” – © 1958) I don’t know how much more obvious we have to…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 30: Feelings and the Culture of Niceness
It’s been a while since my last post (7/29/19!). I’ve been busy over the summer, far busier than I expected. I’ve gotten more involved in some relationships and responsibilities, and my writing output for short stories, scripts, and essays has jumped considerably. (I even had Ms. Irving stop by a set of Facebook posts…) But it’s time to get back to this book. Ms. Irving is still processing her experiences at a conference, and so this chapter opens with an incredibly important insight, one that I’d like you to read a few times to consider what this means. It’s that necessary: One of my first challenges in the hours and…
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Juneteenth, Reparations, and What Do I Do About It?
Today is June 19th, a day when we remember that our American experiment with freedom included over 200 years of enslavement for Africans stolen and sold to white slavers. Today is the day when HR#40, a bill to set up a commission to study reparations, was introduced for discussion in a House subcommittee hearing. And today I considered the long and winding road of my own presence in America. I have a history, y’all. My father’s family came to America in the early 1700s from England—the region where Matlock, Derbyshire sits. The family split early into Northern and Southern branches, with one group leaving for North and West, from North…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 6: From Confusion to Shock
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 19: My Good Luck
“… I returned … with my childhood ideas about a level playing field, a world teeming with opportunity, and myself as a good person fully intact.” I thought this chapter was interesting about the smooth ride that being both rich and white can make of life. I wasn’t “rich” by Ms. Irving’s standards, of course, but I was never in want. Travel to other lands when I was in my teens and twenties helped me see a bit more about the differences in lifestyles, but I don’t think seeing the destitution in the poor in Mexico, for example, elicited anything more in me than curiosity. And travel to Europe was…
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A Reminder: Welcome to Our Muslim Neighbors
Note: I first wrote this when I was asked to give the community welcome to the Muslim community in our town. There were certain comments made by local residents as well as our state legislator, Jay Rodne (R-05), that were inflammatory and ill-informed. The Muslims set up an open house and invited the community to hear their stories and to let us tell ours. Here are my remarks, first posted in an article on this site from three years ago. I extend my thanks to Mujeeb Mohammed, President of the Muslim Association of Snoqualmie Ridge, along with the Board of Directors, and the Board of Governors, for asking me to…
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Entertainment Matters
We usher at the local theatre about once a month for live productions. It’s our “date night,” and we generally make a half-day of it. We have to prepare for the show, because even though we are “out there” in the lobby or in the aisles, we are still part of the theatre production: our clothes and our demeanor are to support the on-stage events. Our customers are the theatre-goer who’s paying for a seat and a view and an experience. We are there to assist in that. So we dress to be somewhat invisible and yet in ways that mark us as not quite blended in with the paying…
- #WakingUpWhite, American Exceptionalism, education, family, history, Life Recovery Skills, racism, Southern California
#WakingUpWhite Chapter 10: The Melting Pot
“The United States has reaffirmed its commitment to being a melting-pot society adhering to Anglo-Saxon standards, as opposed to a mosaic nation built on the diversity of multiple cultures.” This chapter dives into a common myth about America—that it is a “melting pot.” It is, if by that you mean that everyone is baptized with fire to lose their heritage and identity, to be reborn as a WASP-y character—as long as they have visibly white skin and features. The stories here match some of the experiences of my mother’s side of the family—she was an immigrant from World War II, and when she went through Ellis Island (figuratively; I’m not…
- #WakingUpWhite, American Exceptionalism, faith, family, history, justice, racism, Southern California
#WakingUpWhite Chapter 4: Optimism
“By pretending the world was virtually problem-free, my family culture left me grossly underprepared to solve problems.” The 50s and 60s were a time in America unlike any before or after. We had won a war (with the uncredited assistance of Russia who lost 10 million men and 14 million civilians to our 410 thousand men and some civilians), there were no real economic challenges (Soviet Russia was a political challenge, but who knows how much of it was hyped up to win votes?), we were prosperous and confident and expanding. Scouts and YMCA and camping and museums were all out there for our entertainment and enrichment, and we simply…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 1: What Wasn’t Said
This chapter* opens with a provocative quote by the author: “‘WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ALL THE INDIANS?’ I asked my mother on a Friday morning ride home from the library.” Gotta tell you, this not a question I had growing up in the 50s in the middle-class white suburbs of Los Angeles and Orange County. “Where are all the people of color?” I did not ask because for me the world was white. I cannot remember a single person I met before the mid 70s who was black except for our neighbor’s maid, and I tell you this with a sense of shame and embarrassment that I never knew her name,…
- American Exceptionalism, Celebrate Recovery, faith, family, history, justice, Life Recovery Skills, questions, racism
What Would You Do If You Could Bring Conciliation?
This is a review of the book “The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism” The key issue that continues to break America’s soul is racism. Full stop. One hundred fifty years before Yorktown there was Jamestown. 1619 was the arrival of captive slaves of African descent, sold to English settlers and colonists looking for cheap labor that could be used for profit and personal success. By 1667 Virginia had passed a law perpetuating the eternal status of chattel slaves; in the last half of the 18th century the same people who held self-evident truths of liberty also held black humans as property to be…
- Celebrate Recovery, challenges, education, faith, family, justice, Life Recovery Skills, musings, racism, writing
The Non-Whiteness of Jesus
I got to thinking the other day about how we see Jesus and Jesus’ teachings expressed in the lives of his followers. And I began thinking about how hard it is to reconcile our Christian behavior with our Christ. Traditionally, orthodox Christianity means a religion centered around the Christ of the New Testament, where what Jesus said and taught and did forms the central, defining properties of the religion. Christ did not hate the Jews or want them eliminated or gassed. Christ did not hate black Africans. In fact, some of the first disciples were black Africans. (You can look this one up. You’ll be astonished at what you were…
- Celebrate Recovery, education, essays, faith, family, history, justice, Life Recovery Skills, racism, writing
So, This Is How It Happened
In which I relate the many interlocking steps leading to my aligning myself with all I once thought was opposed to God, flag, and country. In the past eight years I have made many changes, from the friends I hang around with, the method of church participation I act in, and the attention I pay to the issues and people around me. My behavior and words have puzzled some people, and angered others. And, to be frank, most people have largely shrugged their shoulders and said “eh,” which is an entirely natural action by most people when they see someone behaving oddly. But if you are interested in how I…
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Memorial Day 2016
Memorial Day is the official start of summer. Typically there’s a family and friends get-together, a barbecue, a game on the TV, and adult beverages. We have this freedom to celebrate this way because of the sacrifice of soldiers to the vision that is America. And so we do honor the fallen with our gratefulness Our memorial is our memories. This isn’t to scold us for not doing more, although, yes, it would be great if we honored the living veterans with decent health care, housing, educational opportunities, and even employment. Decent men and women gave up their freedom and risked their lives to serve our country. It’s up to…
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He Was Twelve
When I was twelve I discovered in an old box of books a novel by Booth Tarkington. “Penrod” was the story (or rather, a collection of stories) about Penrod Schofield, an eleven-going-on-twelve-year-old boy in the Midwest. Indiana, I think. I was twelve, Penrod was twelve; we were both noted for getting into trouble which, at the time, seemed perfectly reasonable. Dressing up in the janitor’s clothes for a Christmas play? Making a concoction of various household discarded foods and giving it to a neighbor boy who accepts abuse as the price of friendship? Eating far too many things at the fair & as a result having a ginormous stomach-ache? Penrod’s…
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Christians, We’re Doing It Wrong (Again)
I read in the news today where a family in Oklahoma is being threatened with death for the crime of . . . protesting the distribution of religious materials in secular, state-run primary schools. Now, I’m a Christian. I’d like people to know that, and to know my Savior, and to know the God of the Universe. I will be more than happy to talk to you about that. But I am also a citizen of the secular United States, with its secular institutions, and its secular schools. No one religion can be permitted to represent the faith of all United States citizens. No one religion can speak for all…
