writing the journey
I’ve watched my friends express their shock, their hurt, their anger, their outrage, their fury, their fear, their hopelessness, their isolation, their understanding of their own oppression in a society that does not see them. Does not value them. Does not, from beginning to end, love them.
The liberation of letting go of my self-image. Choosing to engage in the effort to dismantle racism promises to bring…
Learning to listen and speak across differences Before I start into this chapter, I wanted to update this series on…
Ignorance is sometimes a lack of opportunity. We don’t have access to resources, including people and their lived experiences, to…
If you haven’t been tracking the news, there’s been a dust-up in the American Evangelical world. An influential publishing outfit…
ETA: I misnamed Ms. Ally Henny in this article & have corrected it. My apologies for misnaming her. I follow…
I write and edit for a living, and I write for fun. I have a few novels in progress, with…
I don’t think I’ve ever been called a racist—not because I’m not, but because the people in my life are…
I write for fun outside of the lugubrious essays you might find here. One of my favorite places that incites…
It’s been a while since my last post (7/29/19!). I’ve been busy over the summer, far busier than I expected.…
NF Reads asked me for an interview recently, and published it. You can find the interview here https://www.nfreads.com/interview-with-author-stephen-j-matlock/
Text composed by Sister Ruth Fox, OSB, from the Sacred Heart Monastery in Richardton, North Dakota, in 1985.
This is a bluegrass musical set in the comfortable hills around Asheville, NC and outlying districts. In the 1920s in…
Goodness, so much here to consider. via What I mean when I say I am a “Recovering Evangelical”
A good word about the guts of the faith. We who believe in Jesus must be more than mental followers.…
This is right where I’m at. I want to be digging into the Scriptures, and I also want to be…
The process of “waking up white” isn’t just to be aware of whiteness. It is to wake up, and then to leave it. To go to something that’s better and more life-affirming and full of health. And to not even be sure where the destination is, but with the calm assurance that it’s out there.
This is a prescient verse from 3000 years or so ago: “And if it seem evil unto you to serve…
Before this day in 1957, Hazel Massery (white) had never met Elizabeth Eckford (Black). After this day, they did not…
This chapter explores the meaning behind not only identifying as white (which is simple enough when we check off the…
Today is June 19th, a day when we remember that our American experiment with freedom included over 200 years of…
This was a fascinating chapter for me, in that I hadn’t really dived into this before: what is it that…
Good words about the necessity of hands and feet working out the effects of the Gospel on hearts and minds.…
In this chapter Ms. Irving recalls a famous experiment conducted in 1968 by Ms. Jane Elliott on a class of…
Goodness, there is great wisdom here about how to be. via Great Expectations (image: kingstown, st. vincent by reynolds beal)
This chapter is about the tendency of white folks to feel like they belong everywhere. Ms. Irving focuses on the school environment, because she was a volunteer or participant at so many levels, including being on committees to help bring about and embrace “diversity.”
We need to do the right things when we can, but it is critically important that we continually reevaluate whether we’re really doing the right things. We might not be able to wait until we have all the data before we try to make changes, but we absolutely must be willing to reexamine our efforts and even our understandings.
