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All the Years Like Yesterdays Departed
I write for fun outside of the lugubrious essays you might find here. One of my favorite places that incites me to write is New York Midnight, which runs contests five times a year for flash fiction, short stories, short screenplays, and now microfiction. Contests typically have 3 or 4 rounds, where by the process of elimination only the top scorers in each round advance to the next round. For the latest contest, Flash Fiction, I had to write a 1000-word story in 48 hours. And not just some random story. I’m assigned a genre, a location, and a prop, which I don’t find out until the moment the contest…
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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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Author Interview @ NFReads
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/
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A Non-Traditional Blessing
Text composed by Sister Ruth Fox, OSB, from the Sacred Heart Monastery in Richardton, North Dakota, in 1985.
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A Review of BRIGHT STAR the Musical
This is a bluegrass musical set in the comfortable hills around Asheville, NC and outlying districts. In the 1920s in Hayes Creek, NC, a young girl, Alice, falls in love with Jimmy; in the 1940s, just after the war, Alice is in Asheville editing a southern journal, looking for new writers, Jimmy is still back home, and a young man appears with a gift for story-telling. The show switches seamlessly between the time periods until all is laid bare and forgiven. It’s an engaging arc, and based on a true story that became the inspiration for a 1900s folk song and a 2013 collaboration between Martin and Brickell. The cast…
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What I mean when I say I am a “Recovering Evangelical”
Goodness, so much here to consider. via What I mean when I say I am a “Recovering Evangelical”
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Sermon Podcast: “A Legend in Our Own Mind”
A good word about the guts of the faith. We who believe in Jesus must be more than mental followers. Else why believe at all? via Sermon Podcast: “A Legend in Our Own Mind“
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Sermon Podcast: “Rooted and Fruited”
This is right where I’m at. I want to be digging into the Scriptures, and I also want to be digging into our community. via Sermon Podcast: “Rooted and Fruited”
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 29: Intent and Impact
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.
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Moral Switzerlands
This is a prescient verse from 3000 years or so ago: “And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15, AV White people are gonna have to choose, every single time. Every single time we choose complacency and choose safety and choose white solidarity we are choosing wickedness and cruelty and destruction. Whether we want to be honest about…
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The Voices Are Coming from Inside the House
Before this day in 1957, Hazel Massery (white) had never met Elizabeth Eckford (Black). After this day, they did not meet again until a decade later. And yet Ms. Massery became the face of white reaction to the mere presence of Black people in their reserved spaces. Without prompting, she exploded in anger and fury—and yes, hate. Something in whiteness trains us to be like this. To simply hate not only the “other” but the “inferior.” We’re trained to believe in the innate superiority of white people; in things where we appear to fail we say we have no interest. What was the actual problem Ms. Eckford caused that would…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 28: I Am the Elephant
This chapter explores the meaning behind not only identifying as white (which is simple enough when we check off the census form), but also identifying white as a race in the same construct that black is a race. Being white, or whiteness, is a construct, with similar rules and roles and obligations as those that are imposed upon being black, or blackness. “[B]eing a part of American organizations, institutions, and traditions came so easily to me, I couldn’t imagine what could be so tough about adjusting to them.” There are at least two parts to being white. One is that we have an entire set of behaviors and standards, of…
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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 27: Living into Expectations
This was a fascinating chapter for me, in that I hadn’t really dived into this before: what is it that we thought about ourselves when we were young that has somehow determined who we are as adults, based upon the choices we made from youth to adulthood. I was talking about this today on the bus with a friend. In high school the guidance counselors said “You can pretty much do whatever you want—you have no one specific passion.” And I’ve done that in life, settling on my current career of doing something interesting in tech while I wait for something to pique my interest elsewhere. I’ve done all sorts…
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In Response to the Dangers of “Social Justice”
Good words about the necessity of hands and feet working out the effects of the Gospel on hearts and minds. https://wp.me/p4qMcC-Bu
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 26: Surviving Versus Thriving
In this chapter Ms. Irving recalls a famous experiment conducted in 1968 by Ms. Jane Elliott on a class of third graders, and then repeated in other circumstances with adults in various settings, including corporate settings where the participants came in order to learn about prejudice and race issues—and yet they were unable to process their experiences and feelings even though they knew they were there for such training and understanding. The experiences of discrimination overruled their intentions and their self-knowledge. “I’ve had plenty of moments where I’ve felt underappreciated, invisible, or misunderstood. I can’t imagine feeling that way most of the time at school, at work, on the train,…
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Great Expectations
Goodness, there is great wisdom here about how to be. via Great Expectations (image: kingstown, st. vincent by reynolds beal)
- #WakingUpWhite, American Exceptionalism, challenges, faith, history, justice, Life Recovery Skills, work
#WakingUpWhite Chapter 25: Belonging
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.”
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 24: Everyone Is Different; Everyone Belongs
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.
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 23: Diversity Training
More than having a map, a method, and motive, grasping what race and racialism in America will involve something deeper than just a way to work things out.
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Your Good Intentions Don’t Make Things Not Racist
Some good thoughts about intentions vs. impact. via Your Good Intentions Don’t Make Things Not Racist
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 22: Why Do I Always End Up with White People?
Ever wonder why it is that even when good people want to fix things, nothing really gets fixed but a lot of talk passes by? I grew up in the fabulous 50s and 60s, and I remember the talk on how we were well on on way to fixing racism. “Just a little while longer,” I heard, “and we’ll get this discrimination eliminated. Just a few years more and all God’s children will be playing together.” Spoiler: It didn’t happen that way. The effort needed to make change happen is much, much great than the effort needed to think about making change happen. We can wish all we want. We…
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Six Freedoms Black People Do Not Have Under a White Supremacy
via Six Freedoms Black People Do Not Have Under a White Supremacy I highly recommend you take a look at this article.
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The Charlottesville Declaration
From the founding of this nation until the present hour, the idolatry of whiteness has been a pro-death spirit within our republic. I did not see this earlier, but I think it’s important to proclaim—loudly, confidently—that the gospel in America is the eternal gospel of God, of recognition and repentance and restoration.
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Green Books, Black Lives, and White History
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#Waking Up White Chapter 21: Straddling Two Worlds
This chapter is unbelievably relevant, especially in light of the post I put up not six hours ago about my past (“News and Updates”) as well as my essay on Medium (“My Journey into Blackness”). While I was in process of rethinking my thoughts and recalibrating my actions according to my values, I was using the online persona “Between Two Worlds.” My own feelings were much like what Ms. Irving relates in this chapter, and I can say I experienced many of the same things she did in the struggle to find who I was and where I belong. “Having my new friends ridicule my old world confused me. I…
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News and Updates
So here’s what’s going down… Some of you might know that I’ve been thinking about and writing about issues of race and equality for a long time. I’ve been vocal about my beliefs and vocal about my insistence that we all must repent and change. A few months ago an online publication, Our Human Family, reached out to me to begin writing for them. They had been reading my work and were interested in what I was saying, and they considered my work to be helpful and healing for the conciliation of us all. As they put it in their mission statement, “OUR HUMAN FAMILY exists as a safe digital…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 20: My Robin Hood Syndrome
“You know, we’re trying to focus on programs that serve Boston’s inner-city youth. If you could develop a vision that includes that population, we’d be more interested in supporting you.” This is an intriguing chapter, and one that is perhaps the turning point from comfort into awareness. The author is given great power and influence, and then is tasked to “go do something good for people.” Intriguing because the attempt was made, but here, at the beginning, perhaps the attempt went wrong when there wasn’t an inquiry into what is needed and how versus what do I think is needed and how can I help? Us white people “doing good”…
