Dear Friends,
A few years ago, I told a story during worship about my Mom teaching our son, Ben to drive that I want to share again. The driving lesson took place in one of my parent’s good-sized farm trucks on a country road near their farm. Country roads tend to be narrower than a two-lane highway. There is no white line or rumble strip to warn you that you are near the edge of the road. You can let your vehicle get over into the ditch a little bit to make room for an oncoming vehicle, but if you get too far over, you are liable to get stuck in the ditch.
As Ben was driving that day with his Grandmother, she became aware of the need to share the road. Ben's cheerful and ornery response was, “Well Grandmother, I’m doing fine over here on my side. I’m right in the middle of the road.”
For me, this is, not only a family story of Ben, being Ben. It is also a metaphor for how injustice works. If you are riding in the middle of the road, it’s not necessarily easy or comfortable to take your eyes off your own path to see what life is like in or near the ditch. Nor is it necessarily easy or comfortable to move over so that everyone is out of the ditch, or to hand over control of the steering wheel entirely.
Racism is a disease of injustice in our country that has come to the forefront of our nation’s attention once again,
through the death of George Floyd by way of a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on his neck. I am outraged and grieved, by the circumstances around his death. And I am heart broken by the violence that has ensued. I pray for the safety and true well-being of all of the Maplewood UMC congregation and for true change in our country, realizing that I do and say these things from a position of relative safety and ease—from a position of privilege, white privilege.
I was raised on the same farm where our son Ben received his driving lesson. The farm girl in me knows that simply speaking about my thoughts, prayers, and emotions, is one way to respond, but it’s not enough
. We can talk loudly all day long about planting the crops, we can even pray for an abundant harvest, but if we don’t go out and plant the seeds in the ground, nothing will grow.
Our Missouri Annual Conference Bishop, Bob Farr has written a letter in response to the senseless death of George Floyd and the need to be antiracist. (Click this link to read the entire letter Bishop Farr's Letter. In this letter Bishop Farr states:
https://shar.es/aHSd2H
“It is not the job of black people to explain the structures of white supremacy, white privilege, racism, police brutality or any of the other byproducts that advances the white standard as the "normative" view. This is white people’s work and our need to engage in this work is urgent. Lives depend on it.”
He asks that every white United Methodist in Missouri, especially clergy and lay leaders, read and discuss the book “
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism (2018) by Robin DiAngelo, PhD.”
that in his words, “
has helped me better understand my own sin and complicity to the horrors of racism.
After reading “White Fragility” he asks that we move on to reading
How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.
I imagine you might be asking, “Is reading and talking about one more book really the way to create change? Or is it just more talk?” To be honest, I believe that this approach could go either way. I know that seeds of change will bounce off of hardened hearts, just as any other seed will bounce off of hard, packed soil.
But I truly believe the seeds of change can and will grow if we are willing to allow our hearts and lives to be broken open by love and compassion. I invite you to join me in this urgent work. Let’s agree to read and talk about these books—to learn from them and each other with open hearts, and to hold each other accountable on this journey.
God’s grace and peace be with you,
Pastor Kim
