Chaplains for Whiteness

Reflections after the Jan. 6th insurrection.

I’ve been thinking about chaplains for whiteness.
Well actually all I could really say at first was “white supremacist terrorists!” - loudly - as if really accurate language would at least reveal the devastating hypocrisy in it all.

I felt angry. So much heat. Tried to slow down when loved ones courageously spoke about fear and trauma. Trusting each of us must be - - exactly where we are.
Learning, always.

I’m here. Yelling “white supremacist terrorist!” while grateful to be called in this week by teachers like @courageousyoga - to the trap of white bodies distancing ourselves from - that, from - them.

Because we are that. We are them.
Ultimately, yes. But also as in: this shit is ours to confront and tend to in this life, with everything we’ve got.

Thankful for reminders from colleagues @cluuf that white supremacy shows up in many forms - usually in much more subtle, insidious ways - equally as harmful.

Because it sometimes seems like white outrage & distancing in the face of extreme acts of white supremacy can stop the good work, the essential and sacred work, of confronting all the ways white supremacy culture is everywhere and has shaped - - everything.

Ok, not everything. Not the mountains or the river. Not the winter. Not the deep longing to love and be loved that sits within me and within you.

But it has shaped schools and hospitals and health care systems and families. For so long. For so much of history that so many of us never learned. Shaped the way we look at ourselves and each other. Shaped the inside and the out.

This moment is connected to all that. And it would be a win for white supremacy to think otherwise. I’m connected to all that. Are you? Because first we have to see it before anything else can happen.

Which is why I’ve been thinking about chaplains for whiteness. The need - the call, the profound purpose - for white bodied folks to witness other white bodies toward the pain and the suffering throbbing just below the surface of insurrection, just below the surface of - - I’m not like them and they’re the problem.

To remember how to grieve.
There’s so much to grieve.

To tend to the dying.
The dying of parts of oneself, of a system, an ideology, a legacy of sickness and violence - so it doesn’t linger, so it can break down - completely - composted by the earth, nothing wasted, nourishment for new life. What a genius she is. For we are that, too.

So much to feel.
Praying you have soft spots to rest your body to feel it all, to be held in it all.