Dear One’s of St. C’s, 

Today the Black Lives Matter Seattle King County Chapter asked that people protest and go on strike.  They said, “We urge everyone to spend their time and energy on direct action for lasting structural change. Don’t go to work, and don’t work from home.”  With both my husband and I working and having the children full time Friday is one of the few days of my week where I get a full day to work.  The idea of not working on this day not only felt overwhelming, it felt impossible.  One thing I have been thinking about each day since the protests started over George Floyd’s death is how patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism work to exhaust us.  

White supremacy tells me I am too busy and important to care about black lives, patriarchy tells me I need to stay up and meal plan, schedule my son’s next doctor appointment, and fold the laundry, and capitalism tells me my worth is in my job.  These three systems at work within me are real and exhausting. As I have been overwhelmed with being with my kids four days a week and working 30hrs a week while being painfully aware that black people are being murdered for being black. I have not known how to let the two exist together without it drowning me.  And this is how patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism are meant to work. 

So during the last couple of weeks I have just spent time naming this out loud.  When I say I am too overwhelmed and tired to go to a protest, I re-frame and say white supremacy is telling me I don’t have time to care about black lives.  So even though it may be true that I am not in a place to go to the protest, thanks to patriarchy and capitalism, I am working to internally change the story.  I do this by writing letters demanding the murderers of Brionna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery be convicted. I do this by listening to podcasts and reading books centering the voices of people of color.  I do this by creating actions in my day to day life that say, “I do have time to care about black lives.”  My time is valuable and I will spend it listening to black people.  This is how I will fight white supremacy in myself everyday.  This work will most likely never be done for me in my lifetime.  White supremacy will call me and try to woo me because that is how I benefit the most for being white.  But as much as it benefits me it also harms me and more importantly, it harms God’s beloved children.

We protested at St. Columba’s today and my sign said, “How many weren’t filmed?”  This was my confession and repentance because, as I confessed a couple of weeks ago, my immediate response to George Floyd’s death was, “This couldn’t be. There has to be more to this story.”  I needed the recording to believe.  This is white supremacy’s lies trying to make me comfortable and okay and dismiss the black experience.  So I stood with my sign and remembered all those black men and women in our country who have died for the sole fact that they were black and repented of my desire to bury this reality. I felt deeply the harm that white supremacy has on my soul during this time. 

I listened to Ibram X. Kendi on Brene Brown’s podcast Unlocking Us.  Brown asked Kendi how to help white people deal with their shame when they are called “racist.”  Kendi said something to the effect that white people should look at it this way - we are drenched in racist ideas and structures and some one is just trying to hold an umbrella over us so we aren’t as wet.  As the St. Columba’s community stood in the pouring rain today holding our signs about black lives and justice mattering I prayed for those umbrellas.  I prayed that we wouldn’t be drenched in racism anymore.  And now I will work to spend my days looking and open to when an umbrella might show up. I hope that you will join me. 

with hope and care, 

Meghan