| Anne Williamson |
This has been a tough year. And, the past two and a half weeks have ached in a way I perhaps haven’t yet experienced. It’s not just that as a woman I feel rejected and widely unseen. Or, that as a sister, friend and ally, I cry for the pain and fear my Muslim, immigrant, people of color, and LGBTQ human family is experiencing. Or, the worry I feel for Mother Earth. And, it’s not even just that I am afraid. I was afraid after 09.11. It’s that I’m starting to doubt whether this grand melting pot experiment called America is going to work. Our nation feels divided and to quote Lincoln, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
So, I’ve been asking, “What do I do now? What do we do now?” And, honestly, I’m still sorting this out. I’m not entirely sure. But, two things are bubbling to the surface....
THE MYTH OF INDEPENDENCE
| Anne Williamson |
Always curious, even anxious, about what I was meant to do with my life, as a teenager, my parents lovingly took me to a career counselor. The process took nearly all day, as there were numerous interviews, and aptitude and personality tests. Finally, all three of us sat down with the head honcho to hear his analysis of my results. What would he say? Was my vocational destiny finally to be revealed?
It was not. I remember only two things from that conversation. One, he did not say I would one day become an unconventional minister. And, two, he did say I was “neurotically self-reliant.”
It is for this second remembrance that I share this story. I often think our entire society shares my disease....
THE RESPONSIBILITY TO BLESS
| Chase Tibbs |
The western hills of Pennsylvania were a wonderful place to grow up. I spent the first eighteen years of my life loved and supported by people who invested deeply in me. Some of you will undoubtedly resonate with my story. Some of you will not. Because, what I did not recognize were the other factors that played into my life. I did not see the privileges that brought my goals into closer reach.
In awakening to my privilege, I can’t say as soon as I realized it I was very comfortable with it. In fact, I’m still not. To be male, to be white, to be heterosexual, to be Protestant Christian, to be born into a middle class family, to be American; to say that these parts of me (and I say parts) are major influences of where I am today would not have made sense to me when I was growing up....
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