Today’s
Prayer
“Lord,
we call on your name to give us holy curiosity about what being black in
America is really like. We call on your name to free us from our cherished
notions of being ‘good’ that keeps us from hearing the truth. We call on your
name to give us this day our daily truth, our daily humility, our daily rage,
our daily hope.”
Nadia
Bolz-Weber
In a
million years, I would not presume to know what it is like to be black in
America. However, having grown up in a family that was generations deep into
racism, I know the heart of white racists. In that heart, there is fear—fear of
losing whatever tiny modicum of power they may have, fear of losing the last
scrap of superiority they have, fear of realizing that they are no better, no
worse, than any other human being, and fear of being irrelevant. That fear
makes them mean because somewhere in the back chambers of their soul, they know
they have already lost all of that. They know they never had it in the first
place.
If we
want to heal this nation, white Americans must lose the fear and face
themselves. We must lose the rage and listen. We must walk a mile in the shoes
of our black sisters and brothers and try for even one day to live inside their
skin. I wonder how many of us could do that.
If we
truly want to “make America great again” then we must stop hating and embrace
honesty. We must stop believing the lies and mimicking the dark heart of those
who incite division and violence among us. If we open our hearts, the truth
will come to us of its own free will. If we pray for understanding, we may
realize things we don’t like about ourselves, but until we do, nothing will change,
and no one will heal.
And,
healing is what needs to happen. Within and without. Let us stand up and have
the courage to listen, and the will to change. That is my prayer.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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