Dear People of Christ Church,
Last week I was out of the office to attend the Wild Goose Festival, a gathering in the mountains of North Carolina my family and I have attended for the last four years. My shorthand description of it is “Progressive Christians in the mud”—speakers come from all over the map from self-titled “recovering evangelicals” to pacifist Roman Catholics to anti-racist suburban mom bloggers. And folk music rock stars Dar Williams and the Indigo Girls!

The workshops I attended were all over the map—I went to one talk by a lay friend of a silent order of Cistercian monks about meditation, one about pilgrimage and laying down your metaphorical and literal baggage, and several talks by the womanist ethicist scholar Emilie Townes (womanism is a politics centered in the experiences of black women). Jim Wallis, founder of the social justice group Sojourners and author of a whole slew of books about American society and Christian faith and politics, was there this year, speaking again about Racism as America’s Original Sin (also his latest book). What I love about Wild Goose is the sense of community that emerges—I can tell our kids to disappear for an hour and they’ll come back jubilant and covered in dirt, along with a new best friend and an invitation for lunch at someone’s campsite. That doesn’t work in metro Boston.

Backgrounded in all of the beauty, of course, was pain—at this moment the pain of racism in this country and the pain that it is a system that we are all enmeshed in, like a spider web that clings to our bodies and won’t let us free. If everybody believed that black lives matter, we wouldn’t have to say it. The “All lives” of contemporary America does not, when the rubber hits the road, actually include “all.” The Black Lives Matter movement is about changing that.

It is a lifelong task to be aware of how racism works in America and how those of us who are white benefit from that system. We are never finished. We will never have done enough. But it’s not about guilt or innocence, not about being paralyzed by shame or longing for exoneration. It’s a journey. Step by step, thought by thought, day after day paying attention. The way we interact with the racism of contemporary America is a moral and political question. That sounds very “exterior,” but it’s also a spiritual journey. We are called to pay attention to white privilege and racial discrimination because where discrimination happens Jesus is present. Jesus is always present where there is suffering. And white people—we are not suffering in contemporary America in the same way that people of color are suffering. We are not. Jesus is on the other side of that. Always. With Philando Castile and Alton Sterling AND with the Dallas police officers who were murdered. In the same way that the assassin at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando didn’t represent Islam, the shooter in Dallas didn’t represent the Black Lives Matter movement.

Writing about our trip to Wild Goose Festival last year I shared a quote from a talk I attended that year with Paul Fromberg, a priest in San Francisco. He said “I don’t believe in progress. I believe in salvation.” I don’t know if I am making much progress in my own journey around race. Am I doing the best I can? Most of the time. I will pray for salvation, too.

Blessings,
Sara+

PS—Please keep my husband, Noah, and me in your prayers as we travel to Central New York next week for the series of meetings leading up to the bishop election on August 6. I’ll be out of the office from July 19-24. Thanks to the Rev. Thea Keith-Lucas, Episcopal Chaplain at MIT, who will be guest celebrant and preacher on July 24. In case of a pastoral emergency, the clergy from Redeemer Lexington will be on call.