My Internal Work

I’m sharing here a response I gave to someone who replied to my previous post about Where I Stand. I appreciate their comments, which were a prompt for me to get more clear in articulating what I see, what I believe, and where I am going. This is what meaningful dialogue can offer: the invitation and challenge to go deeper and get more clear; but also, hopefully, to listen to new and different ideas and perspectives.

Nowhere in my post do I call to abolish racism. Certainly not because I’m a fan; but, because its abolition seems impossible for me, also, to imagine, and perhaps foolish to hope for.

Still, the farmer plants her fields because of her faith in the seeds.

 
My mission is not to eradicate racism. It is to listen heartfully to what I haven’t been hearing or seeing. It’s to question what I have been taught is the truth. It is to challenge myself to expand my circle into where I feel vulnerable, instead of shutting down and believing that different means dangerous. 

As I hope you can see, this is internal work. The kind of work I’ve already been doing. Simply, I have been shown an area of my own consciousness to which I was NOT shining a light and doing this kind of examination. 

All the while, people have struggled, been held down, incarcerated, and executed. 

The pledge and mission of which I am speaking regards my business and personal life. As you say—live as an example. I will use my advantage and voice to bring attention to the ongoing injustice and institutional system of racism in this country. 

I don’t support violence. But, I can understand how people will resort to violence as a desperate plea to be heard, when they are fighting and screaming for their very lives, and the lives of their children and communities. 

If we believe there is injustice AND we don’t want violence, we have a choice—we can add our Voice and our Vote to the conversation, on the side of what we believe is right.

This work, and my journey, are ongoing. I will continue to share the voices and great work I am discovering. May the conversations continue.