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I am a human being… I seek to follow the shalomic Way of Jesus… and I am a white, heteronormative, educated, middle class, relatively able-bodied, cis male; which means I carry within myself the world’s most deadly virus. White-body supremacy may well be the most deadly pandemic in human history. It has been sweeping the globe since around the time Columbus sailed the ocean blue claiming “new” lands… and it must end!

As I continue to listen to, and learn from others, I’m discovering and growing in understanding of both personal and systemic ways I have been complicit with a grossly inequitable system designed to benefit people “like” me at the expense black-bodies… and brown bodies… and female bodies… and queer bodies… and differently-abled bodies, etc. Oppressive systems have been, and are intentionally designed, defended, and perpetuated by whiteness. Whiteness is a worldview bound in abstraction. Whiteness abstracts truth from reality, and persons from one another, and peoples from place. Whiteness is a fragmenting force intent on dividing what’s being created to discover a way of love together.

In his essay titled, “Can ‘White’ People be Saved?” Dr. Willie James Jennings writes,

Whiteness comes to rest in space. The maturity whiteness aims at always forms segregated spaces. It forms lives lived in parallel, whether separated by miles or inches. It constructs bordered life, life lived in separate endeavors of wish fulfillment.

Segregated spaces must be turned toward living places where people construct together an everyday that turns life in health-giving directions. Overcoming whiteness begins by reconfiguring life geographically so that all the flows work differently…

Willie Jennings, “Can ‘White’ People be Saved?” page 43.

Dr. Jennings is one of the growing cloud of wise voices inviting me to ground myself within the real… starting with my body, in time, and in place. To root myself within the local, while opening up to reconfigure life with all those living in this place, (past, present, & future). I repent of any and all assumed supporitity to the times in which I am living, my geographical place, and to the great diversity of peoples who call this place ‘home’.

I’m part of a faith tradition that hears within its sacred texts an invitation to welcome and delight in all human beings as created in the image and likeness of Creator; the theological term pointing to this idea comes from the Latin… Imagio Dei (image of God). I love the serendipity that the work of “Diversity Equity and Inclusion,” goes by D.E.I. (Dei = God). Part of why I love this fortuitous linguistic connection is because most Christian faith traditions refer to Divine Mystery as Trinity. Trinity coming from Tri + Unity; or tri/three persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), and one/unity/love. A Christian imagination of the Divine is simultaneously multiplicity and oneness; diversity and love. Real difference appears necessary for love. This historic Christian understanding helps us anticipate that the greater difference a person sees in the Other, the greater the possibility to experience something of Divine love. As Divine love does not demand sameness, but delights in it, and we see each person of the Triune God empty self in serving and making room for the other. One of the most sacred practices in my faith tradition is Holy Communion, where all are welcome dine at the table set by Christ

I am growing in awareness of the innumerable ways that I have knowingly and unknowingly benefited from white privilege. I am waking up to the cries, sufferings, and inequities my fellow humans have endured because of whiteness, and I will spend the rest of my learning to identify, repent of, and make reparations for my explicit and implicit collusion with Whiteness Christianities oppressive systems. As best as I am able, I choose to not hide behind my sense of regret or ask people of color to take care of me or make me feel ok.

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• I open myself to learn, study, and grow in my understanding of my whiteness & how I’ve been shaped systems that privilege me.
• I open myself to identifying racial inequities & disparities.
• I open myself to confront & interrogate the racist ideas that I have held and will discover are still in me.
• I open myself to develop a more robust intersectional anti-racism.
• I open myself to champion anti-racist ideas, language, practices, & policies.
• I open myself to pray, dream, collaborate, and work toward new & truly equitable ways of being human together.
• I open myself to interrogate my assumptions of self: opening up to discover the impact of my white, male, sis, heteronormative, able-bodied sense of identity.
• I open myself to use my platform as a theologian, educator, writer, & speaker to foster a more Shalomic world for all.

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I seek to engage in anti-racist action, and as I do I will open up to hear and learn how to be an even more effective ally in pursuit of the common good for all. As Angela Davis says,

I’m no longer accepting the things I cannot change… I’m changing the things I cannot accept.

Angela Yvonne Davis

Below are a few of the books that have, and are helping me grow stronger in my calling to help end racism, white-body supremacy, foster greater intersectionality, while helping me join in co-discovering a new way of being human together, as we move toward God’s shalom for all and everything.

Peace, dwight