“An open heart is stronger than 10,000 shields.”
Kathleen Hanagan
We face the task of loving our world and one another back into wholeness. We can only do that if we learn to be open from the center. Desmond Tutu said, “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”
I have written these two letters from my heart in an attempt to sort out my feelings and thoughts as a while woman who lives in a country with inbuilt structural racism.
Dear native and sisters and brothers of color,
I realize that as a white woman, I don’t have a leg to stand on as far as telling you I get even a small bit of your hurt or anger. I have educated myself a good deal about structural racism over the past few years and spoken candidly with several black people about my own realizations, and have welcomed their sharing.
I still didn’t lift a finger to help you or the cause of your liberation. I realize that my obliviousness is outright complicity with a toxic system that I shamelessly benefit from. I cannot read enough articles telling me what to say or do that is not offensive to you. Should I apologize or not? I can only tell you what is on my heart.
I am sorry.
I feel shame for not being more awake. I can only make reparation by becoming and remaining more awake and acting differently. I am sorting out what that looks like.
I am completely open to the many messages that you have shared with white people about what you need and don’t need from us. I realize it is not your job to re-educate misinformed white people, because we have the same opportunity to know the truth, but have chosen not to.
This pandemic has shown us all that we need to ditch the fantasy of government that would care for and protect its people. You have known that to be a lie for a long time, while I remained comfortably oblivious.
You have a right to be sick and tired of hearing so many of my white brothers and sisters say they are ashamed and sorry. If your attitude is that it is too little too late, that makes sense to me. But there would not be protests if you truly believed that.
I am not ready to believe it is too late for the children, yours or mine.
Peaceful protesting is essential to draw attention to police violence and repression in a country where so many of us have been willfully ignorant of your suffering. It appears that most want to protest peacefully, while there are insurgent factors that no one is 100% sure about, that are making that so brutal, turning protest into riot.
I know that riots are the voice of the unheard. So many are unheard.
There is some romanticized view, that I will admit to harboring, that this is the revolution we need, the one that won’t be televised but will rise up from the depths of our souls. But I also know that most white Americans (including myself) are nowhere near developing the radical working-class consciousness that’s needed for a true revolution.
I realize that revolutionary consciousness starts with de-throning the tyrannical despots in the hearts of white people that lead us to believe we won’t have to give anything up to have a better world.
I am willing to do that. I am figuring out how. I know it will cost me, and it ought to.
No one needs to grant you or anyone freedom, as we are all intrinsically free and sovereign beings if we made it this far to planet earth. Any rule of law that does not uphold that truth cannot be a part of the new world I envision in my heart, and I take a stand for that.
There is no room for overt or covert force in that new world, and I believe we may have common ground to stand on together. It is justice—-not law—-that creates change. Justice arises out of love for the other, and rule of law rises out of the drive for power. Martin Luther King, Jr. said “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”
I am so grateful that the voices of the unheard are being heard—not necessarily by a crumbling democracy, but by people, of every color. All over the world. And I do know it is an inside job to embrace social justice, fully. I personally come from the perspective of our Oneness, our common humanity. My liberation is dependent upon yours, and visa versa. That makes sense in every fiber of my being, so I re-commit to living that truth.
Thank you for not giving up.
Dear white brothers and sisters,
I have called myself out, and I am calling us all out. We are so far from free!!!
Find your empathy! Dig it up from the piles of to-do lists and digital dialogue that is a constant running rat race in your over-loaded minds. Please drop down and become open from the center. Our hearts are good.
I am not going to give you a list of resources to awaken you in this letter, as so many have already been shared. I am not an expert on any of this, but I know a lot shifted for me when I read the book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism by Robin Diangelo. I encourage you to take the initiative in some way to investigate your deeper feelings about people of color.
If you assume that due to the fact that you and I were born into a racist culture, that we carry beliefs and attitudes racist in nature, then we will be less fragile as we look at what is really happening.
Please take 5 minutes to listen to this powerful song:
Here are the words I want you to take in:
Free from all old stories I've been told
I walk through the valley of my own shadow
Free from all old stories I've been told
I walk through the valley of my own shadow
Creating concrete visions of a macrocosmic prism
with a brilliant optimism and appropriate ambition
to be open from the center, redirected to the moment
this is it love, this is it love, this is it love…
This is it. It’s time to be open from the center. Let your heart break open, wide.
The young ones around 18-24 are coming to me more and more. They feel hopeless, have no idea what their part is in a world that is falling apart. Mental illness, addiction, apathy….you name it, black, white, native.
The young ones don’t yet know that on the other side of struggle and suffering can come great healing. All they see is a world of grief and rage and despair that they have no idea what to do about. Most of them haven’t lived long enough to know this, and those of us who know this deeply must show them. Speak into their broken and scared hearts.
We need to let them know that this descent into our own shame is necessary and that it will lead to wholeness. It is a choice we need to make in every cell of our beings if we want to impart that to them—all of them, the black and red and yellow and white and brown children.
And yes, the system is working just fine. It was made this way, and counts on the oppressed remaining so downtrodden that there is not enough energy for a revolution. But now, the forces have conspired to create so much pain and loss, and those hurting the most are expressing what we all need to wake up to. There is a rising up.
All the mea culpas in the world mean nothing if are not willing to walk through the valley of our own shadow of narcissistic entitlement.
In case you have not been willing to do that until now, life itself seems to be providing that part of our education, as the economy declines and we need to rally in our communities to helps those in need. We have to be willing to let it cost us, in generosity, awakeness, courage, compassion, and outright love.
We need to see people of color and native people and people everywhere as all part of one big human family.
The Lakota greeting Aho Mitakuye Oyasin which means “All My Relations,” reflects their world view of oneness, interconnectedness and harmony with all people, animals, plants, rocks, rivers…..all things.
This is it love. This is it. Figure out what it all means to you. It’s personal, and you have to look inside. The pandemic has hopefully given you that opportunity, to stop pretending that our liberation does not include the liberation of all our brothers and sisters.
Thank you for looking inside.
So well said, Kathleen. You are a voice from the center. Thank you.