1. Martin Luther King, Jr. never shied away from challenging ‘white society’, specifically the ‘white moderate’, who he often described as a stumbling block on the road to freedom because of their obsession with not ‘rocking the boat’. He was right. Still is. A lot of us white folks don’t want our world disrupted. So, we hunker down in a world we think we can manage. And then one day our screens are filled with images of George Floyd and it messes up that world completely. We don’t know what to do with all these people demanding “liberty and justice for all”. That’s well beyond our management capabilities. Now what? If we just don’t give a rip, then we have oodles of very unclassy options available to us. But I think most of us do care.At the very least, we’re being challenged to stop saying that ‘racism’ isn’t a part of our lives. That might not seem like much but in all honesty, there’s a lot of folks in denial about the impact of racism on the way they think and act. If you’re white, like me, you have been influenced by racist individuals, thinking, and systems. It has a toxic effect on all of us.At times, it feels as if racism is in the very air we breathe. It quietly and insidiously seeps into the deeper parts of our being, trying to persuade us that racial injustice no longer exists, that it’s something in the past. By refusing to deny and instead choosing to recognize that ‘racism’ has some kind of unholy hold and influence on us – well, that’s a very good thing, especially if we take it a step further and actually deaI with it. It takes courage to stand against it. It’s sinful to buy into it.

2. The photo op stunt with the unnecessary and dangerous show of force against peaceful protestors, with the Bible as a prop, the entourage of white staff, standing in front of a church whose own staff had spent the afternoon handing out water bottles to protestors – yah that stunt. It was a doozy, so wrong in so many ways. And the whole world was watching, squirming, and grimacing, shaking its collective head in bewilderment.In all honesty, I found this stunt to be so incredibly out of bounds, so anti-democracy, so dictator-like, so demeaning of the faith, so irreverent, so poorly conceived, so unconcerned about church leadership, and so callous and ego-centered that it just boggles the mind. And for what? Footage for a campaign video? Lord, deliver us from this evil. Please.

3. “What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun
Or fester like a sore — and then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load
Or does it explode?” ~ Langston Hughes

4. Imagine being a White House staffer. Your first assignment each morning is to check the president’s twitter feed cuz a good part of your day will be spent defending, spinning, and propping up whatever slipped into his head overnight. And the next day, you’ll do the same thing and there’s a good chance that the current tweet will undo your work from the day before. What a horrible way to make a buck. What a sucky way to lead a nation.

5. “Amy Cooper was for many people, I think, the catalyst. Here you have this woman who — we’ve all seen the video now — blatantly knew how to use the power of her whiteness to threaten the life of another man and his blackness. What we saw with her was a really, really powerful explicit example of an understanding of racism in a structural way.” ~ Trevor Noah

6. “Hope is too often conflated with empty optimism. But Christian hope is like an anchor that God tosses way out into the future and reels us toward it. Pulling us from the ache and drawing us toward beauty and restoration and brightness. This reminds us that we really are going somewhere.” ~ Kate BowlerWe’re walking through the deep weeds these days. May ‘hope’ draw you towards the beauty, the restoration, and the brightness you long for.

7. From the Center for Action and Contemplation
– “When the Bible is read through the eyes of solidarity—what we call the “preferential option for the poor” or the “bias from the margins”—it will always be liberating, transformative, and empowering in a completely different way.”
– “Our cultural worship of individualism and “bootstrap” mentality deprives us of the capacity to empathize with people in need and recognize systemic oppression.”
– “Throughout the New Testament, Jesus’s parables and stories paint a picture of a reign in which the poor and marginalized are lifted up and their needs are met, rather than being despised or ignored by those in control.” ~ Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis

8. We’re still in the middle of a pandemic and it appears we believe that a healthier economy is the vaccine. Why do I think we’re going to pay the price big time for the way we opened up the country? Hope I’m wrong.By the way, has anyone seen the Coronavirus Task Force recently? Maybe they’re out working on our national ‘attention deficit’ problem. After all, we were riveted on the pandemic for all of three months.

9. “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you did not know.” ~ William WilberforceOnce you know, you can never go back to the way you were.

10. Despite his claims to the contrary, the president is not having his right to speak stifled. Twitter is only warning people that he just might have a problem telling the truth. It took Twitter a while to figure out what most of us have known for a long time but I think the reminder to ‘fact check’ the guy is wise.“As the vilest writer hath his readers, so the greatest liar hath his believers: and it often happens, that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it hath done its work.” ~ Jonathan Swift