Finding the Road Less Traveled:
To Pittsburgh and Back with Friends
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
— Psalm 139:7–12 (New International Version)
Pictures by Vanessa Julye.
Five days is a long time. But as someone who is committed to racial justice, positive change, and my faith as a Quaker, I cleared my calendar, packed myself and my 14-month-old daughter, and hit the road. Together with 40 other Quakers gathered at the invitation of FGC, we attempted to go “Beyond Diversity 101”—and figure out collectively how to take the rest of the Religious Society of Friends along.
Let me start by saying that this is not an unbiased report of events. I have an agenda—I want each person who reads this to emerge with a sense of hope. I refuse the notion that ultimately we will all be undone by the negative impact of being bred into a white supremacist culture: That our scars and the scars of our ancestors, and the wounds that continue to be inflicted daily in the name of race (as well as a myriad of other oppressions, but for the sake of this article, I’m going to focus on race) will ultimately claim our spirits. For my own survival, I cling to the belief that change is possible, even if I never see it in my lifetime.
So it is with relentless, sometimes desperate, hope that I both entered into and emerged from my experience in Pittsburgh. The details of what we said, the experiential exercises, the wrestling with the vast chasms between our individual and collective realities seem less important to share here than the lessons. After all, workshops create a microcosm of our existence together, and shed light on ways we might raise our awareness and ultimately positively impact our communities.
Because we represented different meetings and organizations many of us had the question on our minds: What would we bring back to our communities from these five days? I am sure we each have different answers to that question, depending on who we are and where we are situated in our identities. I happen to be a white woman, born and raised in Trenton, New Jersey, who has come to Philadelphia Quakerism by way of Italian-Catholic- Jewish roots. From and through that filter, here are the lessons I took home.
We must lift the blankets of our individual cultural experience and peer underneath.
A great analogy shared during the workshop for defining dominant culture was that of asking a fish to describe the water in which it was born and has lived all its days. Can you imagine the challenge of that? Can you imagine how shocked the fish might be to learn that others drown in the water it calls home?
For anyone who lives the cultural experience of being white in the United States it can be extremely difficult to perceive elements of that whiteness that is oppressive to others, simply because it feels “normal” to you. That lack of perception often leads to a denial that a cultural norm of whiteness exists. If you look at it as something you are wrapped in but that is not necessarily your skin, you might begin to see the impact whiteness has had on your own life, and on the lives of others who do not share your cultural orientation.
Individuals do not naturally have a sense of shared reality when it comes to experiences around race. Yet for some reason, many of us seem compelled to disagree about each others experience, invalidating and thus wounding others.
I’ll share with you a more personal example of this dynamic that is not based on race, but that may help make the point. When I was fourteen I was raped by a boy up the street from me. This was before the term “date rape” was coined and understood. When I finally got up the courage to share this information with my mother, she didn’t believe me, which just added to my shame and confusion over the situation. Years later, when I asked her why she didn’t believe me, she shared that because she herself did not make a very conscious and informed choice about her first sexual partner, she assumed this is what happened for me. She was not able to validate my experience because she was not able to understand it in any context other than through her own experience. And to do so would have required her to confront her own feelings of anger that it happened, guilt that she was not able to protect me, and hurt that something so horrible was done to her own daughter.
One of the most powerful moments of seeing this dynamic play out between people of different races came in a video we watched together in Pittsburgh called The Color of Fear. A white man, who we watched in a dialogue with a group of men the majority of color, was completely unwilling to hear their stories of how race affected them in their lives. It was wrenching to watch the interplay between his denial of their realities, and their own range of responses to it. Finally, one of the men asked him, “What if it were all true?” As he opened up to the possibility, he broke down and wept, responding that it would be awful, and that further, it would completely change the way he saw himself and the world.
When we take the risk to discuss issues of race, and the differences between the experiences and realities of one another across race, we must be willing to accept each other’s stories and perceptions as true. When we are confronted with that place in ourselves that finds it too hard to face, too painful to believe, too threatening to our own reality, we must be willing to ask ourselves and one another, what if this Friend’s reality was true? And allow ourselves to experience the opening, and the possibility of sharing realities beyond the limits of our own experience.
The emotional landscape cannot be ignored.
One of the greatest challenges of the weekend for me personally was the effort that so many Friends made to try to have a dialogue without taking the time to experience and share the feelings behind our words. I realize that many people find the open sharing of emotions distasteful, and that often when strong emotions are shared, many people attempt to shut down either their own emotions or those of the person sharing. Still, when we discuss race, these emotions are present—they are the big elephant in the room. They must be aired—and furthermore, they must be aired responsibly, not capped out of fear, nor used as weapons against one another.
There is a question in my mind whether the quietism and politeness of Quaker culture will allow us to explore this lesson fully in our communities. Embodied in our faith is an infrastructure for allowing the gift of human emotion to emerge and inform us. The belief that there is that of God in each of us, Quaker process, plain speaking, and worship sharing all support the appropriate and necessary emergence of emotion coupled with the Truth of the Spirit within. Are we willing to accept this gift from one another?
Finding the path to wholeness through the pain.
We are not alone in our struggle to see and understand the workings of race and various forms of oppression among us, and we must hold on to the fact that it is a worthy and necessary struggle. If we look at most divisive situations in the world, we see how differences in race, culture, and class— with the overlay of atrocities such as slavery, colonialism and imperialism—are at the heart of the conflict. We are a faith community that is absolutely committed to equality and peace. If we are to live those commitments, we must be willing to examine how these issues play out among us. It is the only way to develop and share a true vision of how equality and peace might be forged in the larger global community.
To me, this means striving for the wholeness of each individual, and of our entire community. And I believe this is what is meant by the very title of the workshop—Beyond Diversity 101. Wholeness is the beyond. Yes, we must share and validate our pain and the pain of others and be open to the gift of healing. We are more than the sum of our painful experiences. We can each be whole. We can witness one another’s wholeness just as we can witness one another’s pain and suffering. Remember that we are a faith community that believes in continuing revelation, always open to the possibility that the next Truth revealed to us could very well be different than the last. Cling to the potential for wholeness and healing. No matter what.
We will feel lost for as long as it takes to find our way together. We must have faith when there is nothing to hold on to but the commitment to faith.
I opened this article with Psalm 139:7–12 because this is a passage that was read and shared in Pittsburgh. I remember feeling a profound sense of despair when the passage was initially shared with the group. All I heard at first was the reference to a darkness so complete and stifling that no real hope could emerge from it. But as I read more deeply, I eventually saw the profound hope this passage conveyed. The comfort in knowing that our places of darkness do not obscure us from God—that the Divine Spirit sees us and holds us in Light even when we cannot see ourselves or each other.
As we face the complexities and challenges that issues of race present to our communities, we must also remember a simple truth: We want to be closer to God, to the Divine presence in ourselves and in others. There is no deeper yearning than this. So if we are lost for many, many moons on this journey, we must continue to have faith that our path will emerge. Because the Divine is already there—waiting for us.
FGConnections Spring 2003 Home
