Last week the church season of Lent began. This is a time of purposeful growth, where Christians examine their lives and attempt to give something up or take something on that increases our ability to be more like who God would have us to be. Lent asks us to take on suffering, not to harm ourselves because we are bad. Lent is a season of stretching, a time of growing pains, a place to face the things we long to avoid.
This Lent at the Sellwood Faith Community we are reading a wonderful, difficult book called Stand You Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. We are meeting weekly to talk about our learnings from the book. We are admitting to our racism, our broken thought processes, and our willful blindness about our culture that perpetuates oppression. At the end of each discussion I ask the question, “What are you going to do in your life based on your learnings from this reading and our conversation?” It is wonderful to be intellectually changed, but our world will not be any different if our lives aren’t changed as well. One of our members is reading books by African-American authors this year to increase exposure to the voices of others. Some of our members are having intentional conversations with the children in their lives about the fullness of our history as a nation. Others are taking inventory of their pasts and honestly naming the times that they participated in discrimination, with a mindfulness to operate differently now.
As Lent continues our learning and pain will deepen as we acknowledge the injustice of our world, the suffering of our neighbors and our own complicity in both. Our work will also increase as we take steps in our journey to speak up, to listen well, to stand with others, to get out of the way, and to follow God’s call to be more fully as God dreams us to be.
Read along with us by ordering the book here:http://www.amazon.com/Stand-Your-Ground-Bodies-Justice/dp/1626981094
Or find your own Lenten practice that causes you to step out of the day to day and grow. Share with us what you are engaging in so that we too might learn in new ways!
Blessings on the journey,
Eilidh
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