Who will you serve?
What priorities will you hold in front of yourself?
How will you show up?
How fully can you love?
–Leo Babauta, Zen Habits
Babauta’s words provide a useful frame as we all figure out how to navigate through these hard times. We are sad, outraged, and committed. Join us on the path.
Take time for silence and reflection. Tricycle Magazine has introduced a new series of short guided meditations called “For the Moment,” featuring “digestible practices to help us stay centered during difficult times.”
Take time to breathe. Local poet and queer activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who notes that “freedom is not a secret, it’s a practice” offers a short breathing meditation to “bring you back to your breathing, to remind us all of the sacredness of breathing.” She recommends listening to the audio version and breathing along at the stanza breaks.
Take time to learn. Listen to Spirit House co-founder Osunfunke Omisade Burney-Scott’s Facebook video challenging you to determine the best role for you. We have added a page on the RCMWS website for books and other resources. Thanks to former RCWMS Board Member Marcy Litle for her annotations. Read these children’s books by Indigenous writers to the young people in your life.
Take time to show up. Volunteer. Join Triangle SURJ who ask “white people, what will we do to change our legacy of violence?”
Join the Mass Poor People’s Assemby and Moral March on Washington. On June 20th and 21st, from 10:00 am-6:00 pm EDT each day the Poor People’s Campaign will host the largest virtual gathering in this nation’s history to demand change for a more just future for all. Click here to register and stand in solidarity with fellow people of faith and conscience.
Support Black-owned businesses in Durham and Chapel Hill. Order books on structural racism from this Black-owned bookstore in nearby Martinsville, VA instead of Amazon.
Donate. Here are a few great local and national options: Equal Justice Initiative , the NAACP, Rev. William Barber’s Repairers of the Breach, and the NC Justice Center.
Don’t do the work by yourself. Study and learn together. Read Robin D’Angelo’s book White Fragility, and discuss it with your friends. Remember, “If you need to talk about being upset about what you’re seeing and hearing, and you probably do, do that with other white folks.”
Vote. Volunteer with youcanvote.org. Help educate and prepare your neighbors and communities to vote for all offices on their ballot!
Serve. Prioritize. Show up. Love. We are here for you as we journey together.
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