A Year After the Murder of George Floyd

 Today we remember and we honor George Floyd.

There will be news programs and articles in newspapers and online venues to mark this day. Social media will burst with comments and analysis. Events and demonstrations, including one at my church this afternoon, are planned. This is an important day, not only to remember a man whose life was taken cruelly and unnecessarily, but also a day to measure what we have done to change ourselves and this country. 

One of the books I use in my daily devotions is Joyce Rupp's Fragments of Your Ancient Name, 365 Glimpses of the Divine for Daily Meditation. Each meditation explores a name by which God is known around the world and in many spiritual traditions. This is my second time around using the prayers in this book, and more than likely it won't be my last, for they so often are exactly what needs to touch or open or nurture my heart.

This is the prayer for May 21. 

                    Home of Good Choices

                Whether to keep or let go,
                To reach out or pull back,
                To rest or keep going,
                To speak out or be silent,
                To forgive or stay angry,
                To offer help or turn away.
                These choices and more
                Tumble and spin around in us.
                If we bring them to you,
                We will make wise decisions.

        Today: I include my Home in decision-making.

This past year has demanded that we make good choices, better choices. And there is always a choice. I believe that when we ground our decision-making in God as "home," it is more possible to make  good choices. Our choices determine if this year will be another of violence and trauma, of injustice and racial disparity or if this year will lead us closer to justice and equality, to love and compassion. 

The choice is mine. The choice is yours.

An Invitation
What informs the choices you make? I would love to know. 

Waiting for the Verdict

Now we wait. 

Yesterday the closing arguments were presented in the George Floyd murder case, and the jury was given its instructions. 

The prosecution urged the jury to believe what it saw.

The defense relied on "reasonable doubt," saying if you don't have all the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies, you can't make chocolate chip cookies. If a single ingredient is missing, it is a not a guilty verdict. Does anyone else find that metaphor insulting? Trivial? Simple? 

Yesterday during my church's online worship service, the text for the opening hymn, "Have Mercy, God and Purge From Us" was written by Gloria Dei's assistant director of music and worship production, Paul Damico-Carper (You can listen here) and several lines keep vibrating within me:

      Have mercy, God, and purge from us enduring corporate sin...

      Lay bare the evil we ignore pretending peace within...

      Unbind our hearts, cast out our fears so we will start today to
      right the centuries of wrongs...

      Embolden us to be participants in turning our entire society...

      Revise our hearts where justice has eluded us too long...

Notice the strong verbs, especially "purge," "unbind," "embolden," and "revise." Active verbs. Nothing passive there. Words of change. 

I tend to think about what needs to change in our society--and much needs to change, but what needs to change within me? Where am I passive, when I need to be active? What do I need to purge? 

As a white person, I am used to being comfortable. I desire comfort, but this is not a comfortable time. For one thing, waiting for this verdict is not comfortable and if a "not guilty" verdict is found, life will be anything but comfortable. But can a person of color ever describe their life as comfortable? 

And if the verdict is "guilty," does that mean life can return to being comfortable for me, a white privileged woman? It shouldn't. And life in this society will still be uncomfortable for too many. 

I need these words from poet Steve Garnaas-Holmes:

    We will do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God.
    We will no longer be afraid
     to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with God.
     Even in the lingering darkness we are not afraid. 

And now we wait. 

An Invitation
What does being comfortable mean to you? What do you do with your discomfort? I would love to know. 

 NOTE: To see more of the portraits I feature in this post go to  https://www.mrjohnsonpaints.com

Minnesota Nice?

Engraving on wall at the National Lynching Museum, Montgomery, Alabama

When my husband and I returned in 1974 to Minnesota, our home state, from St Louis where Bruce had gone to medical school, and I had taught high school English in an inner ring suburb, we couldn't figure out what was wrong. Something was missing. 

Soon we realized what was missing were Black people. We had become used to living and working in a much more integrated environment, and returning to Minnesota, we were struck by how white our state was. 

And remains.

But, I admit, with time I stopped thinking about that fact. I acclimated easily to the culture in which I had been raised--that of white privilege. 

I shudder now to remember that one of the classes I was assigned to teach at Webster Groves High School was called "The Outnumbered." I vaguely remember a series of paperback textbooks with stories and poetry and essays by minority writers. I don't think I had studied or been introduced to any of those writers in any of my college courses, but maybe there had been a Langston Hughes poem thrown in there now and then. And I certainly remember hearing Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have A Dream" speech, but my awareness of anything beyond white male literature was severely limited. 

Many of my students were African American kids whose families had been able to move out of inner city St Louis into a suburb, where they hoped to find better schools and better living conditions. Now I wonder what business did I, a white woman educated at a small liberal arts college with a Scandinavian background, have teaching content so foreign to what I knew about life. I hope I was sensitive. I hope I was open. I hope I listened. I hope I learned as much, if not more, than my students. 

In recent years, all these decades later, I have despaired at the statistics about life for African Americans in Minnesota--the disparities in income, employment, education, health, and housing ETC. ETC, and yet Minnesota always scores high in church attendance, as well as  philanthropic giving. I have wondered, "What is our problem?" Aren't Minnesotans nice people? Do we not deserve our reputation as a progressive state?



The last few days I have seen many different lists of resources to read or watch. Several titles on the lists are books I bought before or after the Civil Rights Tour we went on the fall of 2018. I read some during that time, but it is time to return to that shelf. One of the books recommended, especially for Minnesotans, is A Good Time for the Truth, edited by Sun Yung Shin and published in 2016. 




I had read some of the essays already, but decided to begin again, reading with the eyes of 2020 and the murder of George Floyd.
I started with an essay by David Mura,  "A Surrealist History of One Asian American In Minnesota," in which he includes several explanations for why racial disparities in Minnesota are so great. 
             * The white people here are very white. To be white
             in Minnesota is different from being white in the South.
             A Southerner, whether a racist or not, knows that black
             people have lived in the South as long as white people;
             their history is intertwined...The issues of race don't 
             exist in Lake Wobegon, and that's the way white
             Minnesotans want to think of their state.
             * The white people here don't like controversy or
             conflict. They like insisting that things are just fine...
             So many white people here subscribe to the following
             tautological wheel: The only time we encounter racial
             tensions is when the subject of race comes up. So the way
             to keep away tensions is to not talk about race. If no one
             is talking about race, then that must mean racism no 
             longer exists.
             * The white people here like to think of themselves as
             nice people. ...The southern white author understands 
             that evil exists and evil has existed in their world. They 
             understand not only that white Southerners are capable 
             of being not nice but that they have been capable of
             great cruelties. But the Duluth lynching? That's an
             anomaly here. It's not really reflective of who Minnesota
             was, much less does it have any connection to what
             Minnesota is... pp. 53-54.

Ouch! 

I remember when dinner table conversation turned political or even if anyone disagreed on a given topic, my mother would say, "Now we are just going to have happy talk." 

Apparently, that's Minnesota. 

We have a lot to overcome, and I hope we will help each other do that. 

An Invitation
What beliefs about yourself get in the way of creating positive social change? I would love to know. 

NOTE: I also recommend a more recent book by David Mura, A Stranger's Journey, Race, Identity and Narrative Craft in Writing. 

Deep Pain in Minnesota

I live in St Paul, Minnesota. Our home is just across the river from Minneapolis. The murder of George Floyd occurred not far from where we live, and the destructive, painful responses are in our loop of life. 

One of the Targets looted was the Target where I shop.

I heard sirens all through the night, and wondered what I would see, what I would learn when I woke in the morning.

And now I wonder how do we move forward? How do we heal? How do we change? How do we become the people we were created to be and how do we create a society, a culture that reflects who we were created to be? 

I do not have words, but I have a need to find the words that will drive my actions. 

Here's a beginning--from Thomas Merton.

            You do not need to know precisely what is 
             happening or exactly where it is all going.
             What you need is to recognize the possibilities
             and challenges offered by the present moment,
             and to embrace them with courage, faith, and
             hope.

George Floyd was not allowed to breathe. It is our job now to breathe a new breath of life. 

An Invitation
Please pray for us.