Staying Awake

In church on Sunday, the lessons we heard focused on staying awake.  I tend to be only able to walk away from a Sunday service these days with a word or an image, so forgive me if I'm shrinking down centuries of interpretation, but this is where I'm at.

Staying awake.

I'm notoriously sleepy.  I fall asleep the second a movie comes on that doesn't immediately capture my attention.  When I try to read, I fall asleep within the first paragraph.  If I'm asked to drive a car in the evening, I decline because I know I will most likely put the passengers in danger because of my near narcoleptic tendencies. 

The moments in my life where this sleepiness has caused the most issues has been those early and sleepless nights with my children.  My son was a terrible sleeper as an infant and only was able to fall asleep if a) he was nursing or b) he was being held in a cloth carrier while being walked and bounced and patted in front of our oven's exhaust fan.  I always chose option a.  But the problem with option a is that it was one that required me to fight my impulses to fall asleep.  As I sat there in the middle of the night, holding this child in the dark who had finally quieted, the most natural thing to do was sleep.  But almost every parenting book in the world will tell you this is a terrible idea - that falling asleep with a baby in your lap/lying next to you is dangerous.  So, I had to fight it.

I did everything one could do on a phone (and what on earth would people do before smartphones??), but still found myself bobbing and drifting, and most nights, I would be awoken by either my husband or the baby moving or breathing, alerting me to my mistake.

Stay awake.

After processing what I heard at church and my initial bristling at the idea - I started to wonder about the moments in my life where I haven't had trouble staying awake.  To be honest, there have only been a few.  Those nights where I've been so scared about what the morning brings that I couldn't do anything to bring about sleep.  Those nights where I've writhed in pain with the pending births of my children.  More often than not, staying awake has been due to my desire to sleep and inability to make it happen, not an active choice on my part.  Those nights I can immediately recall, can tap into their feelings in my memory, can taste the desperation and loneliness.  But I was awake.  And I was ready for what was to come.

Those evenings of insomnia have been more frequent this past year - with life changes and of course, a terrifying political climate, I find my mind racing at night - unable to quiet enough to sleep.  I have even felt moments where I dread the coming darkness because I see the hours laid out in front of me.

But maybe that's the point.

Advent is a time of darkness, a time where we really look at the emptiness around us.  Really see our needs and lacking laid out in front of us.  It's almost like a month of insomnia.  Something we'd rather close our eyes to, rather rush through - but these are the days that remind us that we are alone and in need of something, anything. R
esurrection.

This Advent season feels different to me.  I want to sleep, but can't.  I want to look away, but can't.  The darkness is all around.  I'm hopeful that rest comes soon.

Owning White Privilege – I’ll Go First

 

*Image Credit: Google Search

So, these last few days have been awful.  I’ve been glued to the news coming out of Charlottesville to the point of putting my family and health at risk.  And to be perfectly honest, the week building up to white supremacist terror attack haven’t been easy either.  But beyond the terror of the Trump presidency and the fear of the world ending, I’ve found myself in some very emotional places.

First, my job.  This place is amazing.  It sent out its Semi-Annual Diversity Progress Report and while, of course, there is work to do, a big milestone was met with 55% of employees here being people of color.  I’ve never worked anywhere where this information is so widely circulated and/or this initiative is so widely supported and emphasized.  We also had a lunch and learn session last week on the subject of white privilege.  These conversations are always so uncomfortable, only more so since I’m still relatively new here, but it was eye opening as they always are.  I walked away feeling more confused and am still trying to unpack what to do.

Then on Friday I attended a forum on the “Future of Chicago” focused on violence in our city.  While all good in theory, the forum was led by 2 white people of means and significant privilege who avoided a question about how there was a noticeable absence in perspective on the stage.

And then Charlottesville.

What appears to be happening (to me too) is once again this white amazement of the severity of the situation, and the “this is not us/this is not me” conversation.  But what I’m hearing from people of color is once again, this is not new and yes this is us, but also this is YOU.  And while I can get there, I struggle staying in that place without trying to find a solution.  But a wise friend of mine said “I don’t know if now is a time that can feel other than a struggle.”  And yes, but ouch.

So, I’m leaning into that feeling of struggle and discomfort, and I really really really REALLY hope my white friends are too – especially those of you that aren’t feeling anything or are feeling pity or some type of sympathy that keeps you from placing yourself directly in the seat of culpability. 

In my experience, the best place to begin a difficult conversation is to own your share of the responsibility, so I’m going to name my white privilege.  It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately (and in fact, for a number of years), but instead of staying on the areas that are somewhat outside of my control (which is debatable, I know), areas like family of origin, childhood 

experiences, etc., I’m going to name the privileges I’ve knowingly taken advantage of as an adult.

1    I chose to live in a neighborhood in a suburb with access to high quality public schools.  My husband and I considered many different locations to purchase a home, but the #1 factor was that our kids would go to a “good public school.”  We actively moved to a community that was already affluent enough to support high quality schools, therefore removing our tax revenues from areas that could have benefitted from it, and we did all of this without any concern about being welcomed into the neighborhood we chose.  Our neighborhood is primarily caucasian, and we knew that moving in, and this did not deter us from moving in.

      I chose and was accepted into a high quality private college which was overwhelmingly Caucasian not by my merits (I was never a great student), but because of my family and because of my family’s wealth.

      I shop at stores and eat at restaurants that will prioritize me and my money over others because of my race.  I am not looked at suspiciously when I enter a store, even if I’m wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt and my hair is a mess and I’m carrying a big bag.

      When I’ve applied for a job, I’ve never had to tweak my resume or application to hide parts of my cultural identity (i.e. changing my name or address to appear more white).

      I don’t have to alter how I communicate (minus less swearing) dependent upon who is around me and where I am.

      I’ve been pulled over or questioned by the police on numerous occasions, even when I’m clearly at fault of breaking the law, and have never feared for my life – in fact, funny story: in my younger days, a friend and I stole a gigantic toilet paper roll from a bar and were walking home and got pulled over by two Chicago police officers.  They hit on us, drove us in their cop car to the El, escorted us through the station (we didn’t pay), and got us on the train. They called us to make sure we got home safe.

     When I’ve been in neighborhoods with high crime, I have known the power of my race and felt secure since I could call the cops and they would listen and attend to my needs.

      I’ve never had to ask permission to take off for a religious holiday that was not celebrated by the majority of my coworkers. 

      I’m rarely the only white person in the room.

      I was able to lean on my family and some government supports in order to purchase my first home.  Had no trouble getting approved for a loan.  Have set myself up for a healthy financial future from an early age and will reap the benefits of home ownership for the rest of my life.

There are seriously so many more examples – and ones that are even more painful than what I’ve listed above, but I think this is a starting point.  And leaning into this struggle is where I am right now.  The next step is more confusing for me, but I own these above and now I need to figure out what to do with these privileges.  Do I throw them out?  Do I try to translate them into something that actually utilizes the privilege to amplify the voices who have been underprivileged?  That’s where I’m stuck.

But, if you are a white person reading this, please please please start doing some soul searching.  We are what happened in Charlottesville.  And we have to start cleaning up our mess.  And it starts with cleaning up ourselves and naming it – just like our fearless leader couldn’t do.  Because once it’s named, it’s real and then we know there’s a starting place.

White supremacy is a cancer to this country.  And white privilege is something that feeds this cancer and helps the cells duplicate.