paravanes:meditations

Photo (c) Deborah Evans Another Black History Month has come and gone. A most important message is:  know and understand Black history is more than trauma. The inescapable inequities built into American history, traditions, and common practices tell any objective observer about the extreme trauma experienced by the ancestors of those trapped in American chattel slavery and the legal barriers of state enforced segregation.  But undeniable is the determination of those who survived the worst things any modern culture has imposed on enslaved people and their descendants. No one survives a life filled with nothing but trauma. Survivors and thrivers have moments and hours and days of love, caring closeness, laughter, connection, goodness, and support -- even small victories are not absent from the survivor's life. When you examine or attempt to understand Black history, beware of those who would define this history as nothing but a series of traumas. That viewpoint, tho...

No, I'm not watching the Tyre Nichols video. For those not living in the States: Tyre Nichols was a young African American man who died from injuries he suffered after being beaten, pepper sprayed, and tazed by five police officers in Memphis, Tennessee. His encounter with the officers began during a traffic stop. The five officers who assaulted him now face murder and other charges. News reports stated the video of this attack was so deeply and violently brutal that children and other vulnerable person's should not watch it. My initial reaction to that report was to acknowledge I am not a child and also to acknowledge I am a vulnerable person. We are all vulnerable persons. I accepted I am vulnerable to experiencing the trauma on display in the video. I accepted Tricia Hersey's (the Nap Bishop on Instagram) definition of the video as "trauma porn": a second hand experience making us think we can experience something we can't personally know, but s...

Jesus Christ values all people equally. His people value and care for all people equally. God's people are not "color-blind", unable or unwilling to see clear and visible differences among humans. God's people see and acknowledge the beauty of the differences expressed in creation, including among people. If you hold the belief that "others" are a different "type" of person, a person not fully deserving of fully and forever sharing God's goodness, blessings, and love, think again. If you would  be offended to see a certain "type" of person in the eternal heavenly kingdom , think again. If you would be offended to forever live as a certain "type" of person in the eternal heavenly kingdom , think again. If you believe you are blessed in a special, favored, or different way because of what you see in the mirror each day (a certain skin color, a certain weight, a certain height, a certain type of clothing, a certain t...

 I do not remember how I first learned of the Black and Missing Foundation, but I am glad I did. This organization, founded in 2008 by a former law enforcement official and a public relations specialist, does good work by forcing all of us to think about how we view the world, the people in it, and how we respond to those who are missing, especially those who are black and missing. Before anyone asks why is there a need for an organization called "Black and Missing Foundation", please know this: ABC News reported that FBI statistics say nearly 40% of missing persons are "people of color ." Would you know this from watching traditional newscasts about missing persons? We are talking about hundreds of thousands of missing persons "of color", most of whom TV viewers or consumers of other media have never heard about. Why is that? Don't doubt this: if some unknown disease or unaccounted for event "disappeared" that number of American citiz...