Each year the Church reflects on Jesus’ transfiguration on the 2nd Sunday of Lent. The vision challenges us to look toward Easter, to envision our hopes and prayers for transformation and renewal this Lent.
Today we face polarized times when neighbors and family members aren’t always talking. Fake news thrives. Violence is so frequent that fatigue sets in unless the violence touches us. What can transform us?
One answer is conversation, learning where others come from. Conversation followed Father Bryan Massingale’s talk on racism this fall at St. Catherine University. He used a ruler as a time line, explaining slavery lasted for 7.5 inches; reconstruction, 1 inch; Jim Crow, 2.25 inches; legal equality, 1.25 inches (1968). He made the point racism isn’t over.
Indeed, an African American woman in her late 20s in my group of three remembered that her grandparents had to sit in a back section in the Catholic church where they worshiped. We talked about the Jesuits at Georgetown University selling their slaves and now making reparation.
A month later our religious community spent a Saturday morning on racism and white privilege. We talked in fives. I learned more. One question asked, “When do you pretend?” Not much, I thought, but the gay man in our group said, “I have to decide all the time who I will be in groups and at work.”
Conversations also happened at a Come Together gathering of prayer and song. A student from Zimbabwe described worries for her family’s safety as she followed news that the only president she has known was forced to step down. A mom with a biracial child shared her fears for the child.
Bonnie Steele, who helped start the Come Together movement, described the police chase and shooting that threatened her children and led her family to move. As three of us talked, a white woman recalled being stopped by the police and having to open the trunk of the car for the officer to get her purse and identification. The black woman in our group shook her head. “In the black community opening the trunk risks having marijuana or other drugs planted there as a reason to arrest you.” Again I learned.
- What conversations have opened your eyes to where others come from?
