“When we talk about race today, with all the pain packed into that conversation, the Holy Spirit remains in the room. This doesn’t mean the conversations aren’t painful, aren’t personal, aren’t charged with emotion. But it does mean we can survive.”
— Austin Channing Brown
“I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness”
Read more: http://austinchanning.com/
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With all of the resources out there — news articles, podcasts, documentaries, books, links highlighted in our own e-zine — you may wonder why we exist. Who is the an Antiracism Awareness task force at St. Ignatius, and what do we do differently?
We are a group of parishioners inviting you to work alongside us to become more anti-racist — as individuals, as families, as a parish, as a city and as a country. This space exists to educate, to challenge, to inspire. To allow for a space to be vulnerable with one another as we grapple with our own racist tendencies and the racism that is in our Church and our culture. If you sign up to join our mailing list, you will receive reflections from St. Ignatius parishioners on antiracism every other week, plus other resources for our journey in antiracism. Maybe you’ll want to contribute a reflection, too.
We don’t want to make this easy. We will reckon with racism, as uncomfortable as that makes us. And why? Because that is what the Holy Spirit calls us to do. As we allow the Holy Spirit to work in us, may She enlighten us to the Truth. May She give us the Grace to be humble, to Listen, to Change.
I know I have a tendency to not listen. To defend myself. To ignore my own racist viewpoints. But I am challenging myself to be further educated on white supremacy in the history of this country and this Church. To self-reflect — for instance, to truly think about why almost all of my friends are white. I also am challenging myself to change, for example by having hard conversations about racism, even when it’s with my father, even when I feel completely uncomfortable. And, I am committing myself to advocate for policy change in order to structurally root out the sins of racism in this country.
Will you join us on our journey so that together as a Church, we may become an Antiracist parish? The Holy Spirit will be with us as we do.
REFLECTION
- Do you talk about racism? What can you do to become more confident when talking about racism?
- Have you noticed the Holy Spirit call you out of your comfort zone to learn more about how to be antiracist? If so, how?
- How can you challenge yourself this week to either learn, reflect, or change in order to be more antiracist?
PRAYER
Jesus, may we listen to your demands for racial justice. May we sit with you in quiet prayer as we realize our racist tendencies. May we walk with you as you accompany the marginalized. May we have the courage to have the difficult conversations and self-reflections, and may we trust in the movements of the Holy Spirit.
Written by Allison C.
Every issue of “Becoming Antiracist” is written by a fellow St. Ignatius parishioner.
Allison C. is a social worker who primarily works with the Latinx immigrant community in Baltimore. She has been a Baltimore resident and parishioner at St. Ignatius for 6 years.
