if a good deed falls in the bush and there is no one to hear it

We’ve all heard the rhetorical question, “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, did make a sound??” I’ve never liked these little mind games. Their only goal is to be obnoxious, which I say is bad manners. My response used to be, “Who cares?” … that is, until I spent too much of my own time alone, in the bush, where trees fall, and there’s not always someone to hear. I have my very own trees – ‘project trees,’ ‘development trees,’ ‘see-what-good-work-we-do trees.’ Metaphorically, our life is a forest of activity, and we do need people to hear about it and respond by funding it, so, in a sense, the question feels relevant: If a good deed falls in the bush and no one hears about it, does it matter?

 

I could get lost in the philosophy of it, but the real question is, do the stories that go untold hold significance? All the things that don’t make the newsletter because they aren’t photogenic? All the crucial-process things that need to happen but are definitely not sexy? All the stories that aren’t shared to protect the privacy of others involved? If no one hears about it, does it make a sound?  

 

Our work here is complex – to say the least. We had visitors recently and they said to us what almost all first-time visitors say, “We had no idea there was this much going on.” Truth is, I want people to open my e-mails and I keep them short for that reason, but the consequence is that 99% of what goes on here never makes the hi-light reel, and there’s the question again… If no one hears the good deed fall in the bush… It’s an important question, the answer to which has the potential to be quite depressing. If 99% of my life is unknown, does that mean 99% of my life is insignificant? God I hope not, but it can certainly feel that way. 

 

I think the desire to be known is human, and reasonable, but I have to check my own motivations for what I communicate and how and why. I recently read a missionary update written by someone whose work is similar to ours and so the stories were very relatable, but the style of the writing was provocative and I could tell readers would be impressed not only by the work going on but also by the portrayed awesomeness of the missionaries themselves. And it made me emotional. I started to cry, but didn’t know why, which heaped on additional feels of embarrassment and shame. Jeremy asked me what was wrong. At first I said I didn’t know… why should this move me? It’s their life, not mine… And then I realized: I’m mad I didn’t write it. I confessed to Jeremy: I mean, this is grade A emotive-compelling-self-aggrandizement. I do these same things every day, but I’m not ballsy enough to talk about it like this and so people don’t know how hard I work and I feel unseen and… my ego is mad. These other people were getting the response they hoped for, and I, living the same life, felt painfully unknown. 

 

In its purest form, we want to be known so that we can reap the benefits of loving, human connection, and this good and right. But I think a lot of the time, in fields like mine where communication and media presence is often less about connecting and more about marketing, the desire to be known is quite layered. Many of my colleagues and I could probably confess, I don’t want you to just know what’s happening, I want you to be impressed… and then I want you to respond… so that I can know for sure that what I’m doing is worth it.

 

For so much of what falls unheard, unseen, unknown, the secret cost is nevertheless substantial – lost sleep, physical injury, emotional drain, mental fatigue. Just because no one learns what went down, and no one has the chance to be impressed by it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t hugely significant for everyone involved. The dynamic between impressive and significant is something I wrestle with daily. I’ve spent nearly 20 years trying to uncouple the two, and still find that old habits die hard. 

 

I come from a culture that doesn’t just look down on unimpressive, it actively disdains it. I was raised in an environment that obsesses over going to a ‘good’ school and getting a ‘good’ job and achieving a ‘good’ life. This all sounds fine but what may not be intuitive if you aren’t familiar with this kind of pretentiousness, is that in this context, the opposite of ‘good’ isn’t ‘bad,’ it’s worthless… and suddenly it makes sense why these pursuits become a matter of life and death. The number of college students from my home community who commit suicide each year is jarring. The fear of being unimpressive and therefore worthless is enough to make people orient their entire lives around becoming something others deem worthwhile, and that often means becoming someone they are not. I can’t tell you how many people I know have attended schools that almost killed them, taken jobs they hated in cities that felt foreign for no reason than because it made people say “Wow!”

 

Beyond my home town, in my current field, the entire development industry is built around the need to impress. The statistics that make donors write the checks are all that matters… whether or not those numbers are attached to anything that the community holds dear. How many times have NGO workers confessed to us, our work is important insofar as it’s impressive enough to win the next grant… beyond that… I’m not sure we’re making a difference. There’s a tell-tale haze behind the eyes when people get to this point. No one goes into development work without desiring to have a significant impact; but an awful lot leave the field with an impressive resume – and an incredibly jaded spirit.

 

The pursuit of impressive is spell-binding. But impressive and significant  aren’t synonyms and we can’t treat them as such. Impressive is its own thing, with its own equation. Impressive is calculated by audience size multiplied by audience response. 

 

How many people know that I’m great and how well do they respond to my greatness… now multiply those two together and I’ll know my worth.

 

Audience x Response = Worth

 

I’ll know my worth… oof. This kind of math is soul sucking. And its why my ego fires up when someone else receives the accolades that I feel I deserve simply because they were driven enough to spin the stories that I didn’t. The need to impress is a core character trait of the Ennea 3, and yet we don’t even realize how exhausting it is until we’re a little too dead inside. The standards are always shifting, and it requires so much hustle – driven by the fear of being not enough – that’s no way to live. 

 

Conflating impressive and significant isn’t a “3” struggle only, but it does make me appreciate how inherent something like this can be. Impressive over significant was once hard wired into my DNA – but then I made a really good choice and Velcro-ed myself to Jeremy who is the least pretentious person on the planet. He has never had a problem calling out, what manner of Ivy League snobbery is this? I joke that he saved me from myself which only makes him roll his eyes because he is literally not trying to impress anyone – including me. (Bless him.)

 

If I want to leave the glitzy world of chasing impressive and instead achieve something truly significant… what does that even mean?

 

Websters says that significance is “conveyed as a meaning often obscurely.” That’s the least define-y definition ever Webby. 

 

The descriptor ‘obscurely conveyed meaning’ may raise more questions than answers but I think it’s vague on purpose. Unlike impressive which is pure math, the search for significance is dependent on that which the operating world view deems valuable. If I am coming from a Judeo-Christian, theistic worldview, then I need to define significance according to that worldview’s highest value.

 

1 Corinthians 13, leaves nothing to debate: 

If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

 

Loosely translated, Even if I’m really really impressive, if my heart wants people to know about it and tell me I’m awesome, then I gain nothing.

 

The pursuit of impressive sets out to achieve a sense of self, but these words say, “I gain nothing.” (Tell Webster we’re getting somewhere…)

 

And where does the ‘obscurity’ part fit in? Well, Jesus taught us to do good deeds in secret: “Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” I assume it’s not because he foresaw the era of Instagram and just wanted to nip vanity in the bud. I think the statement stemmed from a spiritual principle Jesus knew was at work in us – that as soon as the good deed is known, we are all too tempted to plug it into the “impressive equation,” hanging our hopes of validation on the oohs and aahs of others. Alternatively, when good is done and no one knows, those actions remain free to be valued for their inherent worth – amplified by love - thus achieving significance.  

 

Can you have it both ways? Be impressive and significant? Maybe, but I have a hunch it’s a lot like the paradox between rich and faithful – it’s doable, but rare, which is why so few people are willing to commit to unimpressive obscurity without humble-bragging about it. St. Bonaventure taught that, in order to work up to loving God, start by loving the very humblest and simplest things and then move up from there. “Let us place our first step in the ascent at the bottom,” he said. Everything about this is counter-cultural. But surely a life of significance isn’t for dead Saints only. 

 

If significance comes down to the inherent value of any action done in love and usually in secret, then I am radically free to move through the world with pure intentions, liberated from the need for anyone to hear my ‘trees fall.’ Furthermore, if I apply this perspective to literally everything, from making breakfast to (proverbially) changing the world, then I can actually live an integrated life because I’m no longer concerned with parceling out what is ‘good’ or ‘worthless,’ ‘impressive’ or not, but simply flowing with the current of God’s love. 

 

I know plenty of people who try to play the game of scales – who are willing to be sacrificial and obscure so long as enough of their life is impressive enough to balance things out and still feed the ego. These people schedule in service, or take gap years to get their selflessness out of the way before getting on with “truly important” things. Richard Rohr shook this up for me when he said that how you do anything is how you do everything. If the desire to impress guides me even some of the time, then make no mistake, that is my truth. 

 

This significance thing is abstract, and it’s mind-bendy and its not at all the normal human way of thinking. We are promised that God, who sees what is done in secret will reward you. I think the reward for chasing significant over impressive is the hard won prize of contentment. I’m content if people ooh and ahh and content if they don’t. Communication isn’t evil. (I will still send newsletters!) Positive feedback isn’t bad. (We need donations to finish the library!) But my soul doesn’t rise and fall on it. To move through life on any other terms is to forgo an invitation into the Divine. 

 

Unclogging the toilet that has a plastic dinosaur in it is inherently unsatisfying if my life goal is to be impressive. Unclogging the toilet in love, however, when the goal is to be significant, is deeply satisfying. If I can walk into school and bandage the wounds and cradle a baby with great love, then no one needs to know that I’m the one doing it because I’m not dependent on their response to make me feel worthy, and I can be happy that the value of those obscure actions, amplified by love, is infinite. To say the product of infinite love is ‘significance’ sounds simplistic, but I fear if we miss this, we may have  missed everything. 

 

If the good deed falls in the bush and there’s no one to hear it, does it make a sound? If it was felled to impress, then no. There’s no payday for that lumberjack. But I have to believe that if the tree was planted in love and nurtured in love, and harvested in love, then when it falls, heaven has heard loud and clear, and that matters very much.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

dirt coffee: on evaluating worth in a material society

 

I recently started taking care of an older woman for whom a simple scratch had become a septic wound larger than my hand. The wound festered on top of her collar bone which protruded from her skeletal frame. Every inch of her body bore testimony to her 70 something years of life. The scars of traditional medicine on the chest; the feet calloused from thousands of barefoot miles; face lines of one who has both smiled and scowled plenty. Such a body is magnificent in a place where the average life span is twenty years her junior. 

 

Some days I had to hurry through the dressing change and move on to the next thing, but other days I had the luxury of sitting and asking questions about her life – childhood during colonialism, marriage and her now deceased husband, the role of the matriarch. Dozens of toddler sized look-alikes flitted around her – the older ones sitting and listening as intently as I. She always seemed surprised by my curiosity, her broad smile telling me that she was grateful to be known. 

 

One day at the end of our conversation as I loaded my medical tub to schlep to the vehicle, she looked up at me and said, “Don’t die, Bana Winnie,” – a benediction of longevity. 

“I’ll try not to,” I said back. 

 

As grandma began to heal, her adult children confessed that they hadn’t believed she would recover. Given her age, general fragility and the severity of the wound, they expected to be saying their final goodbyes. Choosing to ignore their lack of trust in my wound-care skills, I rejoiced with them at how well she was doing. After that point, I rarely left that home empty handed. After the sterile gauze had been taped onto her paper-thin skin, grandma would slowly rise up from her mat on the ground and say, “I’m coming,” which in this culture implies, “don't move.” She would go into her tiny brick house and come back with something for me – dried cassava, freshly harvested peanuts or whatever her children, grands and great-grands had pulled from the fields that day. The day she asked how I like caterpillars, I had to think quickly through the pros and cons of accepting a gift that was a delicacy for them and not so enticing to me. But then one day she gave me something really special – a little sachet of coffee. The day before, Grandma had shown me her single coffee bush next to her house. She explained that she picked the beans, heated them in a pan over the fire, pounded them in her mortar, sifted the grounds and then drank it. She asked if I knew what coffee was. Indeed! I responded, explaining that the culture I come from is a little bit obsessed with it. The grounds she gave me were wrapped in a yellow strip of used plastic bag, tied around the powder and very much looking like contraband. I said thank you, and I really meant it. 

 

I took the coffee home and opened up the sachet. I smiled, remembering an incident several years earlier when I had taken bags of Zambian coffee to the states as gifts for donors. Thinking I was being cute, and not knowing any better, I gave an adorable burlap, hand-stamped bag of ZamCoffee to the owner of a successful PNW coffee shop. He opened it, sniffed, and simply said, “Oh wow it looks like dirt.” Slightly stunned at the critique in lieu of “thank you” I accepted that maybe I should have known better. (He wasn’t the only coffee connoisseur on that trip to inform me that Zambian coffee is definitely sub-par. Its ok, my wounded pride has since healed.) 

 

But there in my own home, as I unraveled the grimy plastic and looked more closely at the locally-grown, pan-roasted, home-ground coffee in front of me, I thought, this coffee kind of does look like dirt… and yet I love it. I brewed the cup and took a sip. Having worked hard to become more discerning since that original snafu a few years ago, I couldn’t deny, this coffee would never pass on the world market. Or in any market. Ok fine, it was barely palatable. And yet as I sipped, my mind traveled not to hipster coffee houses but back to grandma’s soft face and her boney hands which had given it to me. The coffee was simultaneously disgusting and precious to me. I struggled to finish that coffee, but also savored it in honor of the hands that made it for me. 

 

A definition of poverty that I have latched on to is that of having little to nothing that the world deems valuable. “Grandma the wound patient” definitely has little to nothing that the world deems valuable and yet she had become so much more than that to me – she was rich in history, tender with babies, tough on teenage boys. She rarely moved from the sack on the ground, and when she did, it was slow, measured movement, that communicated determination, intentionality, and resilience. Her generosity humbled me daily. The day we both attended the funeral of a neighbor lady – her friend – I asked her how she was doing and she said, with wise eyes, “I’m alive.” Gratitude. Character. Grounding. This woman’s coffee did indeed taste like dirt but to me, her mere existence - painful and labored as it may be - was and is of immeasurable worth. 

 

As a community developer that tackles the mammoth of poverty alleviation, I notice how much time we spend evaluating projects and programs based on how productive we can help people become. The things we encourage people to do simply because “there’s a market for that;” defining worthiness by whether the people with fat pockets are willing to pay. The system makes sense, considering that the drivers of development are descendants of the protestant work-ethic who have signs that read “He who doesn’t work doesn’t eat” hanging in their kitchen. In essence, that phrase which the West considers a “Capital T Truth” basically means, if you aren’t willing or able to produce something that the world holds valuable, you don’t deserve to be kept alive. It’s possible that this paraphrase sounds more hyperbole (and dystopian) than it means to be, but I think Grandma’s dirt coffee has me seeing more clearly.

 

Today is black Friday, the day which ushers us into the most materialistic month of the year and, I fear, the worst version of ourselves. We want the stuff, that much is clear, but do we want the stories? As we hold things in our hands, are we giving thanks for the hands that have made it? Are we equating products with dollar signs or equating persons with infinite worth? When we commodify others, we dehumanize ourselves and I can’t help but feel like we are missing out on the massive opportunity this season would otherwise afford us to become a little more real. 

 

The mystery of the incarnation is that God came to earth, tasted our coffee and said, I see your worth. The coffee tastes like dirt - I can’t lie - but your worth? Immeasurable.

God became poor so that in our poverty, though having nothing, that paradoxically, by virtue of embodied glory, we may possess everything. 

 

The world has a ton of leverage over us – impacting the way we see ourselves and others, as doers first, be-ers second, worthy of dignity only if the market agrees. Grandma’s coffee was nowhere near good enough to be valued by anyone that matters which means that she will live out her days unknown by people who haven’t seen in her face all that they are missing. But tasting and seeing go together, so drink the coffee. Bless the hands that made it. Savor the stories. See the worth. 

 As a post-script, if you are interested in spending money on things that promote the dignity and infinite worth of people, may I suggest these options: GIFTS THAT MATTER.

 

for those who have been cancelled

Cancel culture. Ubiquitous in recent years, the phrase started as a way to call people out and has evolved into a dynamic of judging and defining people by snapshots of their imperfect lives. Cancelling provides an easy out for frustrating relationships or people we’d rather not get to know. Thanks to polarized politics and a pandemic keeping us in front of our screens all day, this special kind of rejection is now a familiar phrase and I’m guessing it’s here to stay. 

 

I don’t know how all of you have fared in recent months or years – how many of you have spoken up, how many have just shut down, how many of you have taken risks that panned out or ones that put you in facebook jail. I have friends across the spectrum – activists and passivists alike – and I’ve noticed in general that cancel culture has a lot of us on edge. 

 

I realize a blog post about cancel culture would probably have been more timely six months to a year ago, but I’ve been too timid to write, still recovering from the sting of cancelation myself. Not a lot of cancelation mind you, but when you’re an Enneagram 3, and a little bit addicted to approval from others, it doesn’t take a lot of cancelling to feel wounded. 

 

I’ve always been a truth teller, but in the last several years have added in the Christian practice of lament. With the number of injustices that have been upheld by people hijacking the name of Christ I’ve found it increasingly difficult to hold my peace. 

 

Opinionated as I am, I’ve never been a keyboard warrior and I don’t think even my harshest critics would label me as such. But I’ve not been silent about many things – namely, my belief that black lives matter, that immigrants are humans, that guns shouldn’t kill kids, Christian nationalism is heresy, racism is real, corporate greed is gross, vaccines save lives, patriarchy sucks and health care for all would be super duper nice. And not to diminish the love and solidarity from the overwhelming majority, I also never realized I could strike so many nerves without even trying. 

 

In the online world, cancel culture takes on many forms, ranging from the tacit unfollow to the flamboyant one-two punch of unfriend and block. 

 

Typical social media users have friends, while more public figures tend to have followers. By virtue of my work, I have both friends and followers, with a good amount of overlap in a special group labeled funders. Missionaries are a bit of a public commodity and financial support is used as a sign of approval – both personally and professionally. I’ve unfortunately learned that cancelling donations is a special kind of cancel culture with its own pointed message. 

 

Our true friends have always stuck with us, even when we’ve gotten a bit fringy. This past year though, our followers who assumed that “missionary” was synonymous with conservative, Trump-supporting exporters of white nationalism, (it’s not,) got a whiff of our actual relationship with Jesus (justice, mercy and Kingdom of God) had a choice to make. In 15 years we’ve never experienced anything like this. Only since cancel culture really became a thing, have funders who disagreed with us personally begun to show their disapproval with their wallets. The cancellation has occasionally come with a written explanation – We can’t send money to support socialists (we’re definitely not). Other times we’ve just picked up on the correlation: when on Monday I lament the loss of Black Lives and on Tuesday I see the cancelation by known MAGA folk it doesn’t feel coincidental. 

 

Our close friends have tried to encourage us, you don’t want people like that on your support team anyway, which is soothing in one sense but troubling in another. I’ve always believed that the ministry we run is so absolutely worthwhile – in a global, macro, human-kind sense. Our tag line is Seeking the Peace of Luapula, our ministry geared in every way towards the total flourishing of every dimension of society. Our non-Christian friends (we have lots!) are largely unmoved by our motivation – for Christ – because the common ground we share is more than enough. The logic of Christian cancellers however is far more fixated on nuance – I smell a hint of feminism in the air and I’m highly uncomfortable with the implications of this and will therefore be withdrawing my support for the feeding program because your egalitarian marriage is somehow incongruent with lunch for little Mwewa and I will pray for you.

 

I’m not actually radical. Or that outspoken. Honestly. I have plenty of friends for whom I am the most conservative person they know and I have other friends for whom I am the most liberal person they know and really I’m the same person in front of all of them – it’s just where we all land on the spectrum. I follow the Gospel Coalition and Mother Jones. Don’t try to make sense of it. I don’t fit in many boxes and I’m happy with that, but I do hate feeling like I have to shape-shift simply so that my neighbors here aren’t punished for my authenticity. Because canceling me for personal ideologies never just cancels me. It cancels a web of people who are connected to our funders through me and that is what keeps me awake at night. 

 

I’ve played the chameleon for so long and I’m really good at it. I know every word in the Baptist hymnal but have also shared office space with the Stop Walmart Campaign so yes, I can hang with all sorts. I’m also at a place in my journey where congruency is really important to me. There’s a Seinfeld episode where George Castanza is having a characteristic freak out because his girlfriend and regular friends are mixing and he can’t cope. “There’s friendship George and there’s relationship George, and the two can never meet!” I too played this game through most of my 20s and 30s and maybe it’s because I’m now old and cranky but I just don’t want to anymore. You can cancel me if you like. But please don’t cancel my people. 

 

It’s mostly for the 400 school aged children and the 250 adults living with HIV and the 300 farmers and the 50 pastors who are direct beneficiaries of programs that I administer that I don’t want people to cancel me over my completely unrelated views on whatever is coming out of Tucker Carlson’s mouth. Caring about current events is not a “distraction” from my life’s work nor is it a reflection of missional drift. We’ve had some advisors remind us that we must be “diplomatic” and we do that too. I bite my tongue ten times for every one time I post something even loosely debatable. But this isn’t the way things ought to be. In my heart of hearts I don’t want to completely overhaul our donor base to include only ideological carbon-copies. Nor do I want to walk on eggshells pretending I have no opinions beyond what happens inside of this little village. I want something healthier than that. 

 

I want curiosity.

Those who have written to say that they are withdrawing support of the ministry because of a clash of personal views have never actually dialogued with us. I wish so much that someone would say, “That’s a really interesting perspective, can you tell me how you arrived at that conclusion?” Or, “I see that this is really important to you. Would you mind sharing what your experience has been?” Without curiosity, there is no connection. Without connection, there is no empathy. Without empathy, there is no humanity. And just like that, cancel culture fuels itself by vilifying because it’s easier to label someone as evil and move on. 

 

I’ve watched so many cancelers explain their “unfriend and blocking spree” as simply wanting to “get rid of the negativity in my life.” Boundaries are reasonable, but I don’t think that’s what cancel culture is. Canceling someone outright for a difference of opinion isn’t being boundaried, it’s a sign of low differentiation. Low differentiation can’t cope when another person sees the world differently as it feels personally threatened by a plurality of viewpoints. Differentiated people however are confident in their own thinking and can either support another's view without becoming wishy-washy or reject another's view without becoming hostile. Differentiation is the polar opposite of cancel culture – and if we’re adults, we should probably take note of that. 

Even well differentiated people have boundaries. I can be friends with you if you think BLM is a terrorist organization – we can stick to what we have in common, like cake-baking or needle point – but if you start spewing hate in the presence of my black son, for his sake, I’m going to ask you to leave. And I would expect that others would respond the same to me. But cancel culture says, there is zero redeeming quality in you, and that can’t be true. 

Our human hearts are wired for more than this. Would you know the real me and love me just the same?Isn’t that what we all want – empathy, kindness, connection? Is that asking too much? I don’t think so. Are empathy, kindness and connection incongruent with passion, activism, or even righteous anger? I don’t think so. Nuance matters here, and I think Christians could stand to manage nuance a lot better than we currently are. 

We can’t remain neutral because that’s not being present in the world. 
We ought not fight with everything because that’s undifferentiated.

We do have to fight with some things because that is what’s Christlike. 

Jesus flipped tables. He also healed. All of his actions were intended to restore relationship – never to break it. Cancel culture prioritizes rightness over relationship, cause over curiosity, yet it doesn’t yield the fruit it’s hoping for. In trying to balance what feel like contending energies (ie, righteous anger and loving kindness) I think a good rule of thumb is “bear more pain than you inflict.” 

When I read Luke’s gospel and scan the headings, in-between all the parables I read:  Jesus heals, heals, preaches, cleanses, heals, ministers, heals, forgives, calms, heals, heals, feeds, heals, heals, heals, JESUS BRAIDS A WHIP AND CLEARS THE TEMPLE… and finally, Jesus gives his life for those who were still trying to cancel him. 

When I look at the life of Jesus. His ministry of restoring right relationship between people and God included a whole lot of healing and only a little bit of table flipping so when Christians reverse that balance, they are doing it in the name of ego, not the name of Christ. 

I recently listened to a friend explain that Christ is the cure for human arrogance. He said, “There is no idea more powerful for humility than the gospel because the gospel invites us to embrace our wrongness and to recognize above all that Jesus is right.” It’s a dramatic reorientation. To be a Christian is to admit, I don’t have to be right because Jesus is right. It is so freeing to not have to defend your own rightness tooth and nail to protect your own pride. Because your pride has died with Christ. In this way we experience the healing of self-righteousness and receive an invitation to something more holy and this is the place I want to find myself.  

 

I’ll admit there are some butterflies in my stomach even at the thought of posting this. I’m afraid of being canceled for talking about being canceled. Oh the irony. At a time when I’m ready to sell a kidney to build a library, I’m wondering, are my readers curious and differentiated enough to hear my heart and love me anyway? I don’t know. I hope so. And if not, you still matter to me. 

 

 

anti-racist homeschool

 If there are two things that have massively shifted in the United States in recent months it’s that the realities of race relations in our country are finally getting the attention they deserve; and second, due to Covid, more families are homeschooling than ever before. I, like many of you, never imagined that I would be a homeschool mom, and yet we are now in our fourth year. What I’ve learned thus far on my homeschooling journey is that my favorite part of being my kids’ teacher is that I have complete control over what they learn and how they learn it. I see homeschool as a golden opportunity to infuse family values into the academic culture of our home, particularly with respect to how we engage race. 

Now before I go any further I just need to put out the disclaimer that we are in no way a precious homeschool family. I use the phrase "homeschool mom" very loosely. I still work full time, I have a million things on my plate and I try really hard to not neglect my kids, which still happens more than I’d like. 

I’m not actually sure we got in 180 days of learning last year. I don’t do cute activities. I don’t teach Latin. There is no morning basket or hymn study because this mama doesn’t have time for that. I am eclectic and minimalist and if you want tips on how to do preschool in the bathtub, I’m your person. 

We do school whenever it's convenient, I delegate tasks to unsuspecting travelers, I multi-task to a fault. It's usually not pretty, and some days I cry, but we make it work. 

 

So with that glowing self assessment to set the stage, hear me when I say that even in the midst of chaos, the things that matter rise to the top, and integrating our values into the academic pursuit is always at the top – our values around racial justice included. 

 

I made an Instagram post about this recently that seemed to really resonate with people and so I wanted to share a bit more about what race conscious home-education looks like for us. 

 

For starters, our free-reading shelves are stocked with books that do a good job of celebrating black culture and acknowledging black struggle. We have acquired as many multi-cultural books as we can get our hands on so that our bookshelves reflect the true diversity of the world and do not perpetuate white exceptionalism. These books are highly curated and screened for content and voice. Our living room books are a reflection of us: we don’t do colorblind; we don’t do white supremacy; we don’t tolerate racist micro aggressions – even in children’s literature. 

 

On our school shelves are stocked with books that I expect to read with them. In this lineup we have the good, the bad and the ugly. The bad and the ugly hold their spots simply because there is value in the debrief. With mom as a guide, we let racism come out of the shadows. These white-supremacist authors might be dead but their proud-boy decedents are still on prime-time television so we engage them. We read of early explorers and talk about the start of the slave trade. We read about the founding of America and the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. We talk about the beliefs that white people had that justified the dehumanization of non-whites. I don’t screen offensive ideas or language. I just stop reading, rest the book on my lap, and call out the racism in every paragraph. We have conversations about how these ideas are equally prevalent today and what we are supposed to do with that. 

 

These conversations are now so common for us that before the word out of my mouth, somebody is protesting, “THEY AREN'T INDIANS. White people should know better – they stole the land from Native Americans.” The mention of slavery makes one child want to punch a wall. These days, the kids rant faster than I do, and honestly, that feels accomplished.  

 

I didn’t grow up racist. Except for the fact that I was taught that Columbus discovered America and that Vespucci and Cortez were mistreated explorers who received an unfortunate welcome in the New World. We read Little House on the Prairie and not once did anyone say the word “problematic.” I was taught that slavery ended with the Civil War and racism ended with MLK. So yeah. I grew up racist. 

 

I want something different for my kids. And that requires not only a different awareness, but also a different response. Like Angela Davis said for all of us to hear and grapple with, It’s not enough to not be racist, you have to be anti-racist.

 

Anti-racism is a matter of acknowledging the status-quo and taking it to task. It's about assessing whether our kids are receiving an education that reinforces white-supremacy or challenges it. The gift of homeschooling, my friends, is that you can sculpt for your children what their anti-racist education is going to look like. For me, this is invaluable. 

 

In addition to the history reading and literature selections, we talk about inequalities in the sciences. We do copy work from Jesuit prayers of lament. Creative writing prompts are meant to provoke contemplation and action. We create art and memorize key scripture. We engage what matters.

 

Anti-racism isn’t a topic. It’s not a unity study. Anti-racism is an attitude and an orientation and a lifestyle. Racism is the air that we all breathe and therefore as parents and educators, our response to that fact needs to be commensurate. If I’m teaching my kids to identify faces on coins, I need to also teach them to identify systems of oppression that put those faces there. If we’re celebrating freedom, we need to teach the barriers to enjoying it. Education ought to prepare our kids up to be functional, wise, contributing members of society. If anti-racism isn't a central theme in that, our society is doomed.

 

I know plenty of people are pushing back against such ideas by saying, “it’s not all about race,” but… it kind of is. Unless humanity suddenly becomes translucent, color matters, always. In my experience, it’s only white people who struggle to see that. I want my kids to appreciate that wherever they are, and in everything they do, they need to be consciously aware of who is in charge, who needs defending, and how to make wrong things right. This requires making sense of the story of race. 

 

This is not as advanced as it sounds. My five-year-old who doesn’t even know her days of the week yet (I told you I wasn't precious) gets it. Like she said to me last week, “We stand up for brown people. It’s what we do.” It’s that simple. Racism and privilege and justice and oppression – these are not mature topics to wait for a grad school class in critical race theory. When we talk about them early, and if we unbind them from shame, our kids are equipped to engage their world with confidence and a sense of purpose. It really just takes intentionality and time, and thanks to the routine of homeschool we JUST. KEEP. AT. IT. 

 

There's a million ways to do this and and the anti-racist education will vary by age, grade, personality etc. My goal here isn't to be dogmatic about method but just to promote that it should be happening. The point is that, for most of us, defaulting to the educational culture that we grew up in is just going to produce more of the same culture that we're now trying to dismantle. And so my word of invitation to every homeschool parent out there, particularly the ones who are struggling to see upside of the covid-driven choice: you have the opportunity and the duty to run an anti-racist homeschool. It’s important. It’s possible. It’s worthwhile. 

 

The world needs us to do this. Let’s live up to our potential. 

where is the hope

 

A few days ago, I messaged one of my nurse friends. “I think I can be creative with Mary’s bandages until the next crate arrives… as long as no one else gets burned.” Today, a little girl whose pants caught on fire showed up at my door. It’s when your ‘just enough’ turns out to be too little that hope comes hard. 

 

My friends who thought they just had to get through the summer are feeling this too. ‘Just enough sanity’ to survive till school starts has been hijacked by school not reopening, and I see a familiar hopeless look in your eyes. 

 

As I lifted the little girl into my tub, giving her Tylenol and cookies to distract her from what was about to happen, I sized up the damage. Thirty percent of the upper thigh, not over any joints. “The clinic sent you home to care for it yourself, didn’t they?” I asked, judging by the gooped on toothpaste and ashes that are considered “traditional medicine” for burns. 

 

Back home my friends are cleaning up different messes. The protest fires of injustice and racism and hate are blazing in Portland and elsewhere and the “traditional medicine” of white supremacy doesn’t debride without tears either.

 

Where is the hope?

 

The little girl started crying as I slowly rubbed away the crust that was clinging angry to the tender flesh. Not recognizing either the girl or her mom by face, I asked where they live. M’wanguni, the mom said, in between telling her daughter to not cry so loud. “That’s two villages over,” I observed, “How did you know to come here?” “I heard from the man whose finger you fixed that you were kind to people like us,” she explained. Ah yes. The man who presented me with a severed finger that the clinic wouldn’t touch except to cover with a square of gauze tied on with a condom. 

 

It’s never ending, the wounding is. For me or you. Breonna Taylor’s murderer still walks free; the poor are being pushed farther out of affordable housing; and demon sperm lady is practically surgeon general.

 

Where is the hope? 

 

There was a time when scenes like this would have wrecked me. More times than I can count, I’ve left a bleeding person alone in my bathroom so I could go outside and sob heavy. And while I’m holding tight to wound supplies and not BLM signs, I feel your pain too – I do. That I can’t march with you, that I can’t help teach your kids’ pod, that I can’t hand you Tylenol and cookies while we tackle this life together – it grieves me in its own way. 

 

Where is the hope?

 

I want to be optimistic; that the Tylenol will take the edge off, that tomorrow the pink skin will magically be brown, that medical neglect will no longer send people to my door. I want to be optimistic for you too; that the Covid curve will angle down and that black communities will be lifted up and that music will return to your streets. 

 

I love the optimists in my life, and I aspire to be one of them. Deeply connected to heart’s desires, goal oriented and stubbornly positive. Optimism motivates us to take risk and study burns and speak truth to power. Optimism serves us well… until it doesn’t. When the next patient is more critical than the last and the next tweet more heinous than the first it’s a sucker punch to the gut and all those Pollyanna thoughts feel childish. Confrontation with reality has sent more than a few optimists into rehab where we’ve tried to make sense of how we could have been so naïve. 

 

Where is the hope?

 

Wiser, more experienced, we get our act together. I order hundreds, not dozens of bandages at a time and silver sulfa now by the gallon. You round up screen shots for facebook ammo and amplify black voices as we try and figure out how to realistically achieve this thing we call healing.

 

But our expectations are tempered more than we admit. Where we no longer pray for miraculous healing and justice is only preached to the choir. Those brave desires have been swapped out for a safer, more cynical version… but at least we’re being realistic, and that feels grounding… though depressing in its own way. 

 

Where is the hope? 

 

Not knowing how to show up for myself, or you, or anyone, I show up to therapy and try to figure out where I am. I learn that the place I find myself is squarely in-between. I learn that God gave us two hands for a reason, so that we might remain deeply connected to our optimistic dreams while also deeply connected to the world’s brokenness. In the space between, wanting so much, and seeing so little, we feel the tension in every cell of our bodies, which opens the possibility of discovering that this is where hope is. 

 

When healed patients feel loved through hours of connection, I find meaning in the pain. Now  I’m hopeful, instead of devastated, by each new story that reaches my door. As I’m watching America from afar, seeing the end of conservative evangelicalism and the emergence of fresh faith, I feel hope for you in so many ways too. Hope lives in the already and the not yet – where we believe that change is possible while still sensing how broken we are. Where the light shines bright and yet darkness still permeates. Where heaven has come and yet is not fully here. This is where hope is.

 

Lament puts words to the insanity of it all. With space for both the longing and doubt that makes us human: That what we experience is awful, but not beyond redemption. That I’m powerless to fix it but I’m empowered by the one who can. That the-God-who-sees is made of everything I am not. That evil is pervasive but there’s more grace than I know. Lament roots us in hope by declaring that suffering is real, but mercy is near, and if everything we long for falls apart, the shattered dreams will, in faith, become the building blocks of a surprising tomorrow. This is where hope is.   

 

And by sowing tears and reaping joy we carry on, hoping against hope that we won’t be disappointed. As I optimistically wrap wounds and realistically still dispense the analgesics. As you optimistically cast your ballots and realistically pray in closets. We can go to task and then go to sleep because the results are not ours to manufacture. It’s in the space between optimism and reality that hope thrives because that’s where God is, involved in what is, working out what will be, and actively transforming everything in the process. And for this reason, and this reason alone, it will be ok. 

 

Hold on to hope, my friends. Let’s hold on to hope. 

  

raising girls amongst karens

Recently, one of my friends of a different race and generation posted a question on social media asking, “What’s a Karen?” He received good responses, mostly copied and pasted from google. I think the tidiest definition for me was:

A Karen is a white woman who feels entitled enough to weaponize her skin color particularly against black men.  

Yup.

Feeling cheeky, I added my own definition, writing, “my face, less woke.” 

Seeing my extra pale skin in the little photo next to the comment I sighed – it’s sad, but true. 

Despite knowing several perfectly wonderful women named Karen, the stereotyped “Karen” as a racist icon has become the meme du jour. They are the wives of Chad, the mothers of Brad and the best friend to Brenda and Becky. All of these people are dangerous but Karen is basically the matriarch of the pro-white movement, so I don’t mind letting her take the fall for the whole lot. 

I was born of white women. Raised by white women. Surrounded almost exclusively by white women. Some turned out to be Karens, others not. Now, having lived a third of my life in Africa, where the white women I interact with are actually one in a million, Karen has its own meaning for me. Here, Karen isn’t going to call 911 for feeling threatened by a black man in a hoodie, but colonialist Karen and white-savior Karen have their own ways of oozing superiority. All that to say, my minority status here doesn’t give me a pass. There’s not a single white woman on the planet who doesn’t need to do business with her inner Karen. Such is the world we live in, and the world we are raising our daughters in too. 

When our first two children came out female and blonde headed, our circle of anti-colonialist, anti-racist, anti-Karen work expanded. “Privilege” in the village takes on specific form, so we started with the basics: you’re not as special as people think you are. We taught them that when they are given free stuff in stores, they don’t deserve it and it must be shared equally with their friends. When an adult takes something out of their child’s hand to give it to the white girls, our kids are obligated to hand it back to the original child. When an adult is displaced in order to put their white butt in a seat, the girls must decline and sit on the floor. These are some of the house rules on par with “chew with your mouth closed” and “say please and thank you.” 

They aren’t perfect. We still have to interrupt their play time to coach them towards kindness. Nine times out of ten they don’t even realize what’s happening when others defer to them. I don’t think your friend is feeling loved, we reflect out loud. Oh, they say, and make a change. The relationship practice gives meaning to the rules. Our goal is to instill habits and attitudes that will support healthy relationships for the long haul. If the rules don’t play out on the playground, they won’t play out in adulthood. There are plenty of right thinking, poorly behaving adults in America right now who know the good they ought to do and are not doing it because theory never became practice. The exercise of relationship hasn’t taken place. 

This is the essence of the Karens who are championing All Lives Matter. They are operating out of a philosophical framework in which “liberty and justice for all” is scrawled across the placards of their lives but for some reason, saying Black Lives Matter strikes a chord. Why? My observation, as I hear their arguments on social media, is that their response is entirely cerebral. I’m not hearing any empathy or connection, and as proof of the absence of relationship bubbles to the top like sulfur, I think about my own girls again.

A few months ago, we were reading for homeschool about Vasco de Gama’s voyages around the horn of Africa during which the slave trade expanded greatly. As I read about Africans being tied up and shipped off as slaves, I could feel the wave of emotion rising in my 8-year-old sitting next to me. As I read on, her gaze lowered, and her brow furrowed. Her fists clenched and she stiffened her whole body until she cut me off with a guttural roar. I stopped reading, knowing that my girl and her big feels was going to need a moment to work through this one. I know her heart and had seen it coming. She sputtered for a moment, the rage flooding faster than her brain could find words for and finally she screamed at de Gama and his crew, “THAT WAS TIMO!!!” (her best friend) “Those are my people! Those are my friends!” And her face fell into her hands and her body flopped on my lap and we sobbed together for a long, long time.

Day to day life for our very white daughters involves constant interaction with people who do not look like them. Their friends are exclusively black. The people they admire are exclusively black. The sources of their greatest joys and most favorite memories are all black. While America is at war with itself over its ingrained fear of black men, our two little white girls are absolutely enamored with a whole community of black men who are not only trusted, but also adored. Through repeated exposure, their brains have been wired to perceive black men as protectors and not threats. So while Karen is calling the police because she’s six feet away from a black man minding his own business, our girls are running straight into the arms of black men whom they love. The idea of black people – their friends – being mistreated is intolerable. And it’s not because our girls are better people, or we’re better parents – it’s simply because they’ve had the right kinds of experience. 

That day, as we read about the start of the slave trade, my daughter got her first taste of dehumanization. By entering into the gallows of the slave ship, she felt helpless and betrayed by her own skinfolk, overwhelmed by 500 years of evil that she couldn’t undo and didn’t know how to make right. I wasn’t going to talk her out of her grief. I’m glad she felt it. The ability to lament deeply the wrongs of people who look like us is a necessary part of growing up un-Karen. 

I’ve been watching the dumpster fire of social media interaction the last few weeks as black folks are BEGGING to be heard and white America is doing a barely mediocre job of listening. The BLM allies are growing increasingly frustrated because they are working overtime in the education department – trying to drop knowledge on every single Karen who is crying taupe tears because her soul is wounded by the idea that anyone else’s life should matter too. I see it. The precious few woke white women are on the verge of hysterics wondering why Karen just doesn’t get it. And of course, Brad, Chad, Brenda and Becky are showing up to add their piece too and the air smells rancid like white supremacy. The riots are visible symbols of invisible pain and moment by moment it's ambiguous whether this is moving forward or backward. 

But none of this should be surprising. Ultimately, America needs to experience healing, and that will never happen if people are not in relationship. What separates the Karens from the people trying to rein them in is that the white people who “get it” all have significant relationships within the black community. 

I’m not talking about “token black friends,” I mean these bridge builders are IN COMMUNITY with people who don’t look like them. They spend considerable time in each other’s homes. Their children are best friends. They share values and a vision for their neighborhood. They break bread. They like each other. They love each other. And the depth of the relational bond is significant enough that when one hurts, the other hurts. Of course their black friends’ lives matter. And it is for these white folks that “dismantling systemic racism” is not an intellectual exercise – it's personal. 

Right now, I’m seeing a lot of resources circling about books to read and conversations to have and that’s awesome, but it isn’t relational enough. Studying black history is essential, but distantly academic. Karens aren’t dumb, they are disconnected – from black pain, from the consequences of their privilege, from reality. I’m pretty sure Karens have google. What they don’t have are black friends. Even if it’s in their heads, it’s not in their hearts, and it’s not in their hearts, because it’s not in their homes. The bridge between knowledge and action is the motivation to care, and that only comes from meaningful relationship. 

Last night Bronwyn was curled up on the couch reading the children’s book Beatrice’s Goat about a little girl in Africa whose family receives a goat from an NGO. Reaching the end, she hopped off the couch and said, “Hey, it says Beatrice lives in a small African village! Do you know where we can find a small African village?” Jeremy and I just looked at each other, and then at her and we both laughed, “Bronwyn, you literally live in a small African village. We literally run a program to manage livestock for 300 families just like Beatrice…” And she just looked at us and was like, Oh. I guess you’re right! Despite the fact that this book was describing the backdrop of her life, it was a story to her and therefore looked new and unfamiliar. Beatrice’s life wasn’t something she was living, it was something she was reading. Text is… textual. But her friends whom she throws her arms around and feels in the flesh – that’s what’s real. 

Children need black hands to shake and hi-five and hold. They need black friends, black teachers, black doctors, and black pastors to admire. Our black son needs to see faces who look like him and our white girls need to see faces who don’t. The key to breaking the Karen cycle is to provide our girls with repeated experiences of sustained, positive interaction with black people – in particular black men – over the course of their growing up years. I don’t believe there is any substitute for this.

I can hear Karen’s brain processing: Not all of us live in Africa, Bethany. Finding this in the middle of Whitesville, USA is hard. There aren’t many black people here.

Good observation Karen! Fostering meaningful relationships might mean changing schools, or changing churches, changing doctor’s offices or neighborhoods or even towns. 

We know families who have uprooted themselves in search of diversity, and I applaud them for that. It may sound radical, but I wouldn’t even be throwing it out for consideration if I wasn’t 110% convinced that it’s worth it. Racial reconciliation requires relationship. Full stop. 

I appreciate that not every family is in a position to actually MOVE, so it does beg the question, how far should the pursuit of racial diversity go? That’s up to you – how much do you want your heart to grow?

Our family would be willing to go pretty darn far. Because we know from experience that it’s not a sacrifice. It’s a gift. To us, and to the Karens who need someone to bear witness to uncommon love.