Looking Into the Mirror on Juneteenth

You can read all the right books and still miss what’s in front of you. This Juneteenth reflection is about waking up—slowly, imperfectly, honestly.

---

Just Announced: Dr. Tom’s Wellsprings Spirituality & Resilience Retreat Sunday, June 29

Join me at this “tiny” retreat for adults of all ages and all faith backgrounds (including none at all). Slow down, connect more deeply and walk away with practical tools to grow your daily happiness and resilience.

Register here.

---

With Juneteenth falling this past week, I thought I’d bring this reflection back from the SMC archives. Originally published around this time last year, it explores staying awake, adjusting to new ideas, and—as Dr. King put it—facing the challenge of change. The road from head to heart to real transformation is long and humbling. I hope you’ll find something in this piece worth sitting with. Thanks for reading. – Tom

Back in college, I’d get buzzed drinking coffee and thrilling to the cadences of MLK’s sermons and writings that drew from such an eclectic array of philosophers, theologians, and preachers. I’d imagine myself marching, arms entwined with fellow Freedom Riders, feet moving to the inspirational rhythms of Mahalia Jackson or Harry Belafonte. King’s interpretation of the Christian Life opened me to the likes of other heavy-weight thinkers/activists like Dorothy Day, Abraham Heschel, and Thomas Merton. Dorothy loved Dostoevsky and often quoted him in her writings. One of her favorites: “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams” (from The Brothers Karamazov). Since my college days, I’ve learned that it’s far easier to canonize civil rights icons than to confront present-day racism, particularly when it’s been internalized!

Since my college years, I’ve noticed a curious paucity in MLK biographies. That lacuna had left me with the impression that there was nothing much more to say about our nation’s Last Founding Father. I had recently heard that there might be a fresh MLK biography based on newly-found primary sources. I hadn’t thought to seek that book out for myself until I saw it on my daughter’s nightstand. She agreed to pass it along when finished. A couple of weeks ago, I snagged it! Day before yesterday, Jonathan Eig’s Bible-sized page-turner closed with a thud when I dried my eyes and finished the concluding quote on page 557. “Our very survival,” King wrote, “depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.” As if he were a member of King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, the author concluded his book with a single-word sentence. “Amen.”

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to say “Amen” to words like these, and how hard it is to live them? Maybe you’ve noticed a kind of brittleness in our society these days? When it comes to following admonitions to “stay awake…adjust to new ideas…face the challenge of change,” in deed and not just words, so many of us respond like the Tin Woodsman before Dorothy showed up with the oil can: not exactly asleep…but definitely not awake…certainly not moving! Or worse, we pick up the ax of our defensiveness and start swinging at the idea that’s disturbed our rusty slumber! Oh, how tempting it is to call out others in their silly acts of snoozing or swinging! Here recently, I’ve had to own up to a little moral creakiness in myself. Ouch! I’m still working out what to do about it. In a nutshell, the story goes like this.

In the throes of a profound and prolonged hypomanic episode, a neighbor of mine delivered a racist comment to the only African American family on our block. Rather than acknowledging the pain of receiving such an unwelcome thing so close to home, I attempted to explain away Shelley’s bad behavior as the product of an illness that has stripped her of so much. My conscious motive for this approach involved a genuine care for Shelley. Over twenty years, I’ve watched her lose almost everything to this debilitating disease. In retrospect, I can see that in asking this family to empathize with her pain, without acknowledging their experience, I minimized their pain, and therefore minimized them. It’s taken me eight months to see this. The awareness came to me three weeks ago. I caught a glance of myself in the mirror of that family’s caution around me at a neighborhood party. The encounter sent me into a period of reflection akin to a grieving process, complete with denial, defensiveness, sadness, and more ego than I care to admit.

“Staying Awake;” “Adjusting to New Ideas;” “Remaining Vigilant;” “Changing”

Jonathan Eig’s encyclopedic volume, informed by loads of new seminal sources, allowed a historic figure to come into clearer focus for me. This book lays to rest the kind of hagiography that scrubs off the challenging edges of King’s message and legacy. King asserted, over and over again, that racism is a core American problem that must be confronted in every generation.

What I’m noticing, when I put my experience in dialogue with King’s perspective, is that:

#1. Racism is not a thing to encounter in systems that are merely out there.

#2. It is also not a thing to be encountered within, like a permanent state that separates the sheep from the goats or the Good from the Bad. My blind spot, born of internalized and totally unconscious race ignorance, doesn’t make me George Wallace or Bull Connor. It makes me human! It’s true that racism is still found in societal structures that must be reformed…

#3. But it’s also found in behaviors and attitudes that require, in my case, humility and acceptance for starters. The longest road in the world is the one that stretches from head, to heart, to change. No doubt about it, when it comes to waking up to any important neglected issue, that Head-to Heart-to Change Journey is most certainly, “harsh and dreadful.” I’m afraid that all too often, I’ve allowed too much grass to grow on that particular trail.

According to Bill Wilson and Reinhold Niebuhr, the founders of AA, one of the flagstones along that footpath involves making amends, “except when to do so” wouldn’t be helpful to the amends receiver. I’m not sure what exactly my amends will look like just yet. I know that I don’t want to ordain my neighbors into some bogus unwanted priesthood that provides an old dude in the neighborhood some ego-soothing absolution for his white guilt!

What’s getting clearer, is that for guys like me, this journey requires a creative balance that contains equal measures of the Reverend King’s prophetic urgency with Doctor King’s healing wisdom. Along the way, I’ll be reminding myself of King the Preacher’s words, “God’s not finished with me yet.”

Dialogue and Discussion Questions: 

Longtime SMC readers know that “the Dialogue” section of this article is set aside for a good conversation over a cup of coffee—with a friend, with a group, or just with yourself! As always, feel free to share your reaction or reflection in the “Comments” section below.

• What stood out for you in this essay? Did it remind you of anything in your own life?

  
  

• Can you think of a time when you had to confront some unconscious or even conscious bias regarding someone different from you? Tell that story. What did you learn? What are you still learning?

  
  

• Have you ever felt defensive in a conversation about race? Would you be willing to tell that story, along with what you learned from that encounter?

  
  

• What is one of your primary sources that has shaped your understanding of race in America? Would you be willing to share two or three principles you hold onto while exploring this topic for yourself?

  
  

• King, and other authors have asserted that racism is one of the core issues for America to wrestle with in every generation. Where in our culture do you find reason for real hope around the issue of race and racism in America?

---

Save the date! "Wellsprings" Spirituality & Resilience Retreat: June 29th

Join me at this "tiny retreat" for adult seekers of all ages and spiritual traditions—or none at all. You'll walk away with practical tools to boost your everyday happiness and resilience quotients. We’ll slow down, connect and explore ancient wisdom and contemplative practices rooted in Judeo-Christianity and modern psychotherapy.

Date: Sunday, June 29th

Time: 1–4 PM CST

Location: Mercy Conference and Retreat Center in St. Louis, MO

Cost: $25

Register here

---

Please share with the SMC community your thoughts and/or reflections in the comments below.