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Comfortable in Your Own Skin

6/2/2019

I just finished an episode of Oprah’s Super Soul conversations: Amandla Stenberg: My Authenticity is my Activism. After listening to this teen, I feel more empowered to be my authentic self. (She is the actress who portrayed Rue in The Hunger Games and Starr Carter in The Hate U Give.)

She talked about her feelings growing up about her hair, herself as a black woman and someone who wants to make a difference in the world. Amandla, which is the Zulu and Xhosa word for "power," shared her experience of being ‘other’ in her own school, community, country and even her own skin. She speaks honestly about topics that white women only have a glimpse.

It made me think back to a conversation I had with my hairdresser just a few days ago. I asked what the new hair styles are. She paused and said, “There are some new cuts that people want but really the trend is to rock your own style.”

Wow!
This is what I thought when I heard that:
First: Good because I was in the process of getting the same cut I have had for years.
Second: It is about damn time.

The trend is to “rock my own style”. I can totally get behind that…and honestly, it is very freeing! Not easy, but freeing. I heard a bit of myself as I listened to Amandla. I am long past high school and yet I struggle some days to feel that same self-love and acceptance.

I can let self-impose questions hold me back:
·       Am I doing enough for the world?
·       Should I learn a new skill to make myself more marketable?
·       Do I need to forgive that person?
·       Will I take the risks I need to be a better me?
OR
I allow myself to hear the answers first that will help me “rock my own style”:
·       I am enough.
·       I am strong, wise, open, kind.
·       I am a beloved Child of God.

Even as I think about my bad days, it is nowhere near the daily reality, the daily struggle of women of color in the United States. I am still automatically accepted as the “norm” and it is only because I my white skin. I may have times when I am deeply self-conscious but I can still walk out in the community and not automatically have stereotypes define me.

This is why Amandla inspired me. She already is intentional about caring for herself when she feels vulnerable. She is digging deep. She knows her truth: she can rock her own awesome self and as she says, “be comfortable in her own skin”.
If she can do it, then so can I!
Take a listen to Amandla!

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Is compassion as important as the Periodic Table of elements?

2/15/2019

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Richard Davidson: A Neuroscientist on Love and Learning
(This particular episode of On Being with Krista Tippett has sparked so many thoughts in me, I feel the potential for more posts.)

This podcast is a conversation between the host Krista Tippett and Richard Davidson, the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The overarching theme of their conversation is how emotion and intellect are interconnected in us, especially as learners. While that may seem like an obvious statement, how many times in our culture is intellectual maturity and growth valued over emotional maturity and growth?

Davidson says that thought and feeling are intermingled in the brain and inform each other. This is an important statement to explore for our American culture. We are so focused on the intellectual areas of education from preschool through post graduate studies, we tend to dismiss “softer” qualities in people, work, and communities. Kindness is seen as a luxury. If we have time, we stop and help someone. For so many people, serving others is relegated to extra “volunteer” time.

What if we prioritize kindness and compassion equally alongside knowledge in our school curriculum? How would that change the school culture and our national culture?

Tippett and Davidson address the question: Can we cultivate compassion?
Richard Davidson says that we are hardwired to learn compassion just as we are to learn language. We have a biological propensity for both. Both need to be nurtured, modeled, used for the child to learn.

So, what if we nurtured and modeled compassion intentionally as parents, care givers, teachers, neighbors, and pastors? What if our children and young people knew that we, as a nation, value that “soft” trait as much as intellectual prowess?

I like to think that would change the world.
What do you think?

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Believe In Your Own "Sound"

8/27/2018

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This morning on my walk I listened to the podcast that compliments the Sunday Today Show with Willie Geist. It was the full interview of the Sunday Sitdown with Jason Aldean.
For years Jason Aldean was an outlier in country music. His sound did not have either the twang of old school country or the pop sound of country from the 2000’s. Finally, when his version of country storytelling mixed with country rock instrumentals caught on, it really caught on!

He shares in this interview how he knew what he liked and what sounded good to him. When record producers told Aldean they didn’t get his sound, he hung on. He believed in himself. It was good to hear that message. So many times we know in our gut what feels right for us and our path even when others don’t get it. His words were a good reminder to me to hang on…believe in myself…knowing that believing in oneself is what brings others around.

Aldean also talks about his concert in Las Vegas last year that was violently interrupted by a shooter from a hotel window. He visited the people who were shot at his concert and keeps in touch with families of those who were killed. His actions are a good reminder of what prioritizing people and relationships look like.

I recommend listening to the entire 30-minute interview. You don’t need to like country music – just authentic people.

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What will you speak up for?

2/18/2018

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I recently listened to Oprah’s podcast: SuperSoul Conversations called Braving New Worlds with Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling. The 44-minute podcast is filled with moments I wanted to stop and turn to a friend and say, “What do you think about that?”

One question that stuck with me was “What will you speak up for?” They were addressing the #MeToo movement and Reese Witherspoon’s contribution to the Times Up campaign to help pay legal bills for women who have been abused and can afford to pay.

It made me ask myself, “What would I speak up for?” There are many issues that are important to me. And in the past 13 months, I have found myself speaking up and out more often. The underlying force that keeps coming back to me as I think about what is important is kindness. This is how I define kindness.
Compassion + Action = Kindness

Compassion is necessary to notice what the other person needs not what I want to give.
Action is necessary so it is not just “feeling bad” for another person.
Kindness is the combination of both of those things working together.

Now I know there will never be a Kindness March. It is not something about which we get all worked up. But it is absolutely necessary in relationships at work, in our neighborhood, with strangers, and in our friendships and family – and in our civic conversations!

For kindness to happen, someone must be truly seen and someone else must be doing the seeing.
For kindness to happen, one must slow down to discern the action that is desired in that moment.
For kindness to happen, one must take a risk and act.
See? The act of kindness is not as simple and tame as some may think. It is an act which requires courage.

So…kindness is what I speak up for when I see it or when I see the need for it. And yeah, when other important issues need to be raised I will be there – with compassion and action.
Take a listen to the entire podcast and then let me know what you would speak up for?

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What defines identity?

2/12/2018

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Two thoughts came to mind as I listened to It’s Not Just about the Blood on the Code Switch podcast.
Both have to do with identity:
1. The complicated reality of Native peoples reclaiming their identity that our government has tried to systematically erase for economic reasons throughout our nation’s history.
2. The dominant cultural/racial identity of whiteness in our country has become the generic norm.

This podcast is one of my favorites. Code Switch focuses on stories about race and identity. The journalists are all people of color. I always learn something every time I listen.

This episode is about how some Native American tribes use “blood quantum” rules to decide who can be a recognized citizen of a specific tribe. In other words, how much “Indian Blood” someone has and so can lay claim to being a part of one of the more that 500 tribes.

This is a complicated rule that was first used by the United States government. Our government noticed that as less and less “Indian blood” was present, Natives could be treated as a racial group instead of members of a sovereign nation. Get the difference? Economics. Power. Land rights. Those are the things that were (and are) at stake.

For the people of these tribes another important issue is answering the very personal questions of “Who am I?” and “Where do I belong?” The podcast shares a few different stories of people wrestling with those questions.

As I listened it brought back an experience in my church from just a few weeks ago. At a congregational meeting each person was given a survey with the typical church survey questions. (What gifts do you have and how can they be shared in this church community?) There was one more surprising question: What is your race?

I’m sure this has to do with the national church body wanting to know who is sitting in our pews. The answers were very telling. Most everyone there is of northern European descent. Some people filled in the names of countries of their descendants from a few generations back like Sweden, Germany, and England. Some people wrote “white” as their race. Many more people left it blank.

It makes me wonder how white people also wrestle with the questions of “Who am I?” and “Where do I belong?” Are we connected to our ancestors’ home countries? Do we pass down traditions and stories that help form our family identity?
OR…
Do we not wrestle with those questions at all because whiteness is the norm? Do we assume that whiteness is the standard against which all other races are compared? Do we leave the answer blank because the WASP identity is so prevalent, we automatically belong?

Listen to the 22-minute podcast and let me know what hits you.

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Radical Hope is Our Best Weapon, Junot Diaz

1/28/2018

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(Originally aired on September 14, 2017 ~ On Being with Krista Tippett)

Vulnerability. Here it is again!
I have read Brene Brown’s writing on vulnerability. I have found it helpful. Her writing and ideas have helped me take down some of the walls I have built to protect myself. Protection is fine. The problem comes that every time we build walls we isolate ourselves away from our communities. Prolonged isolation does not bring healing. Prolonged and unhealthy isolation feeds our fear and shame. Our walls become thicker, stronger and more impenetrable.

I get this. I am working on this. Every time I do, I find healing for myself. So, it would make sense that I would transfer the benefits of being individually vulnerable to the importance of my community sharing in being vulnerable together – right? Nope. I never made that jump…until listening to this podcast. When I heard Junot Diaz speak about vulnerability within community, it felt like a long drink of water on a hot day: refreshing and life-giving.

We build walls all the time. Walls around our people to protect us from those people; walls made of political affiliations, theologies, ideologies, class, education, skin color, language…..
How will we be community, church, or country unless we embrace vulnerability so that we can remove the barriers to authentic relationship.

Diaz listed acts of vulnerability to exercise and practice so that we will not only be together but be better together. Those practices are contemplation (slowing down), mourning (lament) and letting in complexity and subtlety (living with paradox). (parentheses mine)
Now I am pondering:
1.      How will I be brave enough to practice those acts of vulnerability in my communities?
2.      What skills do I have or need to sharpen so that I can encourage vulnerability in groups that I lead?
3.      What changes do I imagine may come from increased vulnerability from me and with those around me?

This was just one idea in a podcast filled with hope and imagination of how we will survive and thrive together.
What did you hear that sparked your imagination?

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Comfortable in Your Own Skin

Is compassion as important as the Periodic Table of elements?

Believe In Your Own "Sound"

What will you speak up for?

What defines identity?

Radical Hope is Our Best Weapon, Junot Diaz

Pam Voves

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