helpers

   I don't really know what to say today. I'm not American. I'm white, straight, Christian, and able-bodied. I have access to higher education and medical care. I am okay financially. I have a lot of privilege. While I have so much sorrow over the results of yesterday's election, I don't think I can begin to understand the implications for people in already marginalized communities in the States.

   I saw this tweet this morning

and it encouraged me to get up and look for what I can do to be a helper. How can I use my position and privilege to help others? So I've been making a list for myself, and I thought I would share it. 

   I can educate myself. I can read, listen to, and watch people who experience the kinds of oppression that I do not. This can mean reading books that have been written by someone with a very different background from me (Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea, The Rabbits by Shaun Tan) or books that are explicitly written to educate and expose (Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay, Citizen by Claudia Rankine, Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit). I can seek out podcasts and TEDtalks by and featuring people who I can learn from (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's talk about feminism). 

   As a Canadian, I can educate myself (and encourage others to do the same) about the racism and sexism built into my society. I can learn about residential schools. I can learn about immigration policies. I can also learn about the diverse communities around me, and I can do it respectfully. I can learn about other cultures and I can learn what words/actions cause harm to people with less privilege than me, and then I can eliminate those words and actions from my life. 

   I can use my whiteness as a shield between others and harm. 

click to enlarge

   I can support the work of marginalized people and choose not to support the work of people who actively harm others. I can buy music, watch movies, read books, and generally support art made by/centrally featuring people of colour/women/people with disabilities/other marginalized people. I can avoid things like movies that unapologetically cast token "Others" in a cast full of white men. I can also avoid movies/music/etc made by/centrally featuring people who have used their position and power to cover up or enable things like domestic abuse. 

   I can be willing to enter uncomfortable situations with my friends to challenge word choices, action choices, ignorance, etc. I can humbly accept and repent when I am challenged in this way. 

   When I buy luxuries like chocolate and coffee I can use my money to buy fair trade goods. 

   When I speak to my nieces (and other children in my life) I can emphasize their hard work, their kindness, their intellectual life, the ways they are learning and growing, their bravery. I can speak kindly about others in front of them. I can speak kindly about my body in front of them. I can, in some small way, encourage them to see their futures as full of possibility and promise. 

   And lastly. To my sisters and brothers in Christ (and to myself): the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbours as we love ourselves. Our job is to work justice for the oppressed. We have been shown what is good and what the Lord requires of us, which is to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly.  We have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and a sound mind. We are to follow and imitate Christ, who treated people with love and respect when they were marginalized (racial minorities, the poor, the chronically ill, people with disabilities, sex workers, women, the list goes on), and challenged and rebuked those who had molded religion into something that benefited them and held others down (the Pharisees as a brood of vipers). We are also charged to test everything and hold on to the good. 

   Are you loving your neighbour? How? Are you working justice? How? Are you doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly? Are you turning away from a spirit of fear? Are you reaching out with love to the marginalized? Are you repenting the times that you have hidden behind Christianity or turned a blind eye to how you or your religious leaders have used the Gospel for your/their own gain? Are you testing what you hear coming from Christians in positions of authority and power? 

   I love you all. Let's be helpers.