I’ve been struggling with writer’s block lately. I’ve only been posting about sewing and reading because those things are easy to write about. How did I make this thing? I can tell you. What did I think of this book? I’ll let you know.
The other things on my mind are much harder to articulate.
Sunday passed with news of the two newest mass shootings, one of which appeared to racially motivated. (I say appeared because I have not gone back down the rabbit hole of news articles related to the shootings since I read two initial NPR articles).
I felt like I couldn’t just post as usual the next day, but what could I say or do? I wanted to load my kids in our truck and drive down to Washington, D.C. I wanted us sit as close to the White House lawn as they would let us and remain in silent protest until someone DID something.
There are a lot of stories white people tell themselves to feel better about race.
Stories like, my ancestors were Quakers and abolitionists, the unspoken conclusion being, so we weren’t/aren’t part of the problem. Or, I live in New York State, and our part of the country wasn’t complicit in the slavery of the South. Sometimes something happens that pulls the pants down on your story and exposes it as fiction.
Enter The Comet’s Tale.
One of the first things I came across the morning of July 4th was this post on my Instagram feed from @themelanatedbirth:
While you’re out popping fireworks, lighting sparklers, and barbecuing with your friends today, I ask that you pause and reflect on the fact that the over 300,000 slaves that were brought to this country did NOT gain freedom on this day in 1776.
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Think of the natives who were killed and displaced to colonize this country, so you can tell folks to “go back to where they came from”.
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Likewise, consider all of the men, women, and children who are spending today in the horrible conditions that are the “detention” 🙄 camps….those people who have come to this country, not to steal, kill, and rape, but to provide better lives for their families.
Consider them as you scarf down those hot dogs and drink your beers because ‘Merica.
I was already having some real mixed feelings about this holiday.
One of my favorite prayers is, “Forgive me, Father, for my unbelief.”
I think it started as a kid when I was asking my parents about who wrote Genesis. When I found out how long after Creation it had been written, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
How could some dude who lived hundreds of years after the Creation of the earth have any accurate sense of how it had happened? It didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t care if he was inspired by God.
I have always believed deep down that science will confirm what the Bible says about how the earth was created, but when I was a kid, it was very important to evangelicals to believe in Young Earth Creationism instead of Evolution, and the two ideas were considered completely incompatible. Since then, discoveries like Mitochondrial Eve, established a much more recent beginning for humans (and confirmed we didn’t come from apes, which was one of the things I remember evangelicals being upset about).
A dear friend and a bit of a nemesis in high school confronted me with the conflicting accounts of different events in the Gospels. I bluffed my unconcern at the time, but I was horrified. If that was true, why hadn’t anyone told me?
Then a professor in college suggested that maybe God wasn’t a man.
Where do you shop for clothes? How often do you shop? Is it medicinal, or is because you have an identifiable need? Do you shop ethically?
I’m a medicinal shopper. I’ve historically been pretty good at making it seem at least part of the time like it’s an identifiable need, but usually, it’s just because I’m stressed out and looking for a way to control my environment.
As a lady in my Late Thirties, I’ve become a bit of a snob with my shopping. I don’t remember how I discovered Anthropologie, but their quirky, European-inspired, artsy offerings appealed to me immediately. I had realized the cheaply made, fleeting styles of third party sellers on Amazon were often disappointing.
I started with Anthropologie’s hand towels. On sale, they are often around $10-14. Which is pretty expensive for a kitchen towel, but these aren’t your average kitchen towel.
