Here is a photo from 1989 my mom recently resurfaced. I was 5, Jere was 3 and a half, and David was 1.
It is end of quarter for me, and today I felt effects from my late night Saturday night. I didn’t have much wind in my sail, but I did run in the morning and make through my work day.
After work, Lily told me all about the book she just finished on Mormonism and White supremacy. I think it is super important as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that we stop denying painful parts of our history, to own up to them, and to seek to heal and mend wounds we have caused. Lily read me many amazing passages from the book. JoAnna Brooks is profound and articulate and writes from the vantage point of a church member trying to help make the church better. Lily also loved the book and is planning to write a review for it.
Here is the last paragraph of the book, which I think is powerful, and read likes scripture to my soul:
“Infallibility has served Mormon communities to foster continuity, but to do so in a way that sacrifices those deemed expendable and suffocates those held in place. Most importantly, the possessive investment in whiteness and the possessive investment in rightness have corroded the theological integrity of Mormonism as a Christian-identified faith. The same can be said of any white American Christianity that has not undertaken its own historical soul-searching and committed collectively to reconciliation and reparation for the massive moral wrongs of anti-Black systematic racism in the United States. Because I love my faith community and believe we can do better, I offer our experience to others as a witness and a warning.”
Lily and I want on a wonderful walk together and Lily told me all about all the things she has going on right now. It’s a lot! I talked about work and other things and then we called it a night.