‘Pray First’

By Emily Bruce
UUAC First Parish at Sherborn
January 19, 2020

Reading – ‘Dear Liberal Allies’ by Trungles

Dear Liberal Allies,

You and I learned very different things in very different ways. If you didn’t live an experience, then step aside.

We students of color, gay students, trans* students, children of immigrants and refugees
knew this stuff before our professors told us what to call it. We learned it from the bottom up.

You learned it another way. You received a set of key words and a list of definitions. Your learning was, in all likelihood, “Here is this word. This is what this word means.”

For you, it was “Xenophobia: a strong fear or dislike of people from other countries.”

For us, it was “Xenophobia: the time that boy in my kindergarten class spat on me because I couldn’t speak English yet. Or when I saw that clerk yell at my mom in the grocery store because her English wasn’t clear enough.”

For you, it was, “Racism: unfair treatment of people who belong to another race; violent behavior towards them.”

For us, it was, “Racism: that one time I saw that manager tell that sales girl to follow my dad around at Kohl’s. Or that one time my neighbor’s kid got shot by the police and they tried to cover it up by convincing everyone he was in a gang because he was Hmong, but we knew he wasn’t. Or the time my dad told me I shouldn’t rollerblade to the library because I’m not white and it’s not safe for me.”

For you, it was, “Homophobia: a strong dislike or fear of homosexual people.”

For us, it was, “Homophobia: that time in the sixth grade when Ryan shoved me against a glass door and banged my face in it while yelling, ‘faggot!’ at me until the teacher stopped him. Or when my Catholic high school’s president told me that, though he loved me as a child of God, he still believed I was sinful.”

For you, it was: “Classism: prejudice or discrimination based on social class.”

For us, it was: “Classism: the time when my best friend came over to hang out and her parents didn’t want her to come over again because they didn’t like our neighborhood. Or that one time when my friends had no idea what food stamps looked like and I was too embarrassed to explain what they were.”

So while you were learning that these academically-framed phenomena were real problems, we were getting figurative nametags for awful things that we already knew. Your weekly vocabulary list was, to us, just a hollow shadow of our lived experiences.

When you step out of class, you get to say, “Oh, awesome. I’m learning how to be a good ally and a better human being. This will help me.” For us, it’s more like, “Ah, so that’s what they’re calling it nowadays. When exactly did they say change was going to come for us?”

Sermon – ‘Pray First’

She said to me “Whatever you do, pray first.”

The woman who said that to me was from Dandora, one of the worst slums in Nairobi, Kenya.

Over 700,000 people live in Dandora and 90% of them are unemployed. The only kind of living that most people make consists of picking through the trash that the city routinely dumps there, for plastic and metal that could be re-sold. That’s how 90% of Dandora’s residents made a living. 

For those who don’t know, I just returned from a 10-day trip to Kenya. I went as the chaplain for a group of students from Andover Newton Seminary (that’s my other job, campus minister for seminary students). We visited towns and communities all over Kenya, meeting people from different local ethnic groups, learning about education and job training initiatives, and really attempting to grasp what life was like living in a developing country. 

The woman who told me to “Pray first” was Muslim and ran a non-profit called the Dandora Women’s Forum which trained the women of that community for paying jobs. They also created schools for children and facilitated community health initiatives. We met women like this all over Kenya – working to support the women and children in their communities to be educated, to help free them from gender oppression, and to make their lives better. 

Of all the words I could pick to describe my journey, I think “humbling” would be at the top of that list. Not just because I met so many people working so hard to help their communities be better, although that’s a big part of it. 

But if I’m being honest, Africa made me really uncomfortable in several ways. On one level, I was physically uncomfortable. 

We couldn’t drink the water, we couldn’t use it to wash our faces or brush our teeth. So, even though I could shower in the water, the knowledge that drinking it would make me sick made it so that I never really felt clean. 

I also went through dozens of bottles of water, creating more plastic waste in 10 days than I do in over a year. 

Another source of my discomfort was the dust. Kenya – especially in the towns and cities – is a very dusty place. It’s red clay dust, and it felt like I was breathing tons of it into my lungs, so much so that I developed a cough after a few days. 

In order to get to all the places we wanted to visit, we spent at least a few hours each day on the road. Only a few major highways are paved, so those roads are lined with trucks. So in addition to the dust, I also breathed in the constant odor of diesel fumes.  

Below all of that physical discomfort, was my discomfort with my discomfort on two levels. First was my whiteness. I was one of the few white people that I saw there. I was stared at a lot when we went into different communities. I’ve never felt so conspicuous in my life – especially around children. They stared at me as if I had three heads – and they were very shy and wary of me. It was hard to befriend them – though I tried - so after a while I started feeling like a menace to them, looking so different with my white skin and red hair. 

A constant companion to that was my discomfort with my privilege. Sure, I was a minority there – a white person in a world of black people – but that doesn’t mean I understood what it meant to be a minority. I wasn’t receiving the same treatment as black people in America. I wasn’t being discriminated against; I wasn’t subject to violence or oppression because of my skin color. Quite the opposite – I was being driven around in a van, given bottles of clean drinking water everywhere I went. I met people who gave us gifts, who welcomed us into their homes, who fed us delicious meals. I was treated practically like royalty. 

All of this made me incredibly uncomfortable and brought me to a place of humility I don’t think I’ve ever known before. I’m still very much in that place, trying this past week to process my feelings about Kenya. 

In a way, this is all good. Because the point of a border-crossing immersion trip, which is what those journeys are called, is to confront one’s own privilege, to face the challenge of being pushed out of your comfort zone, and to stay with the discomfort that that discovery creates. 

Reckoning with my privilege in Kenya forced me to accept a few truths. The first is that I don’t have a right to be comfortable. Comfort is not a right, it’s a privilege. Many of us enjoy a great deal of comfort in this country of ours. But many don’t – and getting even a small taste of what it means not to have comfort was distressing to me. 

Another truth was the importance of embracing the humility of not knowing: Not knowing what it means to live in poverty. Not knowing what it means to live in a country of profound gender oppression. Not knowing what it means to be African. 

And, to echo the reading we just heard this morning, not knowing what it means to be a person a color, to be gay or trans, to be an immigrant or refugee, to be anything other than what I am, which is a cis-gender straight white American woman.

In the Unitarian-Universalist faith, we like to talk about unity a lot. About how we’re all human beings with inherent worth and dignity. And that’s true – I believe that deep within my soul.

But sometimes I think that message often gets muddled in with a slightly different message – one that seeks to unify us, but often also lumps us together in ways that aren’t true. Messages that say “we’re all in the same boat here” or “what unites us is far greater than what divides us.” 

I’ve made that statement myself at some point I’m sure – probably in a sermon no less. But that’s not really a fair statement. Yes, we’re all human beings and yes, we all need things like food, shelter, safety, love and community. But to say we’re all the same ignores all of the complex social, political and cultural systems that make us see the word differently. 

We’re not all in the same boat – there are many, many different kinds of boats. 

Our experiences of the world are different because we are different. There is so much I don’t and can’t possibly know about living in this world in bodies and identities and cultures that are different than my own. Listening to the stories of the Kenyans I met taught me that truth in a way far deeper than I’ve ever contemplated before.  That was humbling to be sure. 

But, and here’s the good ‘but’, resting in that humility of not knowing brought me some comfort. Admitting my discomfort actually provided me a certain amount of solace. Because we can’t know what we don’t know – but we can listen humbly. We can lean forward and try to understand. There is a certain freedom in admitting you don’t know, that you can’t understand but that you want to try to learn. That you’re willing to sit in discomfort and get curious about it. Kenya taught that there’s a both/and, not an either/or at work. That I can be uncomfortable and curious. Unsettled and wanting to learn. 

The scholar and author Robin DiAngelo writes in her book White Fragility that “The key to moving forward is what we do with our discomfort. We can use it as a door out—blame the messenger and disregard the message. Or we can use it as a door in by asking, ‘Why does this unsettle me? What would it mean for me if this were true?’

I am just beginning to process what unsettled me about Kenya, so I don’t yet have answers to those questions that I am ready to share. 

But I know – as you do – that we can’t ignore or wish away racism, transphobia and all the other means of cultural oppression that are present in our world. It is a long road to even coming to grips with the oppression and privilege present in our country, let alone the world. But the discomfort is no doubt the doorway. The unsettling awareness of privilege is the key. 

It’s okay to be uncomfortable with your discomfort; it’s okay to be distressed by the idea of privilege. It feels like a very recent phenomenon, but the truth is it’s always been there, we just haven’t seen it. 

So where is the solace in this work? Where do we gain strength and support to sit in that discomfort?

For me, my faith provides me with a great deal of solace. That which I call God, guides me and accompanies me everywhere I go. The truths of my own personal faith – what I believe, who I pray to, and the grace I find in those prayers – are the things that hold me through the discomfort and struggle. I know that I am loved, just as surely as you are all loved, and that brings me peace. 

And that – that – is the place where I was able to connect with so many of the people I met in Kenya. I talked with so many women whose faith carries them through the struggle and toward the justice they are fighting for in their communities. The faith that holds them through hardships that I couldn’t even begin to understand. Hunger and thirst, violence and anger, despair and sadness.  

I met Christians, Catholics, Muslims, and people of indigenous traditions – and they all expressed in their own ways a sure and sincere faith in their faith. In the truths they believe that bonds them to each other. That bonds them to their God. 

My friends, what is your faith? What is that which holds you in the struggle? That sits with you in the discomfort? 

We’re Unitarian-Universalists so I expect – and hope – that this is a very diverse list. That we are all in many, many different boats when it comes to what our faith is. So for you, what are the truths that you can hold onto? That see you through the struggle? That bond you to this community and each other? I invite you to think about that – to articulate what your faith is. And let that faith guide and comfort you, especially in those moments when you experience the humility of unknowing. 

I asked the Muslim woman from the Dandora community what her faith was. How her faith helped her and supported her in her work. I asked her where God was for her and she said “Everywhere. Everywhere I go in Kenya, God is with me. And no matter what I do in Kenya, I pray first. What you should do – what everyone should do – is pray first.”

Friends, whatever your faith, whatever your truths – whatever holds you through the struggle – I invite you to pray first. Pray to that which guides you. Pray to that which holds you. Pray to that which helps you find comfort in the discomfort. Pray to that which lets you sit in the humility of not knowing, so that you can lean forward and try to understand. Pray first. Amen.