By Conference Minister Diane Weible
“This is not us.”
How many times in the past week have we heard this?
It’s just not true.
What happened on January 6 is very much, us. It is who we are at this moment.
I would hope that the meaning behind that statement is really, “This is not who we should be.”
That to me is a truer statement. It is not who we should be. Whatever got us to this place in our reality of what is the United States of America, the only way we can move forward is with transformative change that acknowledges the truth of our current reality.
We first have to acknowledge the reality of what is. This is us.
We have to agree that there are fundamental wrongs that happened, not just on January 6, but every day—wrongs that oppress and disempower individuals, most often because of their skin color or their gender identify, or their culture, or just because someone decided they were different and different is wrong.
It is never ok for a mob to kill, commit violence and even bring a Confederate flag into the Capitol Building of the United States of America. It is never ok. Period. The question for us is, why did anyone think it was ok to do that? What got us here?
We have to confess our complicity in what happened—regardless of who we are or where we were on January 6.
We have to commit to learning and growing in our understanding and our awareness of how people are treated differently in this country just because of who God made them to be. If we condemn but are not aware of our own unconscious beliefs, we are part of the problem.
I know I am part of the problem. Even with all the work I have been doing, there is still more to do. It is daily work for me because uncovering generations of habits and beliefs and traditions takes more than just a will to make a change. It requires constant work and education and a willingness to do something.
We need to figure this out. Otherwise, we will never be able to say with complete authenticity, “This is not us.”
Amen to this. I have tried to engage with “the other side” on social media, and we usually wind up not understanding one another. The political divisions have been cultivated. Facts, truth and common decency are the collateral damage. Thank you for this word of calm wisdom.