For the month of February we are committed to intentionally learning black history together. With only 29 days we wont cover it all. There are going to be a ton of people, movements, events that we will inevitably miss. But that doesn't mean we cant try to soak up as much information as we can. After all, we do believe there is much to learn from our past! 

So every day for the month of February, I am posting a link to a piece on black history on both Facebook and Twitter. I hope this is an opportunity for us to rethink some things we thought we knew, to receive fresh insight, to read from black people about themselves, and of course to ask ourselves, 'how does this information impact our work today?' 

In case you've missed the first few days, here is what we've covered so far!

• 7 Medieval Kingdoms You Should Know 
• The Atlantic Slave Trade During its Heyday and the Remarkable Life of Olaudah Equiano
• African Resistance to Slavery 
• The Half Has Never Been Told 
• When Slaves Go On Strike  

I've also added this new page so you can return here for our list of resources at the end of each week. Happy reading! 

It isnt just on MLK Day that we watch it unfold. It happens with national race incidents. It happens in heated conversations. It happens in tweets and Facebook comments. If you are someone who regularly hosts dialogues on race, this has surely happened to you. Being MLK'ed. 

"MLK would never condone those rioters." 

"MLK would tell all of us that we just need to seek peace and unity." 

"MLK said... [insert quote taken entirely out of context]" 

"MLK would promote racial healing- not your words of anger/division." 

I could probably fill a whole page with this, but you know what Im talking about. Its what happens when people want to retreat to easy answers, feel-good quotations, and rely on MLKs work instead of our own. 

This behavior is awfully convenient and void of authenticity and understanding. If we truly valued the life work of Martin Luther King Jr we would stop trying to predict "what MLK would say now" as if he died of old age. Whatever wisdom we think MLK would bring to this moment in 2016 seems to often discount that he was assassinated on a balcony, taken from his wife, his children, his friends. Why do we think MLK would say anything to us other than an indicting statement of fact, "You killed me"

But that doesnt make us feel good. Its so much easier to think of Martin Luther King Jr's death as inevitable, as that of a martyr, a heroes end to a life of public service. We'd rather not consider the bullet that ripped through his face. We dont like to talk about how his spinal cord was so severed that his death was rather quick. We dont talk about his blood spilling from his body onto the concrete balcony. We like our pictures in black and white.

Because to feel what his wife felt

To feel what his children felt

To feel what his friends felt

To feel what his supporters felt

is to invite pain over celebration, rage over rousing speeches, devastating loss over convenient platitudes. 

We do this because we dont really like to think of Martin Luther King Jr as a person, a husband, a father. We like to think of him as the stone statue in DC- large, strong, unmovable. While Martin Luther King's legacy may be all those things, it turns out he was human. He was a human who read lots of books, listened to lots of preachers, worked on the craft of writing and speaking. He was a human who laughed and cried. Who felt great pain and experienced great joy. Like most of us humans, Martin Luther King Jr evolved in his thinking over time. He took a stand for racial justice, and realized he could not talk about racial injustice without also talking about economic injustice. The more he talked about economic injustice in America, the more he recognized the underpinnings to military injustice around the world. Martin Luther King Jr was not one note. He didnt have just one thought. As he traveled, as he gained access to powerful, political spaces, as he read more and more... Martin Luther King Jr continued to grow in his thinking and his passion for the disenfranchised. 

So truth be told, we dont know what Martin Luther King Jr would say in this moment in 2016. Because had we not killed him, he would have continued to evolve, to grow, to connect the dots, to ask questions, to dig in the Bible, to be a human committed to a cause. Thats how it works. We learn to interrogate our language, our assumptions. We learn to speak truth to ourselves and to power. We learn to confront, to organize, to write, to speak, to seek greater change. We grow. But Martin Luther King's ability to speak into the modern moment of white supremacy was violently interrupted. We cant keep taking that for granted. 

So the next time we are being MLKed, we could respond by giving context to a random quote thrown our way. We could offer a differing, lesser known quote in response. We can extrapolate and postulate, for sure. (Ive certainly done all the above.) But dont hesitate to also take a moment to acknowledge the real man, made of flesh and blood, who was murdered at the age of 39 because his leadership represented such a threat to the status quo. 

This is the period at the end of every sentence MLK ever spoke. America had a chance to mobilize, to follow the immense leadership of Civil Rights leaders, to decide white supremacy needed to die a violent death. But thats not what happened. And here we sit, celebrating the life of Martin Luther King Jr, but never without acknowledging how his assassination is also our legacy until we decide that white supremacy has finally taken one body too many.    

*photo from The King Center (thekingcenter.org)

I dont know about you, but the sense of "waiting" this Advent season is feeling much more palpable than in past years. I have certainly had seasons when reflecting back over the year increased my sense of longing for our awaited King to return. But this year, it is not only the reflection that feels heavy but the present moment. 

The other day as I sat at my computer listening to Christmas music, my husband turned on the news which played in the background. The voices formed a dichotomoy that was hard to ignore as the San Bernardino shooting unfolded in the other room. 

O Come, O Come Emmanuel

Confirmed at least 14 dead in the latest mass shooting, today in San Bernardino, California. 

And ransom captive Israel

This scene unfolding before us is taking place at an agency that supports people with developmental disabilities. 

That mourns in lonely exile here

You are seeing pictures here of the wounded; those who have escaped or were evacuated from the building

Until the Son of God appear

We believe there are two or three shooters. We are still waiting for more information to confirm, but officers do believe this was not just one shooter. 

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Wait! Wait! We believe this is the car of the shooter or shooters. They seem to be a in a shootout with police! 

Shall come to thee, Oh Israel

Just in recent days we have been rocked by the murder of Laquan McDonald and been outraged by the level of corruption trying to hide it. We experienced back-to-back mass shootings, having only recently mourned attacks around the world. Just yesterday I learned of the death of Mario Woods and cant quite express the depth of my anger at the police chief's explanation of why its justified. 

And my soul keeps singing: O come, O come, Emmanuel. 

The truth is I want to turn off the news. I want to turn away from pain and death. I want to turn up the music and tune out the mess. I want to wait without the heaviness, to acknowledge Advent only with cheer. And yet I am reminded of the way Christ stepped into the world- hated and scorned. Reminded of the immense injustice Christ's very body suffered. Reminded of the loneliness, the weeping, the betrayal Christ experienced. Reminded of the many ways Christ reached toward death, toward sickness, toward the demons. 

And I remember that Emmanuel, who came to take away the sin of the world, is coming again. 

When I was just a kid in elementary school, I remember being warned that those who aren't Christian would accuse me of believing in Christianity only because I was weak, because I needed a crutch in life. I dont remember what remedy or response was handed to us; I can only recall the warning. The older I get, the more I realize that statement is of no offense to me. I am weak. My body is exhausted. My mind is overwhelmed. My spirit is too often crushed, limping through each day. My passion flares up, driving me forward, but isnt sustainable as raging fire. I am tender and sensitive, able to be hurt. I am incapable of carrying the full weight of the news. I hold it for as long as I can, and then I must let it go. I need the force of Love in my life, need to believe in hope. This is no shame to me. I am not just a sinner in need of a Savior, I am a human in need of a better future. 

And so this Advent season, I am embracing my weakness. I am lighting candles as a symbolic way of letting the Light hold onto the grief, the pain, the death when I cannot bear it. As I wait, I will work as Love compels me, knowing it is not my work that will save the world. Emmanuel shall come to thee, Oh Israel. 

You wouldn't think a symbol or a collection of words and phrases would have so much power. You would think that after all these years, so many generations of use that they would wear off, unable to produce any level of potent emotion or perhaps wear down- like an old, tired, floppy coat kept around only because you're too lazy to throw it out. It just always amazes me that hatred so effectively disrupts the harmony of the soul. 

Lately, I have had a couple encounters with symbols of racial hatred. And each time, they hurt like hell. The most recent made its rounds on social media last night- "white power" and swastikas written into the snow on the windows of parked cars on our campus. Here's the honest truth, yall. When I first saw the pictures pop up I wondered to myself, "Is that my car?" I wondered if my own students had decided to find my car and intentionally inflict pain for being at Calvin, for speaking about racial justice, or just for being black and easily accessible. It wasnt my car. No one's car in particular was targeted. But that was my first thought. 

And my students, as they learned of this, had a range of emotions. Anger. Disappointment. Frustration. Fear. Exhaustion. Rage. Most of them cycled through all these emotions at different points during the day. I am proud of many of them for being resilient, creative, present, honest. I am so proud, but I cannot protect. I cannot protect them, nor can I protect myself. 

And thats why I have been thinking for the last couple weeks about this thing called a "casual racist". You know that uncle who is always telling "those" jokes? You know the sister who is always using coded language to talk about "those" people. Or how about the folks at church who pull up with a confederate flag on their truck because free speech. And of course the "silly" kids who tag homes and cars and streets with messages that disrupt all that was peaceful about your day. As I was writing about supporting students last week, I stumbled on something that I only fully grappled with this week: There is no such thing as casual racism because the only thing standing between a causal racist and an infamous one, is a dead body. 

It was one thing to write that when discussing other schools. It is another to internalize the realities of that statement as I look into the eyes of the students I adore. 

The weight of this is the weight of white supremacist ideology. White supremacy is and always has been for the subjugation of black bodies even unto death. And any "casual" nurturing of that ideology easily grows into violence that a body like mine will have to endure. That is why hateful rhetoric remains so violent to the soul. Because white supremacy is a promise of violence to the body.  

But we have been convinced that there is a difference. That there is a casual racist and true racist. That there is a passive racist and a violent racist. That there is a regular racist and an extreme racist. We want so much to believe that racist ideology can remain in our hearts without turning folks into monsters. It is a convenient understanding of racism for those whose bodies are never targets. 

White supremacy grows. It encompasses as much space as we are willing to give it. It is all-consuming by design. It is never satisfied. It chases after power in its conception: the power over the hearts and minds of slave owner, enslaved and all those who were disinterested enough to let slavery thrive. And this desire for power, for control over the will, control over the body has been witnessed again and again and again and again in our present day.  We are about to watch it once more with the release of the video of #LaquanMcDonald. Time and again we are watching the snap decision, the snap inclination to brutally overpower black bodies. We saw it with Dylann Roof- a desire that he just couldn't squelch despite the hospitality he received. We watched it in how the resource officer responded to a black girl sitting in her desk. We watched it when an officer wrapped his arms around the throat of Eric Garner. We watched it as an officer callously shot Walter Scott in the back. We heard about it in the case of Jordan Davis who died because of "loud rap music". Loud rap music, yall. That was all it took to make a man take out his gun and shoot at a car of teenagers. All of these cases (and there are so many more) are just a handful of cases that put on display the shallow cause and required overreaction that unchecked white supremacy demands in the treatment of black bodies.  

So those of us who are committed to racial justice, can no longer afford to think of racism in categories- the painful and the painless. Those categories aren't real and we cant endorse them. We must name the depths to which white supremacy reaches. We must take every act, every sound bite, every joke, every message written in the snow seriously. We must.