Dream Week Event
A Quaker Approach to Anti-Racism Work
Wednesday, January 17th
6-8pm
Potluck at 6pm
Worship Sharing at 7pm
The public is invited to join Friends Meeting of San Antonio (Quakers) in a prayerful reflection on questions involving privilege, race, and ways to work for equality. We will gather for worshipful reflection on January 17, 7:00. A potluck will proceed the event.
You are welcome to join us by Zoom. Click HERE
(Zoom ID #976 0522 6497; passcode: 194077)
At the Quaker Meetinghouse
7052 N Vandiver Road
(corner of Eisenhower)
Free to all
Overview:
Welcome to the San Antonio Friends (Quakers) Worship Sharing on Anti-Racism. While there are no hard and fast rules within worship sharing, it is important we have a mutual understanding of our space together to create a meaningful worship for all. As we explore the highly charged topics of anti-racism in sacred community, the Quaker form of worship helps us to listen to one another and ourselves in a deeply spiritual, loving, and open way. It draws us into a sacred space in which we can speak openly from our hearts and our own experience. Worship sharing is very much like a silent Quaker meeting for worship except that we are asked to focus on a particular prompt and query, then respond from our own experience.
We offered these simple worship guidelines:
- We begin with stillness and silence and reach as deeply as we can into the sacred center of our lives.
- We speak from our own experience about our own experience. We concentrate on feelings and changes rather than on thoughts or theories.
- We speak out of worship and leave a substantial period of silence for reflection between speakers to savor what has been shared.
- We listen carefully and deeply to what is spoken. We listen patiently and attentively without judgment and without the distraction of our own thoughts.
- We do not respond to what anyone else has said, either to praise or refute.
- Whether one speaks out of worship or remains in silent meditation rests with each individual. We have the option to remain silent. But if everyone has spoken, we may speak again.
- What is said here stays here, what is learned here may leave here.
Introductory Text:
Ruth King, Mindful of Race, Introduction
- “Something alarming happens when we think or hear the word racism. Something deep within us is awakened into fear. All of us, regardless of our race and our experience of race, get triggered, and more than the moment is at play…. This activation happens to all of us. . . . Some of us do not acknowledge that we are racial beings within the human race, nor do we recognize how or understand why our instinct as members of racial groups is too often fear, hurt, or harm other races, including our own. And we don’t know how to face into and own what we have co-created as humans.”
- “The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be an anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it’s the only way forward.” Ijeoma Oluo (from her book “So You Want to Talk about Race”)
Queries:
- What feelings am I holding as come to understand my/their whiteness automatically benefits me/them in the dominant culture?
- In what ways can I overcome those feelings and ensure the focus of my antiracism work raises the voices of those least heard (or with the least privilege)?
- How can I help others become more aware of how their privilege impacts others with less privilege?