We Are The Middle We Are The Middle

Black Joy can be loud and cacophonous or slow and still. We find Black Joy after the most difficult and challenging moments. Black Joy is a way to embrace our soul and give others to embrace their own joy as well. We do not take it for granted, and it allows us to unite as a community, whether that’s through art, life, rest or many other ways. It’s where we find solace when we are denied the right to express our pain in other spaces. It’s our place of permission to let go of trying to protect ourselves and figure out the world for one moment. It’s daring, beautiful, courageous. And needed.
We invite you to laugh with us, learn with us and give you permission to fully express your own Joy. Not only that, but we treated you with hearing some stories of Black Joy from our family members at the end of the episode. There’s some lovely, sweet and powerful moments.
CORRECTION
Joy said the routine she loved from Louisiana, but it was actually from UCLA. Please check out their Instagram here: Nia Dennis -UCLA Gymnast Floor Exercise
Find out more about Embodiment Movement (dance) here: https://www.jadore-detroit.com/blog/dance-embodiment
Pertaining to the poem by Maya Angelo “Still I Rise”
Outro Music by Music by Hooksounds
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Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.
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In this special episode, we invited my friend Brittany onto our show to talk about privilege and how we can all experience it in different ways even when we are part of marginalized groups. We share what our privilege means to us and how addressing these privileges can benefit and hinder us from moving closer to a more equitable society. This is a really insightful episode that will help us examine our privilege, especially when the word “privilege” can get bogged down with a lot of misconceptions. At the end of the episode, Brittany asks an introspective question that I encourage us to take time to answer, and to re-answer as we move through our journeys.

Special thanks to John Stratton for his awesome audio editing skills. You can find him at www.johnstrattonmusic.com

If you’d like to take the BuzzFeed Quiz you can click on this link here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/how-privileged-are-you

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We are bringing you a special episode discussing the pending 2020 election. Hang out with us as we take some deep breaths, laugh a little, and offer a few suggestions for remaining hopeful after the results are in.  



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The three words, “Black Lives Matter” conjures so many different feelings, reactions, and thoughts from people it’s hard to find the central focus for what those words truly mean. With the widened that racial chasm it seems that this has halted a lot of forward progression for racial equality. Della and I have a conversation about the BLM movement, hashtag, and symbolism. It’s challenging in so many different ways. I hope that you learn and are able to step into our stories as we share our journeys. Della also talks about coming back to the US from living in Korea for almost 9 years and returning to the awakening of racial injustice and church engagement. She shares her perspective and thoughts on finding a place of understanding with these issues. Along with the chants of, “Defund the Police”, this topic presents so much push back under a wave of political and social agendas. Where do we find Jesus in the middle of this? How do we reconcile the calling of loving others in the middle of a politically charged matter? We try to answer these important questions in this episode of We Are the Middle. 

CORRECTIONS

In this episode, I state the New York Police Department budget is 2 billion. I was incorrect - the actual budget is over 6 billion a year. Please watch this prolific Business Insider video for further education: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-cost-of-police-nypd-actually-10-billion-year-2020-8. 



RESOURCES AND CITATIONS

Skimm: https://www.theskimm.com/daily-skimm Black Lives Matter Platform (This is specific to BLM Los Angeles) https://www.blmla.org/guiding-principles The Bible Project: https://bibleproject.com/podcasts/the-bible-project-podcast/ 

(YOUTUBE CHANNEL) https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBibleProject/featured 

What does Defund the Police Really Mean? http://bit.ly/USAWhatDoesDefundthePoliceMean 

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For this episode, we invited our friend Sarah Dornbos, who is a wonderful teacher, non-profit leader, and Social Justice champion. And...SHE BROUGHT IT. You'll hear us breathing deeply a lot in this episode because she was preaching y'all and we were taking it all in. We recorded this episode on Zoom, so the audio might be spotty in some instances. Hang with us friends.

Show Notes:


Quotes that Sarah shared: Frederick Douglas: "I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."
Willie Jennings: "White supremacy is a parasite that can’t survive without a host - the host it attached itself to was Christianity"
Daniel Hill (Pastor who wrote “White Awake”) “The most hostile environment for having conversations about race is the white evangelical church.”
Dominique Gilliard’s book "Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that restores"

Sarah’s "3-legged-stool" recommendations from the COR:


1) Education: The Seeing White Podcast (Season 2 of Scene on Radio) is a good place to begin to learn US history that is not taught in schools! https://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/

2) Action: Sign up for anti-racism training! To check out/sign up for the CORR anti-racism workshop (happening virtually during the pandemic) go here: https://corrnow.org/

3) Self-Reflection: There is a contemplative prayer practice of Lectio Divina at the end of this podcast that can help guide you through self-reflection to get past shame/defensiveness in the conversation around race and reconciliation on The Eternal Current podcast September 4th: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-eternal-current-podcast/id1476002283

4.) Spectrum of Allies from Andre Henry.

You can view and download the file here

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Look, we know that the Church has taken some hits with the current social issues. The response and disengagement from followers is not lost on us. As two people who grew up in the Westernized Christian Church, we recognize that our experiences are not all negative, but there are certain things that we still wrestle with. Whether it’s the church, society, or other corporate body, we have all been disappointed and/or disillusioned by their response to issues that marginalized groups face. How do we move in this? Where is the middle road? How do we hold these two things in tension with each other? We talk a lot about the church, but I think we can all share similar hurts and reckonings with systems that are causing more harm than good. This is our raw and vulnerable conversation about experiences with the church.

Books and Articles Mentioned: 

1. Whitford, David M (David Mark). “A Calvinist Heritage to the ‘Curse of Ham’: Assessing the Accuracy of a Claim about Racial Subordination.” Church History and Religious Culture 90, no. 1 (2010): 25–45.

2. The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby: We recommend the book and the accompanying video series

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