I was sorry to learn of Lowen's passing; this was the first I'd heard. Now I see the announcement in the newsletter.
I've been somewhat peripheral to the life of the Meeting, as was driven home today during Peace and Justice committee meeting, in which I felt clueless about much of what was talked about.
Which didn't keep me from opening my fat mouth a few times (I tried out another joke: one thumbs up one down). The joke: my pronouns are in the possessive tense: his and theirs. Hah hah?
Joking aside, the most insidious of all pronouns is "we" but people rarely talk about that one, especially "we white people" (guffaw... barf). What "we" whiteman, right?
Kepper, Lowen's partner, made a telling point when talking about filling out Lowen's death certificate info and having to specify race. The clerk just assumed "white" but Kepper added "he wasn't white until his twenties" which of course the clerk couldn't process.
What she meant was: Lowen was born into the Jewish tradition and wasn't allowed even to caddy golf games except in Jewish clubs. The country club WASPs were that anti-semitic, even that recently. A good reminder.
Did we want an anti-racist trainer to come into the Meeting and catalyze a transformative experience for the attenders present? Friends have fallen a long way away from being leaders in the anti-racism campaign I gather. Now they need help, like any corporation (we are a corporation, not for profit). Color us IBM?
I'm saddened to see booji well-off people spending money on themselves to deprogram. Yes, racism is insidious. But isn't our faith and practice all about self deprogramming, to make more room for God's will (to use the archaic language)? Sad that we have so little faith in our faith that we need to heavily rely on outsiders, is how I was taking it.
Speaking of my take on racism (old hat by now, with so much already here in my journals), here's the gist of my view, that a racist is someone who believes in races:
