Welcome (and welcome back) to Opti-Mystic Meditations! No doubt you first came here because you felt compelled to grab the bonus chapter of the book I collaborated on with Fr. Richard Rohr – The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation.

I really appreciate you sticking around as I share my very best reflections, plus inspiring writing from friends and mentors, poets and mystics – all of us caught up in this beautiful struggle and gracious surrender of being Beloved Community together.

This includes you – of course.

And today I reflect on us being the first week into Lent, a traditional season of subtraction leading up to the great multiplication of Easter, 40 days later.

40 days to let go – to create space.

Would you like to know one of the things I’m letting go of this Lent?

My progressive, privileged hand-wringing echo-chambers. And the conservative privileged echo-chambers I tend (if I’m not careful) to define myself in opposition to.

I was called out of my mimetic spin-cycle when I read a brief Facebook post from Ashon Crawley. Commenting on the almost-sadistic glee some white folks adopted when reporting how dire and chaotic news has seemed lately, he said:

“The stuff I’m reading isn’t about knowledge with the purpose of confronting and alleviating harm, but about spreading discomfort. And it’s almost like a shaming: ‘Why didn’t you think it’d be bad?! how could you not know?!’ sorta moralizing happening. because they wanna style themselves as the ones with the real knowledge of what’s ‘actually happening.’”

…and this is where he got me:

“This is why minoritarian knowledge is so important. Not (only) because we emerge from traditions of resisting this nonsense since before 1492, but also because we have had to imagine – and thus materially implement – alternatives to normative order as a way of life. Doomsday narratives emerge as pleasurable when you don’t pay attention to indigenous and black and latinx and queer and women knowledges.”

From Margins to Center.

Ashon is absolutely right. In working and playing toward being Beloved Community, I don’t want to make myself front and center. It’s an easy space for me to occupy, as a straight, white, Christian man living in the United States. I’ve worked hard and had my struggles, of course, but I’m used to the un-earned privilege of spotlight-by-default. But I’ve come to realize that I’m really letting myself down – and letting you down as friends and readers – when I only listen to people who look like me, and occupy the same social location as me.

Humility and repentance and curiosity compel me to center voices that I’ve previously been content to hear on my periphery. And so, what originally began as a Black History Month appreciation, I’m extending indefinitely: sharing my blog home with indigenous and black and latinx and queer and women friends and collaborators, creating a resonant mosaic on MikeMorrell.org and in these Opti-Mystic Meditations.

By subtracting my usual input habits this Lent, I’m noticing greater understanding, insight, and joy is already being added.

I leave you here with a curation of excellent posts, below – and to a stirring, centering message from Rev. William Barber. I hope you take the time to watch this – it’s not only inspiring, it’s quite educational.

As we seek to move beyond the tired binaries of Left and Right, let’s find ourselves in the fusion coalition that invites us to reconsider our prejudices and find common cause with our neighbors as we move forward together in doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.

November 13th, 2016 – As many post-election Americans feel distraught and confused after the election of Donald Trump, Moral Monday Architect Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II provides deep historical insights that help make sense of the moment, while also delivering a powerful – moving forward – charge as he addresses standing room only and thousands online from the Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Yours in sweet surrender,
Mike Morrell

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