On Sunday, continuing our series “Free Your Mind,” Rev. Lola Wright gave her message, “Transforming Trauma”—a raw and powerful response to current events. Below is a video shown at the beginning of the service, followed by notes from Rev. Lola’s talk.
Message Notes
“You cannot know what healing means until you know the hurt.”
— “Healing” by Adam Lawrence Dyer
Objectives
- Acknowledge – the what’s so/the condition/the Law
- FEEL – Witness our propensity for spiritual bypass
- Breathe/Listen for our call – what is mine to do?
Keywords/Points/Stories
- 400 years of white supremacy: Systemic racism/Callous disregard for human life/Murder/Hate/Corruption
- Thomas Jefferson (Founding Father): 1776 Declaration of Independence
1781; Notes on the State of VIrginia - beLOVEd Community: Triple Evils of Racism/Militarization/Poverty
“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”
— Assata Shakur
Karmic Law/The Law of Cause & Effect
“A profound shift in our collective consciousness must occur, a shift that makes possible a new America. I no longer believe that we can “fix” the police, as though the police are anything other than a mirror reflecting back to us the true nature of our democracy. We cannot “fix” the police without a revolution of values and radical change to the basic structure of our society. If we’re serious about having peace officers — rather than a domestic military at war with its own people — we’re going to have to get honest with ourselves about who our democracy actually serves and protects.
— Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
Feel our feelings all the way through:
“When a man is hanging on a tree and he cries out, should he cry out unemotionally? When a man is sitting on a hot stove and he tells you how it feels to be there, is he supposed to speak without emotions? This is what you tell black people in this country when they begin to cry out against the injustices they are suffering.”
— Malcolm X
NO SPIRITUAL BYPASS/OPTING OUT/PRIVILEGE
Spiritual bypass – the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with uncomfortable feelings, unresolved wounds, and fundamental emotional and psychological needs
Breathe, Listen & Mobilize
Spiritual Mind Treatment (Affirmative Prayer): We turn entirely away from the condition, because as long as we look at it, we cannot overcome it. By thinking upon a condition, we tend to animate it with the life of our thought, and thereby it is perpetuated and magnified. Treatment (Prayer) is the science of inducing … concepts, acceptances and realizations of peace, poise, power, plenty – health, happiness and success – or whatever the particular need may be.
— Science of Mind, p. 164.3
