So often, those of us engaged in justice work consider ourselves the “good guys.” It’s those “other” people, we think, who are the problem: the ones who don’t acknowledge racism or climate change; the ones who want to stop immigrants from making a home here. We argue that it’s “they” who are holding back a better world. But in today’s Gospel, Jesus isn’t talking about those “other” people. He’s calling us to examine ourselves—to practice self-denial, take up our cross, and even lose our life.

This means no one is off the hook, even those working for peace and justice. For all our enlightened rhetoric, for all our earnest activism, are we willing to deny ourselves in order to bring about a more just world? Or are we only interested in the work as long as it doesn’t require too much of us or create too big an inconvenience?

Read the rest at Ignatian Solidarity Network.

Not long ago I had a dream in which my neighbor, who is both a fiber artist and a mother of two, was pressing fabric into a basin of shallow water — ostensibly dying the fabric, perhaps, but I can't be sure. She was making art, one way or another, and she kept finding larger and larger containers to serve her purpose. Without frustration, without disappointment, she happily and with curiosity moved from vessel to vessel, seeking something vast enough to contain the wilds of her creativity.

When the basin failed to satisfy, she moved to a washtub; when the washtub did not suffice, she swapped it out for a kiddie pool; when the kiddie pool proved inadequate, she drained an Olympic-size pool in her front yard, stories and stories deep, astonishingly deep — we marveled together at how we hadn't known how fathomless the water had been all along. She covered the bottom with a shallow film of water and meticulously laid out the fabric inside, careful hands pressing out the creases. The result satisfied her, and she left the work to soak.

But a drained concrete pool of treacherous depths is not a safe thing to have sitting barrier-free in a little Midwestern neighborhood. In the dream I saw two of my own children heading over to play and I ran after them, knowing the danger they were in. The ground was covered with hornets that I stepped on as I rescued my little ones, muttering prayers of thanksgiving under my breath for their safety as I guided them home across the street, leaving my neighbor, her art, and a perilous cavern of imagination behind.

Read the rest of the Rewilding Motherhood excerpt at National Catholic Reporter.

Every weekday morning, I zip around town in my minivan to drop my kids off at their respective destinations: The littlest three go to their grandparents’ house for a few hours, while the oldest two shuffle through the halls of our local elementary school. Five children whom I would do absolutely anything to help and protect. Five children who are my heart walking outside my body. Five children: four White, one Black. 

My mother and father grew up in the Deep South during the civil rights era and were determined to educate their children about racism when they became parents. From early on, they talked quite openly about the evils of racism with my sister, brother, and me. I will always be thankful that they did not shy away from such a painful topic, but rather taught us in no uncertain terms that all people were created equal. That early exposure to rejecting toxic ideologies enabled me to receive much from the Black community throughout my life: friendships, teachers, music, and, eventually, my first child.

While preparing for the adoption of our son, my husband and I were instructed by professionals on the importance of diversity and inclusion. When social workers and veteran adoptive parents explained to us that our child needed to see himself represented in the predominately White world we were inserting him into, I bent over backward trying to undo the whitewashing that I suddenly realized marked our lives. 

It was a massive reality check. Almost overnight, I could see how nearly everything around us was created for and marketed to White people. From the board books on store shelves, to the characters in television shows, to the people we spent the most time with, everything communicated to my dark-skinned child that he was the odd man out, the exception: not normal. We realized what Black families had long known: If we wanted our Black son to see himself positively and equally represented, we would have to be very intentional about every single lifestyle and media choice we’d make. 

From that point on, my husband and I vowed to work conscientiously to help our son construct a positive racial identity—no small undertaking for a Black boy in this country. Then in 2012, when my son was 2, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was murdered by a neighborhood watch volunteer for wearing a hoodie and looking “suspicious.” And my whole world changed.

Read the cover story at St. Anthony Messenger!