Living in cornavirusworld 117: privilege is our expertise

7/21

the birds seek shade

Central Park jazz combo

Back in the day, I used ti be a member of the New York Road Runners and a frequent race participant. I even ran 10 marathons in my time. Hard to believe.  But since a major back surgery in 2011, my running career came to a stop. This coronavirustime has meant time to reclaim lost, forgotten or ignored parts of ourselves. Like cooking for example. And this... I discovered an emerging world of ‘Virtual Road races” designed to be run individually wherever and whenever you want. I decided to reenter that world with a 5k in June, with a long hot stretch down Riverside Park to the Pier. Today, in 90 + degree weather, I create another 5k course from my Harlem apartment building down the West Drive of Central Park to Columbus Circle. I realize how many years it has been since I completed at least one whole side of the Park. Each particular part, the extended ups and downs you generally don’t think about, the different mini-worlds of the park pass underway feet in the heat. There’s a jazz combo in the Gazebo by the lake. Finally at Columbus Circle, I leave the Park. Time for an iced coffee in the shadow of the monument to victims of the Maine battleship explosion, cause celebre for the Spanish-American war. Remember the Maine now mainly forgotten. Birds are perched on the shade side trying to keep cool.

from Portland, where else?

Beekeepers

A beekeeper truck from Portland seems to have escaped the incursion of federales into their city and made its way to Fredrick Douglass Boulevard. 

The New York City Presbytery General Cabinet meets. Our moderator shares her own pain as a result of General Assembly. Reminds us that for white people, privilege is our expertise. We are experts about racism having lived with its benefits throughout our lives. Our Executive challenges his with the words of J.Philip Newell of the Iona Community with three questions:

* What can you leave behind?

* Can you imagine what is to be?

* What are you willing to commit to doing today? Tomorrow?…and forward?

We continue to live with the effects of this virus. Our loss of so many, including Grace Bowen, an urban ministry mentor whose life was the very definition of her name. Income last year for Presbytery at the end of June was $186000. This year only $99000. We will only be down $55000 thanks to a small business loan, otherwise we’d be down $!55000. Small churches are unable to pay their insurance. Churches need to reopen to reopen income streams, but only large churches can afford to do all the things listed on our checklist. We are entering into a new day for churches as money runs out.

Presbytery remains committed to engaging the engagement with  systemic racism. Several people point out all that is already been done. The Black Women and Girls conversation. Efforts around bail bonds. And Rikers.  Living wage. Homelessness. I point out that all those are issues, are symptoms of the deeper problem and we have to look not just outside but inside. Even as the most diverse Presbytery in the PC(USA), if we simply insert diversity into a system that by culture, structure and ethos is intrinsically white, all you do is strengthen the white privilege and worse, cause people of color to be complicit in their own disempowerment. We have to go deep.