A Day in the Week: Tuesday

A Day in the Week: Monday

A Day in the Week: Sunday

It's coming back to me now...

I have been noticing an odd thing:

Finding myself arrived into April, it is as if I have been struck with a mild but unsettling case of amnesia, wherein I cannot remember who I was pre-somewhere-in-February or where I have been for more than a month.

In this digging-myself-out week, I have been slowly slowly returning to feet-on-solid-ground. I organized my desk. I stood in my kitchen and did the prayerful cooking. I sat with Good friends, and listened with my heart as they spoke Truth into and over me, in the places where it has been stolen. And then I sat with God, who rocked me sweet to sleep.

Then, this morning, after a night of I-am-dead-to-the-world-and-I-need-not-see-the-5am-sky, I woke up to this:

 As if God were saying:
Don't worry baby, you didn't miss a thing.

Truth and Reconciliation: In Concert

We kicked it off in the fall [you can read about it here]

and then over the course of the year, I watched it come to be. 

I have made partnerships and joined conversations all across this campus, and I have been moved and I have been changed.

This weekend,

a "concert" made of many,

from the campus and the community,

to tell the arc of a story still unfolding:

Roots, Realities, Reconciliation, Rebirth.

Many came together, many spoke their stories.

It was powerful, and I am grateful.

Good afternoon,

My name is Lauren Kooistra, and I am the Associate Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities here at Penn State. I would like to welcome you to Truth and Reconciliation: In Concert.

The Truth and Reconciliation series, which started in the fall and of which today’s event is a part, was birthed in the wake of Michael Brown’s death, when my facebook feed exploded with what I can only call breaking hearts. It seemed that the events in Ferguson were a turning point of sorts for members of the black community, inciting a cry of “enough is enough.” Two of my former students, Kiena Williams and Eric Williamson, joined in this cry, and ultimately I emailed them with tears streaming down my face, saying, “I am hurting with you.” I told them that as a white person, I was afraid to express that hurt, because it felt insensitive somehow, in that the legacy of black hurt is not hurt I can claim. They said: You are an American, and you are a human --we are all affected by these injustices. They said: Let the black community know that they are not the only ones who feel this.

By the end of that conversation, something inside of me had changed. I looked at where I had been placed: Associate Director of an Institute that has a presence on this campus, and I thought: It is time, to do something. But that did not mean I knew what to do.

It has been a put-one-foot-down-in-front-of-the-other kind of year. Throughout it, I have felt mainly uncomfortable and unequipped.  But over this year I have done a lot of listening, and I have gathered a lot of language. I have been faced with questions, simple questions, such as, “Have I ever wondered if I matter to my fellow citizens, and to my government, or even to this University?” And the answer is: I have never wondered this. I have taken for granted that I do --in fact-- matter. But I have learned that people of color very simply do not know this in the way that I do, and therein lies --one aspect of-- my privilege.

At the end of this year, I feel confident saying that if you are white in this country, you do not understand what it is like to be a person of color in this country. Now--if you are white in this country, you might be affronted by such a statement regarding your lack of understanding. You may reasonably counter that you are a thoughtful person, that the crimes of other whites are not your crimes and you are tired of being told you should care --or that you are somehow complicit. I feel confident saying that “you” may feel this way, because I have listened to these statements over the course of this year as well, and I have struggled with them myself.

My explicitness in saying that we do not understand is intentional, however, because I have come to understand that if we are hoping to move forward from where we have been,  we must be explicit.  It is time for us to acknowledge that our ignorance of what we do not know is a legacy we have been conditioned to stand in. It is time for us to say: We may have inherited a legacy of ignorance and the white supremacy that comes with it, but we will no longer stand in a legacy of ignorance. The burden of this legacy has for too long lain on the shoulders of black men, women, and children, and it is time for the white majority to demonstrate: We will take responsibility, and we will carry this burden with you.

So--let me say it again.  At the end of this year, I feel confident saying that if you are white in this country, you do not understand what it is like to be a person of color in this country. But by the end of this year I have also come to believe that if we agree to listen, we can find ways wherein we can relate, and in the relating we can arrive at empathy. Listening causes me to see the person standing before me, and when I see him, I come closer and closer to understanding him and the path that he has walked. If I agree to see him, I communicate that he matters. And if I see him--and her, and them-- I acknowledge the question crying out in our streets and on this campus, which is: Have you even heard me?

Over the course of this year, I have learned: all of us want to matter, and all of us want to be heard. When we are brought to the place of saying “enough is enough,” all of us know what it feels like to need something to change. When we don’t know what to do, this is the common ground from which we start.

At the end of this year I am still uncomfortable, but I have come to understand that protecting my comfort never should have been the point.  And I am still unequipped--but this is no longer an excuse to be silent. In my silence lies my complicity with a system that does not work for everyone; and--to take very personally the words of James Baldwin--if I remain ignorant of its fallacies, it does not mean that I am innocent.

I am asking myself, and today I am asking us: What are the stories that we are telling? Will this crises that we face just continue to cycle through black lived experience and through our white peripheral vision, so that our children face the same questions that we do today  --the same questions, by the way, that our parents faced before us? Or will we tell our children the stories that matter? The issues of race that we see today are born of the legacies that we have invested in. And it is time to invest in a new legacy.

This concert does not tell every story, and it does not tell the whole story. I put out a call for participants, and I recruited some people whose voices I knew to be powerful. I asked for our children to stand here with us, because I wanted to be challenged by their innocence, and I wanted their innocence to be unsettled. Today is a monument along our path that asks us: Where will I put my foot down next? Where will I choose to walk?

This week I heard President Barron speak on the role of the arts and humanities in our lives as a space to reflect on the problems our society faces, in ways that lead us to solutions. We are a thoughtful people, individually and as a community, and this concert is intended to help us think.

I have many people to thank for their help in making today happen. First and foremost is Michael Berube, who has essentially given me free rein over this year to do whatever I pleased for this series in the name of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities. All of the participants have patiently fielded my emails and questions, and Kikora Franklin, Dr. Steven Hankle, Amy Rebarchak, and Russell Bloom have been particularly kind in giving of their time to help me think through content and logistics. And thank you to you parents, who by the very act of allowing your children to participate today said to them: This story is important.

The concert you see before you today is made of a network of people working together to tell a story that needs to be told, and our thanks goes to you for being here, and for joining us on this path.

Chapter 1: Roots

Chapter 2: Realities

Chapter 3: Reconciliation

Chapter 4: Rebirth

Wake Up--Go Forth!

All photo credits to Madison Mock

For all that is so lovely.

You arrive at the restaurant.
The hostess sees you from afar and 

looks down the row where "your table" is.

She says, "It's open!" and waves you over.

You sit down to wait for your friend, 

the one you meet here every Wednesday at 8-ish.

The waitress brings over the coffee, 

and two waters--one with ice and one without.

You pull out your notebook and think through your day,

and say another thank you,

for all that is so lovely.

The season of: MARCH

March is the price I pay for a life of luxury the rest of the year.

But, here is some of it, to remember the gift of it:

ReBirth of a Nation

Film and Public Q&A with DJ Spooky

 [The event was the bane of my existence for many months,

but the man was lovely, and the night was powerful.]

Salon Conversations: Post Ferguson Race Matters

 [What is the role of art in social justice movements?]

Early mornings into the office...so much to do! 

 But, such a pretty view.

The CitySpace Series:

StoryWalks: Walking as Place Making Methodology 

in San Jose Japantown, California

[Kimberly Powell]

The Fire This Time: 

Citizenship, Civil Rights and New Racisms in the 21st Century

 [When you have 15 minutes to kill after buying 

a box of forks and a case of water at the grocery story 

but before picking up your grad assistant so that you can go to 

India Pavilion and pick up the food for the event later that evening...

you go to Sweet Frog in order to process all you heard that day.]

[Also, you know that things have come to a pretty pass when you are seeking comfort in 15 minutes at Sweet Frog at 5:15 on a Friday...] 

The Second Salon on Neurohumanities 

[Held very last minute at the very charming Centre Furnace Mansion,

due to the original host's losing battle with a stomach virus...]

And then, Easter.

For which I spent the late afternoon the day before,

dying eggs with a dear friend and her family.

Then I hopped over to another dear friend and her family,

who very prettily painted my nails to sparkle for Jesus

as I played the piano during church at the early service this morning.

Another dear friend joined me with her husband for the late service and we wiped our tears and held each other's hearts 

at the power of God to do what He does.

Then, I came home, 

for Restoration Quiet

and the working of His Work.

There may even have been a good old fashioned Easter nap, 

following a rather non-traditional Easter Quesadilla.

I'm a little weary in all of my ways in these crazy Working days,

but listen--I'm alive, because He lives.

So let my song join the one that never ends.

Amen, and Hallelujah.

Hallelujah; Amen.