&&&’s Summer 2020
“Let It Shine” Yearlong (and Beyond) Beaded Novena
for Racial Justice
&&&’s Summer Issue comes on the heels of our eleventh-hour Spring Issue, that introduced the Yearlong (and Beyond) Beaded Novena for Racial Justice: a series of prayers, encircling the year, from mid-April 2020 through mid-March 2021, with an ongoing pattern of nine days on and seven days off. This novena follows the general guidelines described in our “Introduction to ‘Street Novenas’,” and includes:
& An intention or intentions.
& A saint, canonized or not, to entrust the need.
& Nine days, with start and end dates.
& A practice.
Specific to this novena (yet open for adaptation):
& THE INTENTION: our common and ongoing intention is for RACIAL JUSTICE, and will amplify, envision, and work toward the following:
Summer 2020 Issue:
July: Acknowledgement of Systemic and Entrenched Racialized Injustice
August: For Equality in Access to Healthy Foods, Healthy Living Conditions, and Medical Care
September: For Economic Parity
Fall 2020 Issue:
October: For Protection of Voting Rights
November: For Police Reform
December: For Reform to the Criminal Justice System
Winter 2020/2021 Issue:
January: For Equity in Education
February: For Safe Working Conditions and for Equal Employment Opportunities
Spring 2021 Issue: March and Beyond: For Integral Ecology / Environmental Justice (which is inseparable from Racial Justice)
& A saint, someone, canonized or not, to entrust the need: we have invited “the Woman Clothed with the Sun” to accompany us on this journey.
& Nine days, with start and end dates: we started on 4/14, with an initial end-date on Earth Day, 4/22, then decided to continue with the beaded pattern of nine days on, seven days off, nine days on, seven days off, which will continue through March 2021. July 3-11 will be the next string of prayers, followed by seven spacer days, then picking back up July 19-27, etc.
& A practice: you may design your own; we are mainly walking, with additional practices, some of which we will share in these issues.
For example, during the spring novena, I “planted” native pollinators, California Poppies and Gilia, on neglected and desecrated patches of earth. I also wrote letters to my county and city officials, urging that we have a mask requirement where I live (which was not the case at the time). In my letters, I argued that their vote (mostly white) would either perpetuate the white supremacy that has dominated our city, county, and country, or it would be a vote that values the lives of brown and black people, who are dying disproportionately from Covid-19 – not due to genetics but from entrenched, racialized injustice. A mask requirement, which would help reduce the spread of Covid-19, I urged, is just one small but concrete way for our city and county to help to protect Black Lives. (The Solano County Supervisors voted down a mandate for the county, 3-2, with Supervisors Monica Brown and Skip Thomson voting in favor of it. And, on May 26, the City of Benicia rejected a mask mandate 3-2, with Mayor Elizabeth Patterson and Councilman Steve Young voting in favor of it. Benicia’s City Council did end up voting unanimously on face-covering requirements, two days before the State mandated them.) I also donated to the Benicia Mask Makers, who at the time had made over 7,600 masks for public health workers and for our community.
But, here is the tragic and eye-opening (at least for me) irony: although, according to the Washington Post: the people most likely to wear masks are comprised mainly of people of color and college-educated Americans, wearing a mask to protect myself and others, without fear of profiling, is another example of white privilege, as elucidated in this opinion piece on “why some black men fear wearing face masks during a pandemic." In fact, people of color are exempt from an Oregon county's mask mandate over concerns about racial profiling.
I realize my carefree attitude toward seed-bombing, and what “trouble” that may get me in (likely a hand-slap, if anything), also comes from my place of privilege, as a white person.
While I will continue to support the making and wearing of masks as well as guerilla gardening, I will do so with far more awareness and humility. And, I commit to doing my part to make things as right and just as possible for those who would be unduly at-risk for engaging such life-giving activities.
Again, for these street novenas, materials, such as candles, photos, and other creative expressions and ex votos are, like everything else, optional and adaptable. We encourage you to share your practices, suggestions, as well as any other feedback here. As stated in our newsletter introducing Street Novenas: “What is most important is that we find ourselves belonging to something larger than ourselves, an ever-evolving and adaptable tradition, a spacious community. Mystery. Love. The Really Real.”
What we are suggesting is something transformational. As we know all too well, a changed statue or statute can only go so far if we don’t change hearts, minds, systems, behaviors, and relationships.
Is prayer enough? Certainly not. However, a collective intention not only has the possibility of changing our own hearts and habits but the hearts and habits of others, in this case I am thinking specifically of myself as a privileged white person. May my heart and habits be changed.
And, like a Morphogenic Field, may the unseen forces that carry information across time and space link with and influence others of this same self-organizing system, through a collective and cumulative memory. The more repetitive an act, such as a novena for racial justice, according to this hypothesis, the greater the power for it to resonate and replicate – with potentiality for further innovation and evolution.
May we be like candles. May we be clothed with sun. May we let our light shine, as Sister Rosetta Tharpe proclaims here, from 1960. More importantly, especially if we are “opportunity hoarding” white people, may we ensure that all lights may shine, here and around the globe, now and into the future, igniting and illumining racial justice and celebrating, by putting at the center and decentralizing ourselves, the countless contributions of black Americans.
This summer I will be reading Rev. Dr. Valerie A. Miles-Tribble’s recently published book Change Agent Church in Black Lives Matter Times: Urgency for Action. Rev. Dr. Miles-Tribble is Associate Professor of Ministerial Leadership and Practical Theology at the Berkeley School of Theology (formerly American Baptist Seminary of the West) and Chair of Women's Studies in Religion (WSR), at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), in Berkeley.
Please email if you would like to join me in an online reading circle of this impactful book: “Volatile social dissonance in America’s urban landscape is the backdrop as Valerie A. Miles-Tribble examines tensions in ecclesiology and public theology, focusing on theoethical dilemmas that complicate churches’ public justice witness as prophetic change agents. She attributes churches’ reticence to confront unjust disparities to conflicting views, for example, of Black Lives Matter protests as ‘mere politics,’ and disparities in leader and congregant preparation for public justice roles. As a practical theologian with experience in organizational leadership, Miles-Tribble applies adaptive change theory, public justice theory, and a womanist communitarian perspective, engaging Emilie Townes’s construct of cultural evil as she presents a model of social reform activism re-envisioned as public discipleship. She contends that urban churches are urgently needed to embrace active prophetic roles and thus increase public justice witness. ‘Black Lives Matter times’ compel churches to connect faith with public roles as spiritual catalysts of change.”
This summer, I donated to the Greatest Needs Fund at the Jesuit School of Theology (JST-SCU), an international theologate, at the GTU, to help support our dedicated, prophetic, and visionary students, whom I serve, with their unexpected costs that resulted from the pandemic.