Leslye's Labyrinth

I am a human being born and living on the planet earth. That is the most general description of who I am and in this moment it applies to more than six billion others. However, there are so many descriptors, terms and experiences that shape how I perceive the world around me, and how others perceive me.  My family has lived on land referred to as Turtle Island by the First Nations for 400 years. Where I live was once the land of the Muscogee Creek. My first African ancestors arrived against their will as cargo on what is now known as the United States of America.  I am also the descendent of people from the European continent, specifically England and Germany.  Because of the sacrifice and struggles of others, I live as a citizen of the United States. I am the descendent of people primarily from the African continent with no ancestral memory of the tribes or nations. Somehow, they managed to survive the Middle Passage, chattel slavery, and Jim Crow.   My grandparents were Lessie and Qu

History is a study of the past. It lives today in our experience of society and how society functions. History becomes complex in a pluralistic society when shaped by the conscious and unconscious biases of the dominant perspective. Those with collective power are often the ones who document what happened as well as how and why, in addition to what is omitted. The significance of history is realized in understanding how the events of yesteryear influence the circumstances of today. On a collective scale, it is similar to learning about the past of one's family - the joys and the sorrows - to understand how it influences who the person is now.  Any human with the gift of reason and any experience of the Divine should recognize racism born of white body supremacy as a grave sin created by individuals, and implemented and perpetuated by systems for five centuries. The sins of individuals for economic gain became the sins of a nation for economic gain and sanctioned by gross distortion

No, this is not what I wanted to do.  I did not choose this as my path, but it is the path on which I journey. At this time of my life, it is the path that must be acknowledged and no longer resisted. A deep sigh reveals my coming to terms with the convergence of my lived experience, my gift of words, and this moment in time.  As a citizen of the United States dealing with the heinous and flawed construct of race is inevitable. To speak about it requires inner work that I wanted to avoid. Included in the work is one essential question. Has the racial system been designed to privilege or oppress people? While many of my fellow citizens may  deny that race is relevant to them and in their lives, for those of us who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), the truth of our nation's original sin is our lived experience. It is no secret. My parents sought to shield me and my siblings from the oppression that infiltrated our lives in an apartheid system. Even without th

It is beyond me that people of privilege have the arrogant audacity to tell those living on the margins and those living in solidarity with them how they should protest. The same thing happened with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. If it were not so pathetically a reflection of white body privilege, it might be laughable. The Boston Tea Party was not a tea party. It was a violent form of protest against the excessive taxation of the colonies by British rule. It result in the loss of property by those who schemed to have blame assigned to others. It is an age old practice throughout human history as powerful rulers have oppressed their subjects through excessive forms of taxation. Christian readers may recognize this unfolding in Scripture as the Jewish people were unfairly taxed by Roman authorities.  Never has a protest been initiated with a desire to appease the powerful. Think about that for a moment. Never has a protest been initiated with a desire to appease the powerful. Protests are

Dear Person  with A White Body, Many of you appear to take pride and comfort in denying   white privilege.   You say the struggles  you have experienced prove you have not benefitted from having a white body in this society.    As the old saying goes, you are speaking  of apples and oranges. Personal struggles and  white body privilege are not mutually exclusive.   The concept of white privilege does not mean that you have not experienced hard times. It means the systems and structures of our society were crafted  to benefit people with white bodies.   To be honest, they were created by a few “white” men to benefit some “white” men as with the initial intention of voting being exercised only by white men who owned land.   It did not apply to people considered  to be "property" including the women they married and the people they enslaved.   Denying this reality shows  your inability to think critically about our nation's history,  an absence of the curiosity  to question

Two years ago, I was anticipating my first symposium as a student in The Living School, a two-year program of Richard Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation. I had read Father Richard's work for more than a decade and was excited for this opportunity to grow in my practice of nondualism as a contemplative activist. My life experiences had introduced me to the concept of nondualism long before I knew the term. I had previously thought of it as thinking out of the box or moving beyond common perspectives. The most significant lesson in my earliest life was probably the mystery of God as three persons in one. Another lesson was presented when my family entered the Catholic church in my racially segregated hometown's only parish. Segregation is a clear and extreme operationalization of dualism. It discourages intellectual curiosity by maintaining clear and distinct options that are in essence no option.  Prayers offered during the Triduum introduced me to a way of praying f