From Your Associate Executive for Racial Justice

“Learning and memory are generally associated with brains and r cells alone, but our study shows that other cells in the body can learn and form memories too.”

Dr. Nikolay V. Kukushkin, NYU Professor

“Your nervous system is your body’s command center. It works by sending messages, or electrical signals, between your brain and all the other parts of your body. These signals tell you to breathe, move, speak, and see, for example. Your nervous system keeps track of what’s going on inside and outside of your body and decides how to respond to any situation you’re in.”

Cleveland Clinic 2023

“…trauma is also a wordless story our body tells itself about what is safe and what is a threat.”  

Resmaa Menekem

Do you have a memory of pain? Can you recount its details? Do you still notice visceral responses? What emotions surface? Any sensorial tenderness related to the pain? How long ago was it? Are you aware of the ways your body reenacts that pain in various settings and with different people? Have you observed members of your generation experience similar pain?

Resmaa Menekem, in his book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Mending of Our Bodies and Hearts, tells us that:

“Recent studies and discoveries increasingly point out that we heal primarily in and through the body, not just through the rational brain. We can all create more room, and more opportunities for growth, in our nervous systems. But we do this primarily through what our bodies experience and do—not through what we think or realize or cognitively figure out.”        

On June 11, the Rev. Alexandra Zareth will explore this concept through a workshop on generational racialized trauma and provide us with practical tools to listen to our bodies and show us a more aware and healthy faith community (Learn more and register here). I hope you can join us for that conversation and invite others. The workshop will also be recorded in case you miss the live version.

It’s a fitting time to join this workshop, since during this month we celebrate and recognize Juneteenth. Multiple aspects of what June 19 prioritizes depend on who you talk to or who provides the information. At the very least, Juneteenth commemorates or is a reminder of freedom, freedom from slavery, particularly. The concept of freedom is experienced and lived differently depending on the member of this society you speak to. For most of the African American community, “freedom” is a layered concept. On the one hand, the abolition of slavery was signed into law. Simultaneously, laws were enacted to prevent African Americans and other non-White members of the United States society from living a freedom-like life. African American bodies were monitored, policed, and still enslaved through policies and practices. Growing economies were systematically eradicated, thriving neighborhoods were erased, and some are covered with beautiful lakes and parks (e.g., Central Park in NYC and Belle Isle in Detroit, MI).

Black bodies were systematically raped, bred, eaten, utilized for accessories, and used for dental enhancements, among many other uses. Black people in this country were bred among themselves—forced to have more children to offset the economic gap after the emancipation—and bred by rape, having that offspring put to work or used as sexual gratification of their White fathers. Lynchings were a public spectacle. Children, pregnant Black women, men, and women were brutally and cruelly unalived in a public setting. Their body parts were sold or distributed among attendees as souvenirs. Postcards were sent to family members and friends with images of these inhuman acts. An entire economy was created around lynchings—vendors, photography, exchange of goods, and more. Also, the passing on of values and standards of what was socially acceptable from generation to generation through the indoctrination of children—children were taken to these events as pastimes. These are just understatements of the cruelty and violence of slavery.

If your body recoiled or you find yourself questioning the veracity of any of these documented truths, you carry racialized generational trauma, too. Resmaa Menakem writes:

“History matters, and an awareness of it puts our lives into a context. A disdain for history sets us adrift and makes us victims of ignorance and denial. History lives in and through our bodies right now, and in every moment.”

There is privilege in not having to think of the atrocities committed by humans to other humans. There is an invisible pain that members of the body of Christ carry of the fact that a construct was created that deemed them inhuman, non-human, not worthy of God’s redemption, not worthy of Christ’s love—only when it served the majoritized culture to appease their guilt and conscience and to justify their actions that slaves were then forced and coerced to be baptized and introduced to the Bible—a corrupted version of the bible, slaves and slave owners did not “read” the same bible.

Where do we think those stories, experiences, and encounters go? Where do they get stored? Do they magically go away with time? No. Absolutely no. The trauma follows us through. We carry the trauma in our bodies. Our ancestors pass along the trauma generation after generation. The more we choose silence and shame, the more the trauma grows, the faster it spreads throughout generations.

In the same book, Resmaa Menekem suggests:

“…that one of the best things each of us can do—not only for ourselves, but also for our children and grandchildren—is to metabolize our pain and heal our trauma. When we heal and make more room for growth in our nervous systems, we have a better chance of spreading our emotional health to our descendants, via healthy DNA expression. In contrast, when we don’t address our trauma, we may pass it on to future generations, along with some of our fear, constriction, and dirty pain.”  

How many of us were raised with the “value” of not talking about “shameful” subjects? “Keep it within the family,” we were told. “Pray about it.” “God will take care of things. Leave it be.” The reality is that slavery, along with these “values,” was taught and continues to be perpetuated by Christianity. Ironically, we, the so-called followers of Christ, have turned the teachings of the one who taught us by example, the one who embodied speaking up, challenged the status quo and the unscrupulous establishments, and his courage into silence, fear, and comfort.

This is one more invitation to reflect, to look inwardly and collectively as members of the body of Christ, to seek healthier ways to serve God and show up for the body of Christ—all members, not just the ones deemed worthy. I believe that a way to progress on our growth and faith journey is to learn about history that was systematically erased and intentionally forgotten. I believe that God is calling us to a rebirth as members of the body of Christ to practice justice even in the smallest of ways by genuinely listening to the stories of our Black and other minoritized communities, without dismissiveness, defensiveness, or correction.

Siblings in Christ, let us continue the path set before us. God has called us and continues to call God’s creation to proclaim the good news, to embody Christ’s love, courage, and compassion to all. May God guide, illuminate, and revitalize our faith walks to spread joy, peace, justice, and love to all we encounter. With God’s help and the Holy Spirit’s ignition, may it be so.

Let us pray:

Pry Me Off Dead Center – from Guerillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle by Ted Loder pp. 102-103

O persistent God, deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle. Pressure me that I may grow more human, not through the lessening of my struggles, but through an expansion of them that will undamn me and unbury my gifts.

Deepen my hurt until I learn to share it and myself openly, and my needs honestly. Sharpen my fears until I name them and release the power I have locked in them and they in me. Accentuate my confusion until I shed those grandiose expectations that divert me from the small, glad gifts of the now and the here and the me.

Expose my shame where it shivers, crouched behind the curtains of propriety, until I can laugh at last through my common frailties and failures, laugh my way toward becoming whole. Deliver me from just going through the motions and wasting everything I have which is today, a chance, a choice, my creativity, your call.

O persistent God, let how much it all matters pry me off dead center so if I am moved inside to tears or sighs or screams or smiles or dreams, they will be real and I will be in touch with who I am and who you are and who my sisters and brothers are.

Pentecost blessings! 

Ruth-Aimée (Root-Eh-méh)

Ruth-Aimée Belonni-Rosario

Associate Executive for Racial Justice

248-752-3697 (cell)

ruthaimee@synodofthecovenant.org