activism

Is Gratitude a Privilege?

~ jjebbia ~ Leave a comment

…the short answer to the above question is yes, insofar as it concerns me and the following response.

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PC: Ian Schneider

I have been feeling a need to express more gratitude lately. Perhaps this is natural, given the climate, or the weather, or just exhaustion beyond explanation. Endorphins? Maybe the fact that Thanksgiving is this week? I’m not sure, but at the same time have been feeling a sense of frozenness, an inability to make decisions or take action. For the longest time, it felt like my perfectionism was acting up and I kept telling myself I would finish certain tasks (including emailing important people back, ehem) once I had drafted a thorough, complete response read over several times. The problem is, what does complete look like? What happens when we are never “ready?”

I was thinking about this question particularly in regard to learning allyship. At my university, we’ve been talking about best practices and how we can support students who are threatened and afraid. Do we wear the safety pins? Do we make public statements? How do we show up for each other in meaningful ways? So many uncertainties and yet, there is no time to seek the answer before something needs to be done. The time is NOW. Attempting perfection inhibits change and has encumbered me from supporting those who need to be held the most. So, as a white woman, I’m going to throw perfection out the window and trying to learn as I go. Is this dangerous? Yes. My “learning opportunities” can certainly be harmful. The damage is real. Taking action can, however, take the pressure off those I’d like to support, because waiting for complete knowledge around the “how” means the oppressed are tasked with figuring it out, and I sit and wait. We, human beings, are not perfect. We are inchoate. We are unfinished. And yet, we love and are loved.

This rambling comes in thinking about gratitude, to return full circle. One of my students challenged me about a month ago to do something every night: name one thing I appreciate about someone who otherwise gives me trouble, and name three things I love about myself. Can you guess which one is harder? In reality, it depends on the day. Every night, she has consistently reminded me to report my 1 and 3 to her, and in turn I ask her back. At first this practice seemed impossible. “He just makes me SO mad!” I thought, “How can I appreciate anything?” Moreover, putting aside self-loathing sounds simple but, of course the loathing is complicated. Slowly but surely, we have made progress together. Sure, some days still seem untenable- you know the ones. This past Friday, this student was in my office and we had a lengthy conversation about gratitude and what it really means.

As I understand now, gratitude requires faith in the imperfect. It means feeling thankful despite the suffering present in the world, in my life. It also requires mindfulness: a sense of feeling genuine in the present. When I feel grateful, I am not taking a backseat and determining that everything “will work itself out.” I am acknowledging that there are in fact slivers of hope, pieces of love to hold as we march into the darkness. I am grateful for the challenges, even if on certain days, they feel insurmountable to address. Gratitude is a call to action, not complacency- this is the difference between ignoring privilege and acknowledging it.

 

Acknowledging a Mistake, Finishing a Race.

~ jjebbia ~ Leave a comment

Many of my fellow writers (and others) have shared that they feel lost for words- what do we add to the conversation this week, especially as we still feel a sense of shock? I really want to sit with that tension, especially to state that I don’t feel like I can give any wisdom or say anything inspiring like, “it’s going to be ok.” What does that mean, “it’s going to be ok”? I decided that sharing two things I learnedM specifically as a white person this week may be helpful. This post isn’t well-written or even logically in order, which reflects the sentiment.

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PC: Annie Spratt

Tuesday of course was a day of fatigue for me and pretty much everyone at work, most especially the students. My colleague did an amazing job of creating a space for the community to come dialogue and for many, this was the first space they could do that. I listened to my students, my beloved Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, unaffiliated students, share their emotions as well as they could. There were certainly tears. And there was love. There was an unabashed, boundless, courageous love that filled the room. I felt it in every hug, every handshake, even the way we looked at each other. As one of the dialogue facilitators, much of what was said echoed my emotions and fears, but I didn’t share.

That evening, I got a call from a really good friend who led the USC Interfaith Council with me. We threw out suggestions for what we could do on our campuses and how we knew folks were mobilizing already. It felt really good to talk to him. After we finished our call I went on a run and listened to Valarie Kaur speak dazzling beautiful and powerful words on our Revolutionary Love Conference Call. She echoed much of what I and many were feeling and told us to think about this moment as birth: first, there is darkness. Then, there is beginning, and creating, and building. One of the Revolutionary Love Fellows shared a heartbreaking reflection on feeling like a failure to our country, and I sobbed as I ran the last few steps to my door. The rest of my evening was pretty quiet- I tried to write something for National Novel Writing Month, to keep up my word count.

On Thursday at our Spiritual Advisors’ Meeting, I realized too late that I hadn’t processed my own feelings fully, especially not out loud. The idea that a man with a track record of normalizing sexual harassment and assault will control decisions and moreover, messages to people in our nation that say “women’s bodies are up for grabs” elicits a significant level of panic for me. I mention this for personal reasons, but also cannot forgive the messaging that has normalized homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, the fact that Black Lives don’t really Matter. Further, to lose my friends who are undocumented, DACA-mented, and/or are immigrants in the blink of an eye feels shattering- it’s as if what I wrote about in college, the rounding up of Japanese Americans and immigrants and physically removing them is coming back to haunt us. So, in a group of 20 people from different faith traditions, I sobbed. I told them that I was scared. That I had been ignorant for being critical of interfaith communities who practice a “basic” understanding of what interfaith is because clearly- we need to encourage any positive interfaith action in full force. I told them the students were my heroes this week. They fricking SHOWED UP for each other, despite their fear and anger. And I made it about me, which I shouldn’t have done. I cried white tears, and learned the necessity of self-care this week. It was an important lesson to learn.

This weekend I flew home to LA to run a 10K and half marathon at Disneyland. The theme of the weekend was Superheroes, which felt all too necessary. Home is strange for me right now- my family did not vote for the candidate I wanted to see in the Oval Office, and have been vocal about their dismissal of people who feel afraid and angry. I’ve worked on asking open questions about why they made their choice, and tried to push back with some counter ideas to their analysis. They are my family and I love them, and we don’t agree. I’m going to sit with that discomfort for some time.

This morning I finished my second half marathon race. This weekend was dedicated to self-care because, as noted above, I learned an important lesson. You ran 13.1 miles for self-care? Indeed, while excruciating at points and not what I love doing at 5:30 am every Sunday, the race was something to which I looked forward and for which I trained over the past 12 weeks. Running is a practice for me, it helps me stay focused and motivated. The race started in the dark and just before we sang the National Anthem, I thought: this is what an intentional community looks like.

Around me, there were people who looked like me and people who didn’t. There was a man next to me who told me he came from Japan for this race and donned a full Minnie Mouse dress and ears to run. “You look so great!” people told him. Four runners in wheelchairs started the entire race. There were people over the age of 70, people from Kansas and Oregon and Australia, people of size and people who were very slender, people who had never run a half marathon before. There was a man who had made the US Olympic Marathon Trials. The course was tough- not hilly, but all asphalt, and as the sun rose it got warmer. For the hour and forty five minutes I struggled through that darn course, people encouraged me unflaggingly. Even in the last 2 miles, we gave each other thumbs up and simple, “you got this!” greetings. It felt like a community. Not perfect, not all the same, just people sharing a goal.

I’m going to focus on simple relationship building in the next few weeks. Finishing this race and thinking about the necessity of building bridges, the dire, urgent necessity, is where I want to start. I’m going to keep reading, keep asking my friends and students how they are feeling, keep supporting. And I will make mistakes, and try my best to write about them in a way that encourages learning.

#RevolutionaryLove

On November 9th

~ jjebbia ~ 4 Comments
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PC: Brandon Day

In the wee hours of Tuesday, November 8th, 2016 the world either ends or begins. This is the rhetoric I hear, the anxiety my friends feel, the way we as a country have been visioning our future for the past couple of weeks. What will be our new national narrative?

The world goes on, simply. Nothing really changes overnight, and yet everything changes in our minds: we either lose everything or make history in whatever way our nation decides. This has been a long, grueling, terrifying election season for many. What will we do, who will we be on November 9th?

The past few months I have witnessed some awful events. Recently I wrote about why Donald Trump’s comments around sexual assault and objectifying women hurt me personally, and cause much deeper harm to the marginalized and oppressed. I cannot claim that any presidential candidate has not made worrisome or downright damaging decisions. And, I can say that in these past few months, wondrous moments have also shaken me and made me believe in love as a human act, indeed an extremely courageous one.

Moving to Boston I have struggled to find and maintain community. Being alone is a part of who I am. Yet this time of great fear and hurt has given me a window into the true importance of community and dedicating everything I can to the ones that hold me and keep me. Let me give you some examples.

The Revolutionary Love Project launched in early September and we, 17 fellows, 250 ambassadors and one fearless leader, quickly got down to business. In the course of only eight weeks, we completed three huge goals (one of which will be completed this Tuesday). We took grassroots action and organized over 100 people across the country to host screenings of Divided We Fall, a documentary by our project leader Valarie Kaur about violence against Sikhs and Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11. Some of these screenings happened in living rooms (like mine), and some on college campuses. Just as we reached our targeted 100 screenings, our leader Valarie went on tour with the Together Tour and reached over 20,000 people in 6 cities: Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, Brooklyn, Atlanta, and Denver. Though I couldn’t attend any of the actual tour dates, I felt a surge of hope every time someone new felt inspired to take action after one of the evenings and posted about it on Facebook or Twitter. So many new Love Ambassadors spoke openly for the first time about their pain and how they have healed, and helped others to do the same. Now, each of us have been making calls (and encouraging others to make calls) to Get Out The Vote, especially in key states like Florida. We have felt the urgency to build bridges and acted upon it through love, not hate.

A few weeks ago I passed by one of the main quads on campus to find almost 50 students occupying a large sector of the grass with tents and signs seeking divestment from fossil fuels at my university. The students demonstrated a deep commitment to our earth and each other as they educated passersby on their way to class. They showed us that climate change is not an issue by itself, but a gender issue, a faith issue, a human rights issue. Hundreds of students showed their support by wearing orange. Just this past Wednesday, several student leaders of faith engaged with members of HEAT (the Husky Environmental Action Team) in an essential conversation about how our faith calls us to care for the earth and take action on climate change. We expanded the boundaries of our own communities that night, welcoming each other among ourselves.

Besides election day, November also hosts National Novel Writing Month. Writing 50,000 words in one month always seemed downright impossible to me- the time and moreover, the content pose a large obstacle. This year, an interfaith activist and professor at Cal Lutheran University started an online group for professors and chaplains in which to participate. My writing class also created a joint account, so we could all contribute to the word count. Both communities in the past five days have been ruthlessly encouraging to every member, posting inspirations on Facebook and checking in with each other individually. So far, I’m on track: it’s November 7th and I’ve written almost 10,000 words. Without these two communities I could barely write this blog post. Though unspoken, there seems to be a deep understanding that though the world feels dark and scary, we have our team and we are writing for each other. Every time someone posts that they have achieved their daily goal, I send them a silent high five. “You DID IT!” I want to scream.

Late on a Friday afternoon, several women leaders of faith crowd in my office, sitting on the floor and watching YouTube videos. We don’t speak about our fears or hopes, but we hold each other’s company. We keep each other safe simply by listening and laughing. I smile, packing my bag to head home for the weekend. We hug good bye, and implore each other to make good choices.

On November 9th, I hope we maintain the urgency that each of these communities has utilized to turn love into action. My fingernails are gone, my eyes are puffy. My heart feels weary, but not closed. The world goes on, and no matter what happens, we can care for each other if we find the courage.

On November 9th, I will recommit to practicing love with optimism and honesty. I will keep writing. I will keep imploring my students to make good choices.

For the Women, and Everyone, that I Love. 

~ jjebbia ~ 1 Comment

Most of us have heard and or read Trump’s sexual harassment comments and if you’re like me, have subsequently read plenty of articles floating around Facebook and Twitter that explain why these comments, this “locker room banter”, is so harmful. Many of these articles I can’t even read all the way through because they feel so invasive. I find myself sobbing uncontrollably, reliving, remembering, and trying to reimagine. I am so in awe of any woman, regardless of who they are voting for, that shares her story of sexual assault with me- especially if I’ve never met her. 
I’ve been struggling with this blog being “not political”, especially in the last year. Realistically, not a few hours pass without hearing a reference to the election in some way. It has not been my intention to ignore the pain and polarization I blatantly see, but I recognize that I have. My default mode of expression on this forum has been stories of my own experience and how they give me hope even among the atrocities in the world. People working together, talking together, laughing and crying together, despite their differences. I am sorry for not speaking more bluntly about the horrifying abuse that black, latinx, undocumented and documented immigrant, Muslim, Sikh, and other people have endured from a single man and his words. So, I will not speak for anyone but myself, and I will tell you my truth. This week I need to tell you why this “locker room banter” matters to me- as a survivor of sexual assault, yes, and more directly, as someone who lives in a woman’s body every day. 

PC: Jairo Alzate

When I wake up in the morning, I put on the outfit I picked out the night before, turn the coffee pot on, and shower/brush teeth/pack my lunch. Sometimes I forget to scoop the coffee into the pot and that adds a few minutes to my routine. I check the T schedule so that when I arrive, I won’t have to wait too long to get on. When I’ve got everything all together, I grab my backpack and head out the door. It’s scowl-face time. There’s a building across the street from my apartment that is under construction. Often, men are working when I walk to the T. I’ve seen them staring, at me and other women. Sometimes, they yell things like “hey, smile!” And “why so serious!?” I practice my therapist’s method of escaping the catcall trigger: name the discomfort (“a stranger yelling at me”), name what’s happening (“I’m shivering, my face is red, I’m walking faster”) and say your calming mantra (“I own my body, I own my mind, I am an agent”). Ignore the comments. It works better some days than others. 
When I make it to the T station, sometimes men will follow me closely so they can enter the platform without a ticket. For whatever reason, this makes me upset and I want to say “if you ask me, I would buy you a ticket” but I don’t because it’s safer to just ignore them. On the T, I try to stand where other women are standing because a few weeks ago the train was very crowded and a man held on to one of the handles with his elbow out and he touched my chest. I tried to move, but there was no space. We passed two stations with his elbow wedged into my chest. 
When I arrive at work, I try to make eye contact with everyone I pass on the way to the office. Self-defense classes taught me this in order to show that you’re aware of another’s presence. Sometimes I make eye contact with someone, usually a man, for a little too long and I feel my face turn bright red. Quickly, my eyes avert and I walk faster. I don’t want to give anyone the wrong idea. Once at work, I usually start my day answering emails or checking in with my coworker. Often we share experiences of micro aggressions that occurred on the train or walking to work. This is 9 am. Our bodies stay on alert for at least 8 more hours before we go home. 
Almost every day, I see women students whom I love that have experienced some kind of gendered micro aggression. Much of the time they don’t even call it that: they’ll say, “I wish I wasn’t scared to speak in class. I guess I just need to stop caring about what people think and speak up.” They’ll say, “I couldn’t tell him I was on my period, that would have freaked him out.” To my heartbreak, they’ll tell me that they should have called a guy to walk them home, their bad for getting followed or catcalled at night. They’ll admit that their male professor makes them uncomfortable and they feel bad about that, they’re just being “overly sensitive.” And I see them interact with classmates, staff, and faculty, and I watch them get interrupted, body shamed, and sometimes even harassed without even recognizing what is happening. This is magnified enormously by their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, their ability to speak English, their religion. And I want so many times to draw these women close to me, cradle them near my heart and in my arms and say, “let’s stay like this forever.” 
I am outraged by Trump’s comments, and even more by his lack of remorse. I can’t say I’m all that surprised, given the systemic non-apologetic oppression women experience every day for the bodies they live in. What scares me the most is the “normalizing.” The fact that people, not just men, live thinking that this kind of behavior is “how it is,” and that this dictates how we live our lives in almost every moment. It terrifies me that people live without the agency to name when someone treats them poorly because of who they are. And I absolutely cannot claim to fully understand this experience, even in my own body and mind. 
I write this because it is my truth, and believe that telling stories helps us make sense of experiences that are painful and traumatic. I also hope we will name our pains and our harms more. My hesitancy is always “people don’t want to listen” or “they’ll feel uncomfortable.” That is not my experience. More often than I have realized, the most intimate and open conversations start with one person’s honesty that they’re living in pain or anger or sadness. Even if we don’t relate, we can build trust this way. I commit to speaking up more, because silence can only hold me where I am. 

Multiplicity: A Short Autobiography

~ jjebbia ~ 1 Comment
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PC: Charlie Harutaka

This summer, I have spent more hours in O’hare International Airport than hours shopping online or trying new recipes. That may sound rational. In my case, it means O’hare has become a second home (NOT- but Frontera is delicious).

This time, I was headed to the Windy City for a University of Chicago reunion and retreat with a great group of former Master of Divinity students. The themes of our retreat were integrity, multiplicity, and innovation. We spent some time thinking about each theme in the form of lecture/presentation, and then meeting in small groups to discuss our own “case studies.” On the first day, we discussed moments or experiences when we felt challenged in our integrity. We thought about our multiplicity, which Rev. Cynthia Lindner defines in her wonderful new book Varieties of Gifts: Multiplicity and the Well-Lived Pastoral Life as our “plural selves”-the different passions and gifts (and quirks and growing edges) that make up who we are. The next day, we grappled with innovation, and how the struggles we face in our respective ministries might be better answered by calling upon different parts of ourselves.

As a college chaplain, I think about the plurality of self quite often. My own self consists of many identities: a young professional, an avid reader, an emerging writer (most humble, of course), a marathon runner, an activist, a sister and daughter. In my work I often walk with students to discern how they can fuse multiple passions they hold. Often, the line of work they find easy and stable is not the work that truly feeds their spirit. Everywhere we turn, we are faced with diversity of identity, both out in the world and within ourselves. Pluralism comes when we cultivate a way to make these differences enriching, not divisive. We know this to be true in interfaith advocacy work, and I learned this weekend that our own selves can and should enrich the other parts of us. Sometimes, this is much easier said than done.

Dr. Dwight Hopkins, who facilitated our conversation around innovation in multiplicity, noted that “theology is autobiography.” I dwelt on this idea for a while. If this is true, and we consider ourselves to be multiple-minded, then our theology must also consist of various ideas from distinct roots. Our theology, the system in which our beliefs amalgamate, is constructed through a variety of experiences, relationships, and passions that we hold. As someone who works to build relationships across differences in young peoples’ theologies (among other elements), I believe that ignoring the multiple parts of our identity puts all of ourselves in crisis. If I spend no time reflecting on my identity as a higher education professional, and subsequently on my calling as an interfaith activist, my integrity is compromised because the norms and values each identity holds are in conflict and not in conversation.

On the other hand, the students that frequent my office who have embraced their multiple selves, who have lived into conflicting sets of norms for their identities by putting these identities in conversation (imagine a group of people in your own mind speaking to each other), thrive in their ability to make change. An eighteen year old Muslim woman leads one of the largest student organizations committed to dismantling institutional discrimination, utilizing her Muslim and Black identities to organize. Another Muslim student teaches his classmates Qur’an and uses mathematical analogies to help his peers understand (he studies physics). The examples of these students demonstrate their innovation within their own multiplicity, their courage to put different aspects of themselves in conversation.

In my world, the heroes who inspire me are often the people who have built their theologies upon both the plurality in our society and the plurality within. My advisor in college, Dr. Varun Soni, originally piqued my interest because he was not just a chaplain- he was an entrepreneur, an academic, and a sports enthusiast. He maintained his integrity and developed deep relationships with his students.

As I think about multiplicity with my students in this election season, this time of immense polarization, fear, and hate, I know that students seek safety and embrace of all the pieces of their identity, especially those under threat. My commitment is to keep ourselves in conversation with ourselves. By doing so, we turn a crisis of self into a dynamic autobiography. We begin to see common values across our different identities, and even find ways to mediate the values that conflict within ourselves.

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My Revolutionary Love Story: A Call to Action

~ jjebbia ~ Leave a comment
A photo by Greg Rakozy. unsplash.com/photos/oMpAz-DN-9I
PC: Greg Rakozy

 

Writing for the Revolutionary Love Project with one of my heroes, Valarie Kaur, and her team of Revolutionary Love Fellows these past three weeks has been nothing short of exhilarating. Every night I find myself  writing an op-ed, article, or blog post that speaks what my heart is feeling: that love needs to go further at this moment in our world. I have been reading stories of love overcoming fear and pain and hate. The stories I am privileged to read from other “love” enthusiasts like me always demonstrate a difficult decision they face and ultimately the choice to act rather than stay silent.

I have learned through these stories and reflecting on my past that “loving our neighbor” must mean more than loving only those who agree with us. In fact, as a practicing Zen Buddhist, I believe that that revolutionary love is about demonstrating compassion for those with whom we completely disagree, those whom we believe cause harm to ourselves and our world.

A few years ago, I was on a bus to Columbia, Missouri, to visit a friend working at the University of Missouri. Since my bus wasn’t direct, I connected in St. Louis. My first bus was almost two hours late arriving and in order to make the connection, I sprinted what felt like miles through the terminal, throwing myself on the steps in the bus just as the doors closed. “Whew,” I gasped for breath. “Made it.” I took the only seat open next to a young man wearing an old baseball cap and tattered jeans. “Ma’am, would you like the window seat?” My partner stood up to move before I could even refuse. I slid across the faux leather seats and thanked him. “On my way, see you in two hours!” I texted my friend.

The first half an hour or so, neither of us spoke. I tried reading John Rawls’ Political Liberalism, but my stomach began to feel queasy. Luckily, my polite seat partner began a conversation at that moment, asking me what I do. He explained he was on his way to Denver to become a truck driver. He had been traveling for over 30 hours by bus already. “I’m studying religion,” I started to explain, when he interrupted excitedly:

“Well thank GOD for that! Finally, I meet someone who is spreading the word of Jesus and being a good Christian. I’ll tell you, all these Muslims and gay folks contaminating our country, it is sure a relief to meet you.”

My heart sank to my feet. No words. I looked down at my lap, and stared at my backpack for a moment- the very backpack that held my UChicago Spiritual Life Council folder decorated with pictures of my friend Sunil (a Hindu-Buddhist classmate), my mentor (a lesbian Quaker woman), and my partner (an atheist international student). This man, a perfectly polite individual, had just shattered my hope in humanity for the moment. I was faced with a choice- I could say nothing, or I could tell the truth. If I said nothing, I could let him assume that I was a Christian, that I believe Muslims and gays sully our society, and I could guarantee we would have a seemingly pleasant conversation.

Or, I could tell him the truth. I could tell this man that I don’t believe in God, at least not the one he does. I could tell him that one of my best friends (who happens to have a black belt in Tae Kwon Do) is a Syrian-American Muslim. I could tell him that my family includes a two gay uncles who adopted a son years ago. I could tell him that I vehemently disagree with his assertion that Muslims and “gays” are detrimental to our society, and that in fact, I believe they are essential.

I took a deep breath and explained that my master’s program was an interfaith one, that my classmates included Christians from several denominations, an agnostic playwright, a Lesbian seeking ordination, and that I don’t actually spread the word of Jesus as my messiah- though I do love his message and works. My explanation wasn’t smooth, or confident, or perhaps even completely comprehensible- I fumbled with my words and used “like” and “um” far too much. Silence followed. The man grumbled something about the next 1.5 hours of his life being wasted. I closed my eyes pretended to sleep. After an eternity, I arrived in Columbia and never saw this man again.

Yet, I did see this man again. I see him every day. I see Islamophobia right before my eyes when people stare at women wearing hijab on the train and grimace. I see homophobia and transphobia and plain ignorance when perfectly well-meaning adolescents use the words “gay” and “fag” as insults, or when people in my community mis-gender my trans colleagues and friends. I see the oppression my own mind, body, and existence are implicit in, and know that more often I don’t see it and no one calls me out because that’s what privilege is. The man on the bus is everywhere, and this is why I am a Revolutionary Love Fellow. The reason I chose to tell him the truth is love. Love for my friends and my family, and also love for the human being who invoked such harm. Revolutionary Love is not perfect, it is a process. It’s about compassion, for ourselves and for others.

My call to action is to share your story with me. Every time I read a story of someone choosing love and taking action, I am deeply inspired and motivated to continue the hard work and long hours. I want to know what Revolutionary Love means to you. What difficult path did you choose in order to put love in the world, and what has come of that decision? You can comment, email me, find me on social media. I won’t share your story unless you give me permission. Please consider sharing- your story matters to me and to the world.

For more info on the Revolutionary Love Project, visit http://revolutionarylove.net/ and look at the three calls to action. A little time can go a very long way. Thanks for your support and love.