​This Self-Care Note is for all who shelter negative feelings, beliefs, and actions through prejudice and bias against others.  These biases may be against skin color, country of origin, language, gender, sexual preference, or sex at birth.  These reflections grow out of my encounters with these demons within my spirit.  I am writing to my kindred spirits who harbor and defend these feelings, beliefs, and actions in our pantheon of prejudices.  We must acknowledge the damage these biases have on the people we have unjustly prejudged and disenfranchised.  But, if we are to recognize the full extent of the damage we are causing, we also need to look within and see how our prejudices destroy our spiritual health as well.
 
Prejudice is an unnamed and unaddressed bias in my life.  It is a prejudgment of another person's value.  It generally relies on physical appearance alone to weigh and measure one's response to or interaction with another person.  It is seldom apparent to the prejudiced person but is more than evident to those around them.  It is most obvious to those who bear the brunt of our prejudice.  When it is grounded in fear or other deep-seated emotions, it will become part of the shadow life.   By hiding it we support the fiction that we are not prejudiced.  But, biases, the seeds of prejudice, are an important part of every person's life.
 
Everyone has a bias.  It is a survival skill that helps us stay alert to dangers.   Our preference for sweets has helped us avoid those bitter, poisonous foods and steer clear of rotting meat.  We may harbor a bias for small animals with larger heads because they are likely cubs or puppies and may be less dangerous.  These biases serve us well when we apply them to the things in our world. 
 
But our biases can become deadly prejudices when we apply them to people.  They can become a cancer on our souls when we harbor the biases so tightly that they become prejudices against whole groups of people.   They will eat away at our capacity for love and trust, joy and hope.  They will erode our resilience and destroy our capacity for mindfulness and self-awareness.  Racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ, xenophobia, and other root causes of poverty become public policy when people with power and privilege hold deeply ingrained prejudices.  Prejudice, like war, is not healthy for people or other living things.
 
What have my prejudices cost me as an older, white cis male in 2020?
 
As part of acknowledging and addressing my prejudices, I am discovering their costs to my life.  I enjoy many benefits of being a cis male due to my racism and other prejudices.  I enjoyed being catered to by business and public policy as long as I could ignore those who were behind me in society’s line. I enjoyed walking the streets until I saw that my safety was being paid for with the lives of others who were needlessly accosted by the racist police who were "protecting my neighborhood." I savored the benefits of being an American citizen until I began to acknowledge that my government was protecting me with walls of cruel and shameful laws that closed our borders to others because they were not privileged with being born on this side.  Once I began looking at the costs of my prejudice, it became possible to drill down more deeply within myself and see the terrible price that I, and I suspect, many others are still paying.

​These are among the things that my prejudice has cost me.
 
Love and Trust – The growing capacity for placing other's needs ahead of my own and entrusting others with my needs.
 

• My biases draw me away from people who could and should be companions for my journey.  I allow my first impression to steer me away from people who would enrich my mind and soul.  Prejudged relationships seldom develop in ways that reach beneath the surface of "cocktail party" conversations.  We will withhold trust when a relationship is grounded in a bias.  I will neither invest myself in their needs nor entrust them with my needs.  Biases and prejudices that grow out of them diminish my capacity for loving, trusting relationships.

 

• On a broader scale, my prejudices prevent me from being part of communities that can help me through my struggles.  There was a time when a person would rather die than receive a transfusion from a person of a different race.  Similarly, prejudice has isolated me from communities that have been through many of the same struggles I have faced, both personally and professionally.  But, I did not benefit from their wisdom and insight because I had already decided that it was either irrelevant to me or deeply flawed.  I would not listen, even when that community had a clear perspective on the concerns that filled my body-mind-soul.

 

• On those rare occasions when I broke through my prejudice, I was rendered deaf to hearing the truth when it conflicted with my unnamed biases.  I quickly discarded inconvenient truths from people who were not respected (meaning they existed beyond my comfort range for a relationship).  Sometimes their words were pushed aside because they could not possibly understand my situation.  I discounted their wisdom as inappropriate and biased against me and my situation.  Sometimes, I would have to engage in personal attacks on them just to create enough noise to drown out their voice in my soul.  I could neither receive their gifts of love nor offer them the gifts of respect and simple human decency.

 

• All three of these have eroded my capacity for love and trust.  They reduced my spiritual health and created a vacuum where anger, bitterness, and resentment flowed in and destroyed these relationships.

 
Joy and Hope – The growing capacity for finding meaning in each day and believing that the best is yet to come.
 

• My prejudices have stolen my capacity to see the beauty in differences and diversity among my companions.  I love sushi, but a bias against raw fish prevented me from ever trying it.  Over the years, my prejudice against people different from myself has confirmed my bias for people like me.  My eyes could not see the beauty in different cultures.  My ears struggled to hear the music of other voices.  My mind would not embrace the questions asked by other cultures because I believed my culture had already answered them.  My capacities for joy and hope diminish when my eyes are veiled to the beauty in other people and cultures.

 

• Most painful of all, hope ebbs when I pass my biases and prejudices on to those who love, trust, and look up to me.  The future's horizon becomes more clouded.  I have stolen their capacity for joy and hope from them in the name of helping them see things "as they really are." My shared prejudice becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that will long outlive me in the body-mind-soul of those who trusted me.

 

• Both of these erodes not only my capacity for joy and hope but also takes away another generation's capacity as well.  By teaching my prejudices as the "way of the world," I will have made room for a continuing resistance to justice and peace well into the future.  I have not only prevented joy and hope from growing, but I have also planted the seeds of cynicism and despair in my children and grandchildren.

 
 
But, by far, the most significant personal cost to my spiritual health has been the loss of authenticity in my life.  Authenticity is being real with ourselves and the world around us.  The word authentic grew out of an old Greek word for authority.  We become inauthentic when we allow something other than the facts or reality to become our authority.  We begin to live a lie.  We neither know ourselves or others.  We get lost in flights of fantasy.  We become blind to our faults and to the truth that exists beyond our wants and wishes.  We not only live behind a mask; we carefully construct that mask to present our false self to the world and to ourselves.  All the while, we live in fear that someone will see through the mask and rip it off.  But we are more fearful that we will see ourselves than we are that others may get to know the real us.
 
Unnamed and unacknowledged fear and despair drive the inauthentic life.  They make spiritual health impossible as we serve our needs first and foremost while letting others take care of themselves.  We hurry to the front of the line before the good stuff runs out.  The world is a place of scarcity, and we believe that those who are not “looking out for #1” are not successful or worthy of our attention.  Love and trust, joy and hope are words for suckers and losers.  Such attitudes and beliefs are the product of eyes, ears, hearts, and minds that have been blinded by bias and prejudice.  They linger in the hidden recesses of the human spirit.  Our fears and selfishness become the authority in our lives and the authors of our biography.

​What can I, as an older, white cis male do?
 
In closing, I am only talking about what I can do for myself.  These actions are not a prescription or universal antidote for prejudice.  I share it only to help you, the reader, begin to listen to and choose ways that you can deal with your own bias and prejudice.  I hope these musings are helpful.
 
I see my own biases and prejudices as a cancer on my spirit, body-mind-soul.  They are taking away my capacity for love and trust, joy and hope.  There are two common ways to deal with cancer when our natural immunity does not prevent it from occurring.  We can find a "drug," an outside agent, that will kill it.   Or we can find a way to cut it out, surgically removing it from our spirit.  Education and experience of other cultures can serve as a useful "drug."  But, living into and accepting my prejudices and not allowing them to hold sway over my life is a painful but successful "surgical" method.  Unfortunately, this surgery will require that I "cut deep and wide enough" to find clean margins to prevent the prejudices from growing back.  I may need to remove large parts of my assumptions, beliefs, and daily routines.  I will need to accept that both the "surgery" and education/experience will be necessary if I am to move beyond relying on my biases and prejudices to write my daily story.  Here are a few of the ideas I am using to achieve this forever goal.
 
I must assume that I have unhealthy biases at play in my soul.  My soul is not pristine and shiny.  I have learned and created all kinds of biases that have metastasized into life-stealing prejudices.
 
I will pay attention to the little bursts of fear or resentment when I encounter people who are different from me.  These are signs that I have encountered these hidden tumors, and I need to let them teach me about my prejudices and biases.
 
I must second-guess all of my first impressions.  I tend to hide my bias against people who are different from myself in these first impressions.  These unthinking presuppositions slip by so quickly that I often miss them.  But I am committing more energy to detect and process these instantaneous prejudgments.  Hopefully, I will become more skilled at catching these as time goes on.
 
I am listening and learning about stereotypes.  I have two books on my Kindle that are proving helpful at the moment.   They are How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and Over-Coming Bias by Tiffany Jana and Matthew Freeman.   I am also watching quite a few documentaries on racism and other expressions of prejudice.  These experiences are helping me to examine my expectations of others for evidence of these stereotypes in my day-to-day living.
 
I seek out relationships with people different from myself.  I do so to listen and learn.  I engage and cultivate meaningful relationships with them.  I not only come to appreciate their experiences, but more importantly, I begin to see myself more clearly in the mirror they hold up to me.
 
I try the art, food, and music from other cultures without preconceived ideas or expectations.  That first bite is all-important.  However, the second bite is also essential to avoid relying solely on a first impression.  I will give them a fair seeing, tasting, and hearing.
 
I will continue to learn the difference between a preference that serves a valuable purpose and a bias that destroys my relationships with other people.  I am working to recognize a healthy bias from one that does damage to myself and others. 
 
I appreciate those of you who have stayed with me through this lengthy self-care note.  These words are hard-won after countless battles within my spirit.  I realize that they will need to revised and likely re-written as the days, weeks, and months pass.  But I am honored by your attention.  I hope that they will inspire you to make an honest effort at understanding and addressing your own biases and cancerous prejudices. 
 
By assessing the real cost of our prejudice and identifying the damage we do to our own and other's lives, will we begin to lay them aside for a healthier and more just path ahead.
 
Blessings,
Bob

​Wearing your mask right now is more than protecting you and those around you.  That mask could actually heal our broken society and start us back on a path to healing.  No, this is not a preacher's exaggeration. This is straight-up, in your face, truth.  Read it and rejoice!
 
Early in my ministry, many of my pre-wedding couples honestly believed that love was all they needed to live a long and healthy marriage.  In the pre-marriage counseling, I would help them look at their hopes and dreams as well as their obstacles and challenges.  A good number of the couples would dismiss every difficulty with the same phrase, "But we love each other.  That will not be a problem." They always left me speechless.  That frustration led me to try all the "C" words, but communication, commitment, and compromise just did not work for them, or me. 
 
One day, as I was preparing a sermon on the biblical concept of covenant, an idea began to take root.  I did a bit of study and wrote a small booklet that I gave to every couple titled "Love is Not Enough." The core of the booklet was that a covenant relationship is strong because it involves a growing capacity for love and trust.  When both partners have an increasing sense of love and trust, their relationship will be strong enough to weather the winds of change in their marriage.
 
That idea of a covenant relationship became a major theme in my ministry and my life.  It became a hallmark of my own 46 years of marriage.  When my ministry turned to peace-making in the troubled 1980s, the covenant grounded in love and trust became an essential element of conflict resolution and non-violent engagement in our communities.  In 2004 an Elder asked me to define Spiritual Health.  After years of pondering and struggling with the meaning of covenant, that question took my thinking to another level.  Our capacity for covenant relationships grounded in both love and trust is the best measure of our spiritual health.  (Yea, I am a little slow.  It took me three decades to sort this out, and I am still working on it!)  This relationship continues to be vital, especially in 2020.
 
What is a covenant relationship?  Love means that we place the needs of the other person ahead of our wants and desires.  Further, if the other's need is more significant than our own, then they take priority in a love relationship.  However, this could quickly become a one-sided, dis-eased relationship without the second element, trust.  Trust means that we are willing and able to place our needs into the hands of another.  We trust them with those things that we cannot do for ourselves.  We are bound together by mutual love and trust.  Our relationship becomes strong enough to withstand illness, accident, marital failure, or deep grief.  As the relationship grows, our capacity for love and trust deepens and expands.
 
Along with love and trust, respect and resilience also develop.  Dependence or co-dependence becomes interdependence.  We do not lose ourselves but become more capable of living more independently as well.  We do not grow apart. Instead, we grow alongside one another.  We grow, together.  And that little comma makes all the difference.
 
Covenant relationships work in a marriage and other family settings.  They create healthy business and corporate relationships.  They make long-term friendships possible.  And, I believe they build powerful social relationships.  Wearing a mask during this pandemic can heal our society.
 
The face mask is not merely a symbol.  It is a caring act of covenant.  If we wear a mask, we have some limited protection from the virus.  If the other person, who is carrying the virus, wears a mask, we are much safer.  If both of us wear a mask and observe social distancing, we are very, very safe.  The only way to become safer, according to the CDC, is to be in isolation.  Our safety depends on the other person wearing a mask.  Their safety depends on our wearing a mask.  When both of us wear a mask, we live into our covenant relationship with one another.  It embodies both love and trust for one another.  Wearing a mask is an act of love for the other.  It acknowledges our willingness to trust the other person with our presence.  It means we are interdependent and growing, together.  Again, that comma makes all the difference.
 
"You can act your way into a new way of feeling much quicker than you can feel your way into a new way of acting."
 
This saying rises out of the twelve-step program and the cognitive therapy movement.  It acknowledges that our feelings and thoughts are not as malleable as our actions.  We cannot "reason" others into wearing a mask if they have already decided against it.  Nor can we "guilt" someone into wearing a mask if their heart has hardened against it.  However, if we start wearing a mask because we are deeply committed to the health and welfare of other people, we will invite them into a covenant relationship.  And it will be an invitation that may be irresistible.  Unfortunately, if we are only wearing a mask to protect ourselves, there will be no relationship building.  Our mask-wearing will be received as an act of selfishness and further harden their mind and heart.  But if we do so out of a loving concern for the other, then covenant relationship-building becomes possible.
 
Not everyone will get it. But I invite you to imagine this.  What happens if we are walking along on a narrow path and see others coming toward us.  They are not wearing masks.  What would happen if we stopped and stepped to the side and put our mask on before they got too close?  What would we be communicating with that small act?   People who only believe that a mask protects the wearer will either ignore or resent the action.  Those who see the mask as a sign of concern for others will understand.  They will see it as an act of kindness and love.  What would happen if 90% of the people that that other person meets along that path does the same thing?  They may just see beyond their doubts/suspicions and start wearing a mask themselves.  In doing so, they will signal that they are part of a community that cares for each other and trusts one another to care for them.  Welcome to a covenant community.
 
If enough people begin to recognize and support this type of community, it will change the very nature of our society.  Will everyone "get it?" No, there will always be outliers.  But they will be a small minority. 
 
Imagine how a covenant society would address racism or other types of discrimination and oppression?  Imagine a covenant society disagreeing on how to spend their tax dollars?  Imagine how a covenant society would respond when it looks to the borders and sees neighbors starving to death on the other side?  How would such a community deal with issues of policing and justice?  Imagine how a neighborhood would treat the new neighbors who refused to mow their yard or pick up the trash that gathered around their house?  How would such a society provide healthcare for those, especially those most in need?  How would such a society respond to the elderly poor or the single parent raising children on minimal income? 
 
These questions could go on and on.  But the point remains the same.  If we could begin to live into covenant relationships with our neighbors, especially those with whom we disagree, we will set the stage for a real revolution, a revolution of the spirit of our life together.
 
With the mask, we can live out Gandhi's challenge to the people of India as he began to build a new society on the Subcontinent.  Many have paraphrased it as "Be the change you want to see in the world." Gandhi said, "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do."
 
Covenant relationships reflect love and trust onto the world around us.  That light shines in the deep glacial crevasses of hatred and distrust.  It warms the very ground upon which we stand and allows the seeds of justice and mercy, respect and appreciation, joy and hope to grow.  We may not see the forest that we are planting today, but our children and grandchildren will one day enjoy the abundance of life that it will provide. 
 
Next time you meet someone along the way, plant another seed.  Wear your mask!  You may just be the flutter of the butterflies' wing that changes the world!
 
Blessings, My Friends,
Bob