Being Thankful...

Hello, friends!

Here's hoping you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Megan, Ezra, and I are up here in South Dakota visiting Megan's family for the week. The weather is cold but the food is delicious, so I don't mind so much.

I suppose this entry would have made sense to post a few days ago, BEFORE the actual holiday, but I wanted to make sure that all parts of my Mizzou Protest Super Blog were out, so this entry had to wait. If you've already moved on to Christmas, feel free to skip this post. I won't mind.

Right about now is when folk start thinking about how they're going to answer the quintessential Thanksgiving question, "What are you thankful for this year?" It's a good question because reflection and thankfulness are good habits to have. I've been trying to start my days thanking God for all of his goodness and it's helped me see more of the little things.

As I was reflecting, there were some obvious answers. I'm so thankful for Ezra and all the joy that he's brought into my life. I'm thankful for Megan for the same reason. I'm thankful that I have a job that I love, that we are never in want, that we have a family who loves and supports us, and, of course, I'm thankful for you, our ministry partners. Without your partnership, whether it be through prayer, advocacy, giving, or serving, we wouldn't be able to do the good work for the kingdom that we do. I'm definitely thankful for all of those things.

What struck me the most though, looking back on this year, is how thankful I am for the steps I've taken in my ethnic identity this year and the steps that I've taken on my journey towards understanding how racial reconciliation looks in the kingdom.

Don't get me wrong, it's been a really hard year in a lot of ways. About this time last year, the St. Louis County prosecutor announced that Officer Darren Wilson would not be charged in the killing of Michael Brown. Since then, we've seen protests in Baltimore, New York, Minneapolis, and even in Columbia, Missouri, all centered around systemic injustice and racism against people of color (particularly blacks) in the United States. People have been shot. Churches have been set on fire. Tempers have flared. It's been really hard but I am choosing to see it as a step in the right direction, thus, I am thankful for it.

One person I know made the point that these things are all actually bad things. He said that racial tensions only got higher since Ferguson and that racial tension is a bad thing. Ergo, the protests and such are a bad thing. I would have to disagree.

It would be naive at best or willfully ignorant at worst, to say that race relations were better "back in the day" (however you define that term). Racism has been a part of the fabric of the United States literally since the beginning, when blacks were only counted as 3/5 of a person when determining state's representation in congress. In the history of our great nation, a war had to be fought over whether or not one people could continue to enslave another. Dogs and firehoses were set on men and women who had the audacity to believe that they had a right to vote. The American church even has a  history of using the bible to support racism, or at least be silent about it. Racism and oppression of minorities is part of our history.

To say that things were better back in the day because there wasn't as much protesting or fewer conversations about race is to take the position that no news is good news. In fact, the protests of the past year are proof of movement in the right direction. How can we move forward as a country or as individuals if we don't know what's wrong? We need these voices crying out to remind us that we have not yet arrived and that we still have a ways to go. Without them, the majority will believe that everything is awesome and minorities will continue to feel like outsiders in their own country.

I'm thankful for the past year because it has allowed me to have conversations that I would not have thought to have otherwise. I've been able to see my own biases and prejudices as a Chinese American man. I've been able to reconcile with some of my Black brothers and sisters who I did not even know I had wronged. I've had great (albeit hard) conversations with students, coworkers, family, and members of the community about what it's like to be a minority in a predominantly White community like Columbia. I've been able to shape my own theology about racial reconciliation and the role that the Asian American community has to play in bridging the racial divide in our country. I'm thankful for the people who have had conversations with me and helped me process. I'm thankful for the people who have listened and entered conversation with me with a posture of learning and not of condemnation. I'm thankful for people who have called me out for my sins and who have been receptive when I do the same. I'm thankful that this is a conversation that can happen out in the open, instead of behind closed doors in hushed voices. I'm thankful that we are actually seeing change.

An analogy that has been helping me process this past year has been that of cleaning my desk. Every few months or so, I need to clean my desk. The first step is to take out everything and lay it all bare so I can see what I need to keep and what I can pitch. After step one, the space actually looks WORSE than before, not better. But, without step one, I can't actually get my space to where it needs to be.

Friends, this is like step one of desk cleaning. Right now all of our junk is being laid out in the open so we can see what should stay and what should go. It looks terrible but it's necessary in order for us to move forward. I'm thankful for the opportunity to move forward with you.

Have an excellent day!

~Adam