"I felt threatened" and "he resisted" and "she did not comply" and "he matched the description" and "I was afraid for my life" are modern-day code words that give white supremacy a secure, reliable foothold in this generation, free of all accountability and justice. Go ahead and use them, white people. You will be assured a safe place inside the justice system and plenty of sympathy for your white fragility. It will work for you. It will prioritize your racism over the lives of black and brown bodies, their families, and their legacies.

So I learned something incredible as a grown up adult: the denominations or churches that elevate men and diminish women, that harm or exile LGBTQ Christians, that protect abusers and shame their victims into "private forgiveness"... ...that create panels of all white men to tell the rest of us how unbiblical social justice is, that peddle shame and guilt and sorrow...WE GET TO LEAVE. There are endless faith communities that operate out of equality and honor and grace. There is no actual door to the prison.

One thing that "fell away" for me these last two years was my tolerance for weird Christian talk. It was my first language & thus entirely familiar, but now it raises the hair on the back of my neck. It all feels coded, a warning signal to keep insiders in and outsiders out. If you are well-versed enough, it can be strategically employed to ignore the dire pain of people, especially people for whom the sterile language harmed immeasurably. It lacks any tender spirit, any beating heart. Plus it sounds super weird. Why can't Christians talk normal?

"Mom, I know the Vermont Inn has been in our family for 4 generations, but I'm meeting with a realtor up here to list it. Ever since Dad died, I can't run it from NYC, especially since I'm about to make partner at the firm." Lifetime movie hilarity on FB: ow.ly/CKyR30mUKMU "But honey, the Inn was your dad's legacy. And it is scheduled to be the final stop on the Parade of Homes for the town Christmas festival. If you don't light up the Inn for the community, it will be the first time in 56 years the old place will be dark." business.facebook.com/jenhatmaker/po…

With some of the warrior women from ANC, I am going to a humanitarian aid center on the border tomorrow. This suffering, on our watch and at our hands, is more than I can take. I pay attention to how the Holy Spirit moves me, and he is moving me toward this sorrow. Every Sunday at church just before communion, we read prayer cards written by children in the detention camp, first in Spanish then in English. It shatters me. I want to share some of them with you. Pray for these kids separated from their families. Prepare to love them with us.

Long talk with my boys this morning about colonization. They were connecting dots: WE were a colony (boo)...who fought for independence (yay)...but not before terrorizing & displacing indigenous people (BOO). Made a list of all the countries & cultures crushed by colonization. It is so sobering to face our sordid history of abuses. Not one teacher in my life ever suggested anything less than Manifest Destiny as a triumph.

Burn everything down. We are as lost from our own gospel as we've ever been while screaming at everyone else that we are the only ones "found." Our women are abused and unprotected, and our "sanctuaries" are nothing of the sort. Why would anyone listen to any of us?

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The amount of repentance necessary to EVER regain 1 ounce of credibility as an evangelical community is just staggering. Look to our ditches: women, refugees, people of color, LGBTQ folks, immigrants, the poor. These are supposed to be our charges, instead they are our victims.

"Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light & voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals." #MLK "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation." #MLK #BirminghamJail