Dayna Kennedy and Paul Rogne Discuss Landmarks on Their Soul Work Journey
Edited by Becky Gonzalez-Campoy, Beloved Community Communications Team

Dayna Kennedy
Next to my bathroom mirror I have posted two notes:

• De-center my whiteness. Participation in several Unity’s Team Dynamics workshops, Wellspring Wednesday events, Black Film Canon series, and Recovery from White Conditioning helps me to rethink how I view my place in the world.
• Where is the action? A challenge issued to me by my BIPOC friends.

Advocacy and political action have always played a prominent role in my life. I’ve been marching since I was very young and writing letters-to-the editor and working with legislators, etc. Yet, I began to see that I was, all at the same time, taking up a lot of space as a white person. Somewhere along the way, I had an epiphany: I will volunteer when I can be led by a person of color. This re-focused my work entirely. Whether it’s affordable housing or marching in support of (or against) an issue, this one idea has allowed me to begin to de-center my white self, my perfectionism, and many other attributes of whiteness.

And I’m showing up differently. I make sure I’m not doing this work to “save” anybody. I clear out any part of me that is feeling like a “hero” for marching. Now, I listen for what is needed and do what I am able to do. Change begins within me. But so does action. When I am feeling overwhelmed or frozen by the authentic history I am learning, I remember that my white history has given me a weak muscle that I need to exercise to build up stamina. And my white privilege has given me a short attention span — I can turn away when things get tough.… and my life will be affected very little. Moreover, no one holds me accountable. This work is hard to do in isolation. One solution that continues to prove invaluable to me is Recovery from White Conditioning. This group provides me with a community of meaningful support and accountability.

Whether it is a phone bank or calling legislators, I hear the freshness and urgency in the voices of my BIPOC partners. The effects for them are now … and every day. I continue to ask myself, “Why, just because the pigment of our skin is different, do I not feel the same sense of urgency?” After all, as James Baldwin said, it is my soul which is at stake.

Paul Rogne
We often rely on words for education, self-reflection, and spiritual growth. Art, too, can be a powerful messenger to change how we see ourselves, our community, and the world.

Unity’s antiracism goals inspire my work as the chairperson of the Unity Art Team. We are the group that bring artists to exhibit in the Parish Hall. We also manage over 80 pieces of art in the permanent collection that are displayed throughout the building. A few years ago, we identified the pursuit of Unity’s Ends Statements as something to embrace, especially, “Create a multicultural spiritual home built on authentic relationships” and “Create brave space for racial healing and dismantling dominant culture.” Consequently, the Art Team has deliberately sought to bring greater diversity of art and artists into the Parish Hall and to expand the permanent collection with art representing a multicultural community.

In 2020-21, this led the Art Team to specifically recruit and select artists of color to exhibit in the Parish Hall. The team also has added six new pieces of art to the permanent collection: A weaving by the Karin Weavers, a fine art print by local Latino artist Ricardo Levins Morales, a powerful painting on the theme of immigration by Black artist Simone Spruce, an impressive diptych painting by Heather Friedli whose heritage is Anishinaabe and Mexican, and a painting by local Black artist Rose Smith inspired by her trip to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. We hope the addition of more diversity in the art displayed at Unity will have a positive impact on the congregation and visitors to the church. This effort will continue over the coming years.

​So come take time to enjoy and reflect on our featured exhibits and permanent collection. Each piece has much to teach us all.

Angela Wilcox, Beloved Community Staff Team

When I was fourteen, my mother insisted that I take an “Assertiveness Training” course offered by my high school during J-term and taught by a psychologist who was a family friend. The very thought terrified me, but the great irony was that my inability to assert myself to oppose this idea meant I spent a week of January learning how to do all the things I thought I couldn’t do: make a cold phone call to ask for information; return an item of clothing; and hardest of all, enter a space where I didn’t know a single person. This week was one of the most significant in my education because of what it taught me about being human in community; Dr. Warloski gave me permission to feel uncomfortable and do the thing anyway. Her goal was to help us feel the truth that discomfort would not kill us, and that often, our paralyzing fears dissipated once we stepped over the boundary and realized that we were not alone — not in our fears, but also not in our values, beliefs, and wonder. 

My high school was parochial in all senses; I felt a suffocating need to get away from the sameness of that world. In college, I was surrounded by smart, curious people from all over the world. United by our academic drive and our willingness to live through Minnesota winters, we were rich in diversity of experiences, opinions, and dreams. We reveled in unveiling the quirky regionalisms that shaped us and the ways we spoke, played, and understood the world. I became aware of parts of my identity that had been hidden from me because they were so ubiquitous back home. In this temporary and carefully curated educational community, we took the time to explore our differences and share our stories. In graduate school, I gravitated toward courses and social groups filled with international students. I married one of them, we traveled the world together, and I embraced the feeling that I had finally stretched beyond the sameness of my hometown and into the world.
 
After a decade of marriage and a divorce, what I longed for most was a spiritual home where I belonged — someplace where the values and the people felt familiar. From the first Sunday at Unity Church, everything from the religious education program to the music to the flow of the service made me feel like I was home again. And yet, Unity felt like the church of my future, where I had much in common with others, and could raise my children and myself in this new version of my life. 

I worked in a junior high classroom rich with diversity of all kinds — age, race, culture, language, nationality, ability, and more. As I tried to connect to my students authentically across our many differences, I was often uncomfortable, and these youth invited and pushed me into spaces that stretched me even further into discomfort. I knew from experience that discomfort wouldn’t kill me, but I learned that it takes ongoing practice to stretch and remain humble enough to stop focusing on my discomfort and start listening. Unity has helped me build and sustain those essential ongoing practices. 

One of my favorite “stretch” experiences has been attending the annual RISE (Reviving the Islamic Sisterhood for Empowerment) conference with some of my Muslim students. During a panel discussion of professional Muslim women, one of my students pulled me aside with tears in her eyes; she’d never met an adult Muslim woman with a career and didn’t know that could be a possibility for her. I’d been so focused on the idea of helping these young women experience a place with other women like them that it hadn’t occurred to me how enormously diverse this gathering would be and what the power of that diversity might be for my students. Where was I missing that diversity in my own life, in spaces that I thought of as being “just a lot of people like me?” 

Here at Unity, we have expressed our longing to be a multicultural spiritual home grounded in racial healing. What if the way we start is by asking what stories, backgrounds, perspectives, and beliefs we might have missed because so many of us share more obvious identity traits? What if our particular, specific identity is our superpower? That work, along with cultivating ongoing spiritual practices that help us remain humble and resilient in the face of discomfort, might help us live our way into that longing in unexpected and world-altering ways. 

Learn more about RISE on their website: www.revivingsisterhood.org.