For Banned Book Week 2023, we're joined by the intrepid Dr. Catherine Meeks. She is the genius behind the Banned Book Repository at the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing. We delve into her marvelous project designed to preserve the voices that some would rather silence (Brave Pages,) and discuss her groundbreaking concept of Brave Spaces - an initiative to encourage strength in standing against societal norms.
We also explore the enduring struggle for civil rights, reframed through the lens of the banned books initiative. Dr. Meeks shares her wisdom on spiritual leadership and the importance of being driven by an internal sense of truth rather than external pressures. We ponder the challenges facing the Absalom Jones Center. We also reflect on the crucial part churches can play in racial healing, and how spirituality can be a potent tool against racism. Join us for this enriching conversation.
You can learn more about Dr. Meeks and the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing at their website https://www.centerforracialhealing.org/ and their podcast A Brave Space https://abravespace.buzzsprout.com/
For Banned Book Week 2023, we're joined by the intrepid Dr. Catherine Meeks. She is the genius behind the Banned Book Repository at the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing. We delve into her marvelous project designed to preserve the voices that some would rather silence (Brave Pages,) and discuss her groundbreaking concept of Brave Spaces - an initiative to encourage strength in standing against societal norms.
We also explore the enduring struggle for civil rights, reframed through the lens of the banned books initiative. Dr. Meeks shares her wisdom on spiritual leadership and the importance of being driven by an internal sense of truth rather than external pressures. We ponder the challenges facing the Absalom Jones Center. We also reflect on the crucial part churches can play in racial healing, and how spirituality can be a potent tool against racism. Join us for this enriching conversation.
You can learn more about Dr. Meeks and the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing at their website https://www.centerforracialhealing.org/ and their podcast A Brave Space https://abravespace.buzzsprout.com/
I'd like to welcome you to Spiritual Gumbeaux. It is a podcast for leaders who lead not by the standards of Western concepts of leadership, but through their spiritual gifts and insights. Today, I have the honor of welcoming a conversation with Dr Catherine Meeks. Dr Meeks is the Executive Director of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing. She is the author of several books, Passionate for Justice, Ida B Wells as Prophet for Our Times; Living into God's Dream; Dismantling Racism in America; The Night Is Long, but Light Comes in the Morning - Meditations for racial healing. And she is also the recipient of the Joseph R Biden Lifetime Presidential Award 2022 for her volunteer services throughout the country, especially in the area of racial healing. Welcome, Dr Meeks. //Thank you, it's good to be here.
Rev Lynne:I am happy to have the time To interview and talk with you and just have a girl-to-girl chat or woman-to-woman chat. Yes, it's better.
Dr Catherine Meeks:I'll take girl.
Rev Lynne:Okay, I noticed on your website you are putting together a banned book repository or library. Could you speak a little bit? What? What called you to do that? What? What's the fire behind that?
Dr Catherine Meeks:Well, in the first place, I'm I'm so insulted that we have banned books. In the 21st century, it feels so 10th centu ry to me to be talking about their books that people, somebody thinks they have the right to say which book somebody can read or cannot read. And I also see this as a as a part of a bigger picture of how do you erase the contributions of folks that you don't want to have around. If those same people who have been in the books could, they would ban African Americans and LGBTQ people People rather than just the books that can't ban people, so that you start with the books and, before you know it, it's something else and something else, and before you know it, we have lost a lot of freedom that we didn't realize how we lost it. And so it feels like to me that the best response to that is not to say too much about it, except to go by those books, push those books, encourage people to read those books, and just to make a concerned effort to say you don't get to tell us what to read and we will resist.
Dr Catherine Meeks:I mean, I think we have got to be resistors and we have to be, we have to be relentless in doing that and we just cannot. We cannot sit and act as if we aren't paying attention, because there's a very dangerous spirit running around in our country, the, that spirit of wanting to get rid of anybody that's not white and that you know there's a. the subtext of so much of what we're hearing is to make America great again. It's about make America white again, where white supremacy has more power, and banning books is one piece of that agenda and we, you know I'm not sure that folks are awake enough to the how enormous, how much of a problem that is to allow books to be banned and to be quiet about it, because it's saying, it's saying things on so many levels that are just really bad, as far as I can tell.
Rev Lynne:Can you, can you speak a little bit about how do you envision this process of banned books for the Absalom Jones Center?
Dr Catherine Meeks:Well, what I'm hoping we can do because we are an education place, as well as spirituality and other things that we promote here and along with racial healing I'm hoping that we can have a collection of books here that people can come here and read, or come here and and buy, or from us or take give. We'll give them away if we, if we need to. We're raising money right now to be able to buy those books and but, in addition to that, we're encouraging people to do this in their own places, wherever you happen to live. So because not, if you know, we have a pretty large database and so people are all over the country and we think that everywhere in the country, if there could be shelves of books, that these are banned books and that you know, like even in the grocery stores and places, there could be a ban of banned books and people could just bring books and take books, I think we could have a a major campaign all over the country that that's my big goal out there. But in the meantime, we will buy books and have a create a library.
Dr Catherine Meeks:What I've said is we'll have a ban book library and, of course, we're partnering with Incarnation as around this as well with children's books, and so I think we need to give, get more children's books and get those in the hands of parents and say read these books to your children, pass them on to other children, buy these books at the holidays or whatever. We just need to make a big to do out of it, and the Center is taking the lead in making a big to do. We created something called Brave Pages as a, as a, we created a coffee mug and a t-shirt to help with that campaign, but we're calling this Brave Pages as part of the ongoing struggle to say we have to be brave about this. We cannot allow ourselves to be lulled into unconsciousness when it comes to this kind of thing.
Rev Lynne:I have a brave space coffee mug and brave space t-shirt and I find myself wearing that t-shirt when I have to gird up myself to do something that I don't naturally want to do. So I resonate with this notion of creating, creating brave space and being brave.
Dr Catherine Meeks:well, we say a lot about that here at the Center for Racial Healing, because what people say so all the time is we want to create a safe space. I do not want to create safe spaces, I'm not interested in safe spaces.
Dr Catherine Meeks:I'm interested in brave spaces where people tell the truth, where people face the truth and where we act on the truth rather than trying to keep everybody happy. Because when we talk about safe spaces, particularly when it comes to racial healing, we're saying we want everybody to feel good when they come and go from here, and you don't necessarily have to feel good about the truth, you have to engage with it and some you'll feel better later. Sometimes you don't feel good while you're doing whatever it is you need to do, and it can be scary to stand up and be counted and do the things we need to do, which is where courage comes, and but I feel like that there's a deficit of courage right now everywhere across our land, particularly in our churches. I just feel like we've become cowardice and we are too busy trying not to rock the cultural boat, and the boat needs to be rocked. That's what makes us brave.
Rev Lynne:One of the things that I am, I guess, becoming a lot more aware of, and especially in the band books initiative, is that this historically, we've looked at civil rights as marching and protesting and etc. But this notion of collecting band books to me feels a little bit like the new civil rights movement. Do you have any ?
Dr Catherine Meeks:I think we all got seduced by the idea of freedom in the 60s. We thought we thought that the legislation around voting and some of all the stuff that happened really did mean that we were liberated, and we started to act that way and we forgot that we weren't free yet. We didn't pay attention, we didn't pay enough attention to that. So I think we have allowed ourselves to lose touch with how we needed to resist. I think for a while here we haven't known what to resist. What to resist because we've been kind of anesthetized by the possibilities of just everything being okay, like our kids want to think that there's, maybe there isn't any racism anymore because they can do what they think. They can do what they want to do until they try to do it. And so I think that we do have to be asking ourselves what is the new movement. I think our Black Lives Matter young people have tried to bring that up in more concrete ways.
Dr Catherine Meeks:I think this banned books thing is a clearer of thing to resist. I think people have a hard time figuring out what to resist when there's not like a bear standing in front of you. You know, the bear's always been there, but but it's clearer. The banning books is a clearer thing than some of the underhanded things that have been being done by people in office and other folks. I don't think if this is a new this, isn't it really that new, because the spirit of wanting to ban Black people and brown people and anybody that's different has never gone away. It's just it, just you know. It's like that line from Jesus Christ Superstar. I know who you are. You just keep changing, you're just changing iterations, but you're the same evil and it's, and that's what racism has been is, you know, and it's this iteration of ban books makes it clearer to us, but it's never gone anywhere. //can you talk a little bit about your understanding of spiritual leadership?
Dr Catherine Meeks:well, it seems to me that we've done, we've spent all these years I just want to stick with it in regards to racial healing. We've done all these years of working to make things better in terms of race in this country and yet here we are on July 19, 2023, talking about books being banned. So clearly we need to be doing something different. I think, when we are led by the spirit, we get passed, having to be first of all afraid because you know that you have a higher calling than whether somebody likes you or whether somebody can fire you. You know, you have to make up your mind what your calling is, and that's at least that's been my experience, and it's not just because I'm in my seventies now. I have been this way. They sent me an article. That was an interview that I did when I was 32 years old and I was saying some of the very same things I'm saying right now. So I thought, you know, I didn't realize that about myself. Actually, back then I was a little instructor at a college and I didn't have tenure or anything, but I said what I had to say.
Dr Catherine Meeks:So I think spiritual leadership, spiritually grounded leadership, causes you to have to figure out what you're called to and then you go, do it regardless of what the culture is ready to support, and you do it without thinking. You don't go out looking to be a martyr, but if you become one, it doesn't matter, because you are not there for anything except to be obedient. So I tell people, the only thing I have to do every day is stay focused and stay faithful. That's it to whatever my sense of calling is and it's not always that easy to figure that out, but you do have to spend time trying to figure it out. First of all, I guess you've got to just decide you want to figure it out, because I think a lot of people just think they want to be famous and they want to be powerful, they want to be wealthy. Those are really bad reasons to do anything. Seeking fame is, for example, I'm concerned. It's really a fool's errand. Seeking fame is a fool's errand and if you do that, you've got to worry about who's going to like you and who's going to pat you on the back and who can you get to give you the next thing? Somebody got upset at me about something and they said well, they had helped me get something. That happened, but there was a gift. They'd helped that to happen, and I thought well, you can have it back. If you only did it, because now I've got to not tell you the truth, then take it.
Dr Catherine Meeks:When I was in college, we used to tell the administration you can have our scholarships, because we're going to do this, we're going to stand up against you. And so once you, I always said that I needed to figure out, what am I willing to lose? And so and I've been willing always to lose everything, including my own life, for the sake of integrity and the sake of being faithful and honest. Okay, so then, if you figure that out, you take my job. I can find something else to do. I know how to pick cotton, I know how to clean houses, I know how to do whatever.
Dr Catherine Meeks:I don't really want to do any of those things anymore, and I don't think I'm ever going to have to, but I have done them and I'm not afraid to work hard. So then you don't get to hold over my head external stuff which then manipulates me into having to do what the culture wants me to do. That's the difference in being guided by the spirit and, as Howard Thurman would say, listen to the genuine in yourself and respond to that, as opposed to some worrying about are you going to get the cultural affirmation to help you get to this goal? You got out here for yourself. My goal is to be faithful, and I mean, I didn't want to be, I wanted to be respected and I want to be. I want to be able to make a living like everybody else, because the most important thing is to be faithful at the end of the day. //What are some of your spiritual practices?//
Dr Catherine Meeks:I spent a lot of time journaling.
Dr Catherine Meeks:I've got my sons told me could you please figure out what you want to do with those journals before you die? Because we don't want to have to make that decision. Because I have got boxes and boxes of journals. I've journaled for 40 years, just consistently, so they're everywhere. It's just terrible. I've spent a lot of time being silent and trying to learn to shut up and listen just to myself and to just be grounded in silence. So I've done a lot of silence, retreating on my own, and for a while for about a year I had a practice of spending a day every week being silent. So silence and journaling. And then I like to play, I like to iron.
Dr Catherine Meeks://Really// for me, ironing is a contemplative practice. So because you can iron and be all in every universe there is and you're right at the ironing board and at the end you have clothes you can hang up, so you actually did something, but you don't really have to think about it very hard. So it's very, I mean, I guess as a little kid I was responsible for ironing all the families clothes every Saturday and I loved it. And as I got older I continued to love the solitude that it brought and the capacity to just be. the re present, working, but not having to really engage with anything, because ironing doesn't require you to have to think about it. So I really enjoy doing that.
Dr Catherine Meeks:And then I enjoy doing other stuff, like making cards and dealing with aromatherapy, with essential oils, and making candles and stuff like that. Those things keep me sane in this insane world. And every now and again I'll have a day that I spend all day making a card. I mean, I might get up one morning and think I want to make a scrapbook for somebody and I'll spend the whole day with my handmade papers and watercolors and I'll just be in that world. So being able to go away from the noise of the outside world into my own space is part of the practice to stay grounded.
Rev Lynne:I find that the image of a laundress very powerful for me because my mother was the first of her lineage female lineage, matriarchal lineage that was not a Laundress.// Oh my gosh,// yeah, my mother, and it was very intentional. Yeah, her mother, of course, and her mother and her mother were laundress. But what the funny thing about it is, my mother not being a laundress, allowed her or gave her the insight or fortitude for Altar Guild, and all of the work that she had learned from her mother about the creases in your pants and how everything had to be perfectly ironed were the skills that she actually took to the Altar Guild. And so she spent many, many, many, many years teaching women about the spirituality, indirectly, of the Altar Guild and ironing and taking care of the sacred linen of the Altar Guild. So I just find that amazing that we have never had this conversation before.
Rev Lynne:But right then, at that moment, it triggered my remembrances of my mother and her dedication to the ironing and caring of the linen, and I never thought of it as an extension of her own sense of spirituality, and that was her full commitment to the church. She was so committed to it, so much she ran other people away Because for her that corpus had to be perfectly ironed because that was your offering. So that's really kind of. I guess that was a connected dots moment for me just now, so I thank you for that. What do you see are some of the pressing issues for the Center?
Dr Catherine Meeks:I think, sustainability, because any small operation like this has to stay always awake to. You know, racial healing is not going to be popular forever. It's been a little bit popular here, particularly since 2020, with the murder of George Floyd. It was like it woke a lot of people up to racism is real. But that was just so curious to me because I had only could say well, where have you been if you didn't know that already? Did you need to see that man being murdered on television to know that racism is real? I mean, I can't tell you how many churches people call to our center. What can we do? You know what? George Floyd was murdered and I would say, well, you need to sit yourself down somewhere and figure out what God wants you to do, because I can't tell you what to do because you have been living this long and you didn't figure it out. So don't you know? I don't know. You need to listen.
Dr Catherine Meeks:I think the way that we approach racial healing is not the most popular. This is not about diversity, inclusion and equity. What we do here. It is about transformation and trying to create space, brave spaces, for that to happen. So I think that that notion is in some ways it's very alive and into people, but it's also hard to be funded because folks always want to know. You know, everything has to be quantified and it's hard to quantify transformation. So I just think keeping the vision, really keeping up the, keeping the courage to stay with the vision, to me will probably be the hardest thing, that for this place, particularly going forward.
Dr Catherine Meeks:I just think that it will be because, because it's a vision that I'm so grounded in, but my whole life is grounded in that kind of courageous, brave way of being and doing things and so I don't have fear about, you know, if the doors close. The doors close because it just means that God wants you to do the work some other way. So I'm not invested in and I'm not even for the Center, invested in that it's got to last a thousand years, I'd say all the time. It would be so wonderful if we could put ourselves out of business by getting all the churches to step up to the plate and do the work that they need to do. That is what we, that's what we have been about for these six years and what we will continue. Hopefully the Center will continue to be about going forward.
Dr Catherine Meeks:So I just I feel like that we have been committed here to in this Center, to mobilization of the churches, because churches are already gathered communities and so they don't have to go hunt for people to do racial healing work with, because they've got the folks sitting in front of them in every Sunday, after Sunday, after Sunday. So we and I've seen some of that happen in these six years which is encouraging churches stepping up to the plate and taking this work on as a part of what they do. We need every church to be doing that, and then places like this would not be necessary. But that's not going to happen in any way that puts us out of business anytime soon. So I just think that you know this Center will be here until it doesn't it doesn't either have the doesn't serve the right purpose, or until God's ready for it to the work to go in some different direction. And I don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about it because it's you just got to do the best you can do when you're doing your assignment.
Rev Lynne:I was lucky to be a part of either the first or second class of clergy that participated in the workshop workshop weekend, I believe or no, the workshops, multiple weekdays of training for racial reconciliation through spirituality. And I have to say I really do believe that is probably the most ingenious way to combat racism, because at the end of the day I've been a race relations trainer for the diocese and all of this stuff which kind of works off of white guilt sometimes, most of the time, but really the heart of it really is about the spirit and the heart.
Rev Lynne:I mean, is this the right thing to do and what is God calling you to do? And I think, as clergy, oftentimes we just we kind of dismiss that and some of your biggest challenges can be in your spiritual institution. So I want to say thank you for that work and how important it is. One of the things I've noticed though it's not just here in Georgia is that oftentimes at the same old suspects that register for this kind of training, how do we, or how can the Center and that may be a very ambiguous question get those who needed the most to participate? How do you, how do we? I guess that's a question that everybody wants to try to figure out how do you do it.
Rev Lynne:But it has been the same old folks all the time.
Dr Catherine Meeks:Well, that's been true, that is true. But we have also widened the circle. We have been fortunate with pilgrims coming from other places and, unfortunately fortunate for us, unfortunate for the world that COVID existed, but fortunately for us, we expanded our circle a lot because we became a virtual place, and so we've got we have done better with getting. I mean, I don't think anybody shows up virtually or in person unless they have some interest in what's going on, and I don't worry too much about the folks out there. I always think the people that are in the room, these are the people that need to be here today and we need to do the very best we can do with them. And then whoever else needs to come, they will come or they won't come. But you just got to keep being. You can't get away from. You just got to keep being faithful and keep staying focused, because we've had people come in class with their arms folded, determined that nothing's going to happen to me, to hear today to make me any different. And by the end of the day, there's some of the folks that have been impacted the most by the class that they've been participating in and will end up crying or telling us how you know they weren't prepared to, they thought the day was going to just be about beating them up. And they, you know, they're scared to death that they're going to get White people are so scared to talk about race, and sometimes people of color as well, and it's just. It's like, can we just believe that we can create spaces where we can come and talk about this thing that's got us all held hostage, and still be alive at the end of the day and when people come and realize that it's transformative for them. So I have seen a lot of movement in folks who weren't even intending to be changed, particularly for the Dismantling Racism class in this diocese, because they, if you're clergy or a leader, you've got to do it. A nd folks would come with this kind of hostility that they couldn't, they couldn't hold onto it because of the day, because of the way the day went.
Dr Catherine Meeks:Changing the focus to Eucharistic centered training was one of the best gifts God had could have ever given to me, that notion. And so somebody told me that you know it was brilliant. Well, it's God's brilliance, but it's also a no brainer. I mean, how could you not see that this is about spiritual growth and formation, and I'm just a little still dumbstruck by how many priests and bishops across the country have said to me, we never heard anybody talk about this this way until you started talking about racial healing as spiritual formation. I don't really understand how you miss that, but I guess you miss it if you don't think of they think of racism and social justice terms rather than in terms of spirituality and in terms of wellness, because if you walk around with as a racist or as a victim of racism either one you're not well, you can't be well. So I just feel like that the more we, the broader we make the subject, then the more people begin to understand.
Dr Catherine Meeks:This really does have something to do with me, you know, when white people say we can't work on race because we don't have any black people around, and I'd say, really, are you serious?
Dr Catherine Meeks:Yes, you can and yes you have to. Because you cannot be a well person having these boundaries, that you didn't, that you didn't work on and you have to decide do you want to be well or not, which you know? You hear me talk a lot about being well, more than more than even than about race, because for me, if you want to be well, you do it ever. You do all the things you have to do to get well, and dealing with racism is one of them, and I just you know, I just stick to that. I just think too. The last thing I'll say about that is that people don't have a holistic point of view about life. I mean, life is all a bunch of little compartments, and they just don't realize that life really is not a bunch of little compartments. It is one thing, and if you don't work on all of them, you leave deficits in yourself that need some healing.
Rev Lynne:Thank you. At the end of the year, you will be celebrating retirement. //yes, yay// and will become the Executive Director Emeritus for the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing. What does that mean for you?
Dr Catherine Meeks:Well, if, first of all, it means that I have completed my assignment, I saw this work as this is something I was called to do, I said I'd be here five years. This is my sixth year. I'm 77 years old. I'll be 78 in February.
Dr Catherine Meeks:I don't want to work like I'm a 40-year-old and this running this Center requires that and that's what I've done for six years. So I am very ready to go write and teach and not have to worry about fundraising and program developing and all that stuff. So I feel really good about these six years. The Center is in good shape and I could walk out the door and never come back in the building and be perfectly happy for the rest of my life because I came to do something and I did it and I'm ready to go and I hope and pray that the next person will come with a vision that has a capacity to build on what is found rather than being somebody. Some people think that the only way they can build something is to tear up what they found.
Dr Catherine Meeks:I hope we can manage not to hire that kind of person, that we can hire somebody who respects legacy but uses it as a stepping stone to do greater things, and that means they have vision and courage and they take what they have found that's good and build on it, rather than thinking, oh, we just got to get rid of all this and start over, because if that's the case, we will have hired the wrong person.
Rev Lynne:And you will be hopefully a part of that process. //Oh, yes, I will.
Dr Catherine Meeks:I mean I will and I will be. I'm not leaving the city and I will be writing the blog for a little while until the new person gets kind of name good name recognition among the database, and doing the podcast for a little while. But I hope not to do that more than two or three months. So I just want the new director to kind of begin to get their own voice with the constituency so that I want the transition to be as smooth as possible. But I've got all kinds of plans to play and one of my friends is moving here. We've been friends since college and we plan to be two little old ladies out on the road going on road trips and doing whatever we feel like doing for a while. Both of us have been working way too hard and we're conspiring to play as hard as we've worked for a little bit while we're up to doing it.
Rev Lynne:Well, I hope that we will be able to do another podcast in the next phase of your life.
Rev Lynne:Because there are so many other questions that I would just love to have and that believe that people would love to hear. If you want to learn more about the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing, the website is www. centerforracialhealing. org. Let me repeat that www. centerforracialhealing. org, you can learn more about the campaign to support the purchase of banned books and the Brave Space, and I hope that each and every one of you that is listening to this podcast makes the decision to enter into Brave Space. Thank you.