Learning to heal – racism

Gillian Straine: I am Gillian Straine. Welcome to the Go Health podcast. So welcome to episode two of Season two of the Go Health podcast. In this season we are exploring the theme of learning to heal. Now we learn in all sorts of different ways every day, in the Go Health podcast, we are learning to heal by listening to the stories and experiences of others. And in doing so, we might be learning to heal ourselves or learning to be a source of healing for others. Or maybe both mixed together. 

In Go Health we take up the call of Jesus to help others to find healing and we know that we all need healing all the time. So the podcast is, we hope, hitting the nail on the head in both ways. If you haven’t done so already, please rate and subscribe to the podcast, because it really helps others to find us to. 

In this episode released in October 2021 we are exploring racism and healing. October is Black History Month in the UK and it is the 34th year that it has been marked. It’s a time when the contributions to the UK’s economical, cultural and political life by people from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean are recognised.

And this year it feels more pertinent than ever that we mark this month in Go Health by exploring the healing ministry in the context of racism, both in our wider society and in the church. 

The pandemic in the UK, we have seen UK minority ethnic groups worst affected and we continue to live in the fallout of the terrible murder of George Floyd. Diversity and inclusion are at the heart of the Gospels’ call to a faith filled life, and it continues to be a source of deep pain that in the church of all places, we are not as open and as welcoming as we should be and indeed, in the podcast, we get in some great conversations around both structural and institutional racism and what we can all do to help change things. 

And I have a top guest. It was an absolute privilege to chat with Rosemarie Davidson-Gotobed the national minority ethnic vocations officer for the Church of England, the founder and director of the Sam Sharp lectures and a diversity and inclusion consultant. She is an amazing woman of God doing interesting and really important work. We had a great chat. It was real, it was honest, it was practical, I learnt loads and I hope that you enjoy it. 

Rosemarie Davidson-Gotobed thank you so much for agreeing to chat to us here on the Go Health podcast. How are you? 

Rosemarie: I’m very well, thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

Gillian: It’s great. So this this is our second season of the podcast and we’ve called this season Learning to Heal, which, of course, can be understood in two ways. We’re all having to learn to heal. We all have stuff. We are all distanced from God. So we hope through this podcast and other ways we help people explore healing. But also we support a lot of people in learning to be healers, to take the healing message of God into their hearts and into their communities, whether they’re a church leader or not, to help spread the healing love of Jesus. So here we are we’re recording this towards the end of 2021, we’ve been through 18 months of the pandemic. So can I begin, Rosemarie, by asking you how you have sought healing during these crazy few months?

Rosemarie: For most part, I haven’t needed to seek healing per-say because I actually enjoyed the whole lockdown experience. I actually I think I was probably the only one on my team at work who who was, primarily because everyone else on my team was used to working in an office environment, the whole routine of going in to work and being with other people, whereas my majority of my work experience was very much the opposite. I was freelance, I worked from home, I worked around whatever our life for my husband as a Baptist minister, and we had children. So that being at home and working from home and not really going out much unless I absolutely needed to, was part of my routine in my life. So for me, it was, waow, I get to do this! Because I found going into the office stressful. Not so much the travelling, because I love travelling in London. It was that whole adjusting to that office culture and all the little things that people don’t tell you, being in an office that you only know by being. And I found I had to adjust a great deal to that -you know, I can plan around all the time that I love because I love being with people but there was just very subtle elements that, and I had to take time to heal from that trauma because it did feel traumatic, and adjust to it and that was – noone, because it’s a normality for most people around me, no one thought to check in: ‘Are you are you OK being here in this atmosphere?’ Because it was it’s normal. With the other way round, once the pandemic and lockdown started, that was my normal. I was back in my element and my colleagues, some of whom were really finding it difficult, and I get that and I had to share – ‘well, actually, I get that because that’s what it was like for me when I first when I started working with you guys and no one knew, no one noticed, no one knew, and it never occurred to anybody. So I’ve had that experience of being on both sides and on the understanding that and just reminding myself to to be a little a little bit more sensitive to help other people coping.

When there were difficult times it was nothing to do with the with lockdown as such. The difficult times were people who we knew who had died just before lockdown or during lockdown. People of Caribbean heritage who’s funerals we couldn’t attend. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a Caribbean funeral, but it’s it’s it’s a it’s an event. 

Minimum a hundred people, you know, folk come not just because they are related to you, but they are friends of the family and things like that. And there are things like the nine night and the coming together and the singing and praying together and funeral and singing around the grave. The men being responsible for filling in the grave, all those traditions, all those things were just wiped away. And there were things that were online, I think I, I think I looked into two and afterwards I thought, no, I can’t do this.

Gillian: Yeah. And that’s a genuine loss, isn’t it, we’ve lost these traditions and over the last eighteen months or however long it’s been, that we haven’t been able to attend these rituals, especially around illness and death, we’ll never get them back.

Rosemarie: No!

Gillian: You know that for that individual. And there’s been there’s been a huge loss. We’ve topped four million deaths globally now with Covid. And that’s one of the things that truly haunts me, I think, is those deaths and the and the loss of the grieving processes for so many people.

Rosemarie: And it’s it’s it’s a real thing. I mean, I never, I never if someone had said to me, oh, sometime in the future, this is what it would be like, you would…there would be a Caribbean funeral would look like this. I’d be like, oh, yeah, that is never going to happen. But in that, like all sorts of traditions and cultures, they change and adapt according to the circumstances. 

So even things like a nine night, which is where people come together nine, nine nights after the person had passed away. When, my dad, I think I said to you before, my dad was born in 1920 in Jamaica, rural Jamaica, you know, very rural. And it was tradition, it was common and tradition that somebody was buried three days after they died. And then the nine night was like the ninth night and that’s when people gather together and sort of like a real time gathering. But here in England, the nine night is nine days that comes before the funeral, 

Gillian: OK, because it takes longer.

Rosemarie: Because it’s … things have changed. You know that death happens and process and so forth is has changed. And the idea of the big funeral may also change now, I think. And so it will be interesting to see how how that happens, because there are younger generations who will be probably be at that time when they are going to funerals, where it might be a smaller event, it might not be the big community thing as before. And you say it’d be interesting to see how that happens. In those times I’ve, I’ve turned to I’ve turned to music, to things that I know, things that I remember.

Gillian: Is that reconnecting in with something in your past? 

Rosemarie: I’ve generally found music has a way that that taps into where I’m at or I can express or just have that that physicality of singing along to something and singing out.

Gillian: Yeah. So it’s an embodied thing as well. 

Rosemarie: Yeah, it’s an embodied thing. Am and that music could be anything. It’s not always, it’s not always music with words. For example, I’m, I’m a huge fan of of Bach’s cello. The cello is probably my favourite of all time instrument, just that depth of sound and feeling. And I think I was really introduced to that by Yo-Yo Ma. So I know that there are other new cello people on the scene, but, yeah, you know Yo-You was my first. You know  just listening to to the way he plays the pieces, these are pieces that he would have learned from when he was very little. And every time he plays them, they sound different. Every recording of them sounds slightly different and you if you, when you know, the tunes, these sort of hum them, along with it. Obviously, there are no words, but you can almost anticipate what’s coming up in the next movement. And that there’s that…

Gillian: I absolutely agree, a lot music makes me it makes me cry, even though I didn’t know. I know. And it helps to connect to something deeper within me. And I like you I find music…We started doing Friday night discos in our kitchen. Just in those really dark, dark days of February this year, you know, and there’s just not nothing to look forward to. We put on a good Spotify playlist. It didn’t have any cello music. And it was quite a lot of queen. I think so. Yeah. Get the kids going to. But yeah. 

Rosemarie: Is Queen disco? 

Gillian: I think it’s rock. 

Rosemarie: OK. 

Gillian: I don’t know. 

Rosemarie: I’m sorry when you said disco I was thinking Sheek, The Brothers Johnson. I was like, i had this image of a glitter ball. 

Gillian: What, your kitchen doesn’t have one? I don’t know. 

Rosemarie: No, no, unfortunately, I couldn’t find one. 

[Laughter]

Gillian: So Rosemarie, you’ve had many years of experience and work dedicating your life to diversity and inclusion issues in a number of different organisations and you now work as a consultant. My question is, what’s what drives you? What’s been your inspiration to dedicate your life to this work? I want to use the word mission. That might not be the right word for you, but…and how has the role changed over the years? 

Rosemarie: Oh, that’s a…what drives me? So what drives me? It feels a bit fraudulent answering that question, because I know I’ve consciously walked away from it before…

Gillian:  Walked away from the question?

Rosemarie: No, walked away, no walked, walked away, walked away from this work.

Gillian: Tell us about that then, why? Why, why? 

Rosemarie: Because I just thought, what the heck? What’s what’s the point? You know, if I, I got to a point really quickly in my work where I was repeating the same stuff that I had been doing when I first started working and I was new, it was always new and news to people. 

‘But hang on, weren’t you born and raised here, you know, don’t you know? How are you? How are you not aware of the of how life is for your fellow brothers, Christian brothers and sisters across the country forget across the world, but right here in our in our cities and towns and villages?’

‘How how are you as a Christian, not engaging in this conversation of injustice and, and inequity and an outright racism within our own churches? How is that not a thing for you?’ 

Gillian: So let’s reel back a little bit, let’s just…you had this role on national minority ethnic vocations officer. 

Rosemarie: No, no, this was before. This was before that. 

Gillian: Okay. Before that. 

Rosemarie: So I’ve been doing this work since I was about 23, 24. OK. Yeah. And when I started, it was like, by that time, Faith in the City had already been published. There were people doing really, really great stuff. I was of that generation that was coming in on the wave of that, thinking we’re just here to like put the crown on top of the top. That was the work, the hard work had been done, now that we can start ushering in this new this, this new era. And it and as we worked in this with…specifically with churches, not generally, we would see that society was having conversations that churches were not having, engaging with issues of injustice and inequality for, regarding their black and brown brothers and sisters that they were not dealing with. And some of our black brothers and sisters were colluding in not engaging with those conversations, for survival reasons mainly. And it was like, well, I’m not sure…maybe there’s a different way of doing this which coincided with my family and I moving to the states for my my husband’s postgraduate study and teaching and engage with a different way of engaging there, that was a lot more ‘you need to take responsibility for your not knowing, it’s not OK for you to say you didn’t know, you did not leave the planet. Everything is knowable.’

Just a little bit more meaty, a bit more muscly in in in in challenging and moving people. And people taking responsibility. So when I came back in 2007 I reorganised all my material and work and offered that as…to theological colleges and churches and did work in, in that regard and and say no to people who just wanted me to come along and tell my story. And that was a real turning point, because they were like, oh, oh, but then how how do we, are we going to know what to do? Yeah, that’s a good question. How how come you don’t know already? Which was a conversation that hasn’t happened before. And so by the time I got this role, you know, I’m very clear about supporting my fellow UKME  global majority heritage men and women who have been called to ordained ministry, but knowing…having a different set of questions for dioceses seeking to encourage people to do that, but also recognising that there are places and spaces where people have already started this work, started it, and they’ve done so quite…with with trepidation sometimes and and a bit of hesitancy. So it just took somebody from the outside saying, well, look, you’ve you’ve done you’ve done this, this is great stuff. How do you want to build on it? How do you want to give it some umfph? What’s your vision for this? You do actually know this stuff. You do already know it, you just haven’t done anything with it. Let’s do something with it. And that has changed a lot of the conversations I’ve had as well, because it because, you know, very often people feel, oh, well, we’re not doing this, we haven’t got this, we haven’t got that. One of the things that I often hear is that, oh, we don’t have, we don’t have any people of UKME heritage here. I said, well, why would you need anybody of that heritage here? Why are you not…would you be prepared if somebody ,people started moving into this part of your world, would you be prepared? And and and how are you preparing? What do you know, how how what conversations are you having, what groundwork are you already doing? 

And to get people to see, actually, yeah, we’ve got stuff to do. So for those people who are not of UKME heritage, but who are really passionate about seeing this work progress and feel and they’ve been feeling maybe I can’t speak up about this because I’m not of UKME heritage, I can’t, I can’t say I can’t do. And I’m like, ah no, you don’t get away that easy. You can definitely say and you can definitely do, because they had the fact of the matter is, is that there are places and spaces that I where I could stand up and say something and it’s not heard. It’s already come in with a with with with a layer of of of pre-assumption, whereas somebody who is not of UKME heritage can stand up and say exactly the same thing – and all of a sudden it’s like, whoa, what was that?

And I learned that in the states, that I was trained to lead. When when it came to talking about racism, none of the people of colour led that session. It was always a white person and almost if possible, depending, obviously, who was available, a white man, and the change in that, the change in the room. Like, wait, hang on, why is she’s sitting down? And so it enabled people to hear things in their own language. It’s a Pentecost moment, hearing things in their own language that makes sense to them and that they can relate to. And that causes a shift in their thinking and and and movement. Yeah.

Gillian: That’s really interesting, listening to your your kind of your pathway and your story. You were really involved and then and this is my word, not yours, but what solution is not making any impact, and then in the States a new approach. And it sounds like you’ve come back and throwing the ball back to the other side, approaching churches. And you also sound really, you know, like, you know, you just became fed up with this process and have used a bit of your anger or disillusionment to throw that back over the fence as well, to challenge people to make some changes. And I wonder how well, how that’s gone down as you’re throwing the ball back to the other side of the court around this issue and saying, you know, you know, you’ve had all the chances, you know, you had to produce all the reports you haven’t acted on them. Why? Why we not done anything. I mean, that’s quite an adversarial approach. And I wonder if you think that’s that’s helped help the process. 

Rosemarie: I think I don’t know, we’ll see. I don’t know how…I think…I think for some people, certainly in my experience so far, some people have been like, ‘Oh, Oh, OK, that’s new. That’s never, never…that’s never been challenged before. And also speaking out when people say…so remember when we had, it was earlier on in this year, where we had those documentaries and there was that BBC documentary and and there were folks who were watching that who were shocked and saddened and who said they were shocked and saddened. And I was in a, I was in a meeting with quite a number of high profile people within the organisation who was saying how shocked and saddened they were and how they…

And I was like, well, yeah, of course, you’d be shocked and saddened because you’ve been missing in action for the past 30 years. Where the heck have you been? Why is it, why are you shocked at this? No person of colour is shocked at this. And we’ve all been living on the same patch for how long? It’s news to you because you’ve just not bother to engage? So my question is, why have you not been engaged now and what are you going to do differently?

Gillian: Yeah, this was a BBC Panorama programme we’re talking about on the church and racism. And I watched that and I have to say…and I watched it with my husband, who’s also a priest, and we found it really shocking and sad to hear I mean, just appalling stories of racism. It’s not the first time I heard these stories. One of the friends of the Guild is Azariah France Williams, in his excellent book, Ghost Ship also talks about institutional racism within the Church of England. And it’s just stories…I mean, when I interviewed Azariah for the podcast, I think I said it was gut wrenching stories. You know, I had to put the book down, just take a moment because there were just so appalling. But having watched Panorama and not notwithstanding the, the terrible stories people suffered, my my question I left with was, is this just about racism, if I can say that, or is is there a deeper problem in the Church of England about abuse of power? 

Rosemarie: Oh it’s yeah, well…

Gillian: It’s got to be bigger – can you even say that, Rosemarie? I’m not sure…

Rosemarie: I mean, it’s it’s…what I have said and what I will say and what I’ve always said, that in our human interactions with one another, it’s never just one thing. Definitely call a thing a thing, but it’s never just one thing.

It is multilayered. It is intersectional. It is multifaceted. And to just focus in on one thing is disingenuous. And, yeah, just dishonest, really, because what it doesn’t do is factor in the other things that are that are part, that allows that to happen year after year, generation after generation, so there is a thing of of apathy, there is a thing of power, and abuse of power. There’s a there’s a thing of entitlement, and there’s also an issue of lack of accountability. And, you know, who do you hold accountable and how do you hold accountable to it? And when is someone just saying, sorry, not enough? You know, some someone says ‘they apologised’. Great – but if there are no consequences what is there to say that, that person might do it again and what the what the documentary, Panorama documentary and Azariah’s book and lots of other books before them I.O. Smith’s book

and oh, goodness, there’s a whole range of them. 

You just you think at what point do we as a, as a, as a church in the broader sense, say this is not who, what we want – and if you can’t just sign up to that, if you can’t lay your own crown down in order to step up to that higher calling of Jesus so that everyone can sit at the table he’s made for all of us, without putting people down or denigrating them because of, because of their ethnicity, the colour of their skin, class comes into that, gender comes into that. And we all embody those multifaceted points, if we can’t have more complicated, complex and more nuanced conversations then really, what is the point? We are going to have…one of the things that did that did shock me about that Panorama documentary was that I knew of some of those reports, but I hadn’t known of some of the later reports. And I thought, oh, that must have been the time when you were away in the States. But that is shocking to me, you know, whereas when in 1985, when that came out, the Faith in the City, I think it was 85, 86. We were just like, waow, this is it. This is the watershed. Things are going. Church is never going to be the same. I thought that I would be in the 21st century trying to explain to people…’well you need to understand that before then, it was this, I know things are very different now and and they’re not…you know, changes have been made, and I’m not denying that, but it feels like tinkering. 

Gillian: And and and my anxieties, a lot of it, from my point of view as a white woman in the church, it seems very box ticking exercises. The amount of interview panels I’ve heard of or been a part of or seen is like, have we invited enough black and brown people to this? You know, who’s going to ask the UKME racism question, you know, and then everyone in the room is like, oh, it’s fine, we’re dealing with this. And it feels like that’s as far as we’ve got. 

How can the church get get more deeply into these issues and tackle it above the box ticking exercise because they’ve just taken out a new report. The Archbishop of Canterbury told General Synod couple of years back, that there was no doubt that the Church of England was still deeply institutionally racist. That set up an anti-racism task force last year. 

Rosemarie: Mm hmm. 

Gillian: And then this year, I’m just so people can catch that are listening. April this year, they publish a report From Lament to Action, proposing another suite of changes. You seemed to really…Faith in The City didn’t work. Is this going to sort us out, do you think? 

Rosemarie: Well, I, I’m waiting to see. There’s nothing in that report that hasn’t been said before in any of the other previous reports. Maybe the words have been been more pointed. There are people who areon the anti-racism task force, this is not their first rodeo. And they’re like, waow, we’re saying this again…Well, let’s let’s see let’s see what happens. I think the stakes are higher this time round, because for the first time in in my observation, for the first time, there are, there’s more commentary and input from younger people and from a wider ethnic group who are like, wait, you people are still talking about this? Wait, you haven’t got yourself sorted on this?

They’ve gone…during the George Floyds protests and stuff. They …my girls were out there, you know, they made their own masks and they went out there with the placards and they were like, you know, there were no church people there. Now there may have been but there was no obvious church presence that they saw. They went to all of them. And I think if we cannot answer, substantially, not just moving the furniture around on the deck of the Titanic, but completely deconstructing and aiming to reconstruct something better we are going to lose that generation because they have nothing to say. 

I was listening to a podcast over lockdown where somebody had said…no it wasn’t a podcast it was a webinar…where somebody had said that the church has a lot to learn from secular society. And you could almost hear people say…’what? what? Us!?’ And he was very clear, he said, think about all the justice legislation that has, that has happened in our country with regards to sex discrimination and race discrimination and equality and equity. None of that has come through church. That hasn’t been our prophetic voice, that hasn’t come from our prophetic voice. And you kind of have to…when there is…very often you hear in in some of some British sort of street music, hip hop music, the phrase, who are ya? And you have to ask, you know, who are you? 

Gillian: Oh, that’s so good. Well, yeah, I just think it’s not like it it doesn’t mention anything in the gospels about this. You know, there’s no male nor female… You know, we have the original manifesto on anti-racism 

Rosemarie: We have it. We have it…salt and light! We have it. We’ve been it’s like  the tail wagging the dog. 

Gillian: It is. I mean, and I think my experience of women in the church, I mean, we’re just behind and the add on anything else more complicated and, you know, entrenched in our history. And it’s just it’s it seems so frustrating. You see the organisation…

Rosemarie:  And and even within that, women in the church, I…it struck me during the 25th anniversary celebrations, it struck me that since the ordination of women, that all these women who had been ordained and and quite a number of them of UKME heritage, really, really bright people and in that space of time…So whenever the 25th anniversary was, which was before… twenty eighteen. Was it 2017 or 2018? At that point there were no bishops of UK, female bishops of UKME heritage, but there was a whole shedload of white female bishops. And so when I hear about…when I hear people talk about women in ministry, all the women’s issues, or you know dot, dot, dot. I have to ask in my head who they’re talking about? I do not see or hear evidence of the issues of UKME women in that conversation.

And, it’s something that is reflected on all sorts of levels. There is a very different narrative there, that, that is, you know, general, the issues of what happens with women generally within the church and the fact that you’re a woman of colour added on top of that, which doesn’t really get talked about, you know, until that conversation is added, until that lens is factored in – not really interested. OK, I’m a woman, too, and I’m not in this narrative. You don’t even know who I am or where my story is. I mean, we have oh, gosh what is the…It’s where they have somebody within the diocese who’s whose role it is to…on on women’s women’s issues, gender. 

Gillian: Sometimes it’s Women’s Dean, Dean of Women’s Ministry?

Rosemarie: Dean of Women’s ministry…I went to an event of Dean of women’s ministries and it was a room full of, you know, some of the smartest women. It was just something really energising about that female energy. But no women of colour. And it seemed like they didn’t even notice. And I’m thinking yeah, there’s something very, very wrong with this picture.

Gillian: It’s sort of a blindness, isn’t it, that goes up. I was at an event for clergy wellbeing, a national event on clergy wellbeing, and that because through the Guild I do some work in that area, I was there and it was sort-of leaders and clergy. There were about 40 people in the room and I stood up…But there was nobody of colour and am, I was and I you know, I don’t know if you get it, I was probably the most junior person in that room. And I just noticed and I thought I should…And then I thought…I’m going to…And then I felt shaky. And I stood up and asked the question to the person who was facilitating the day, and they’d paid for the day and all the rest of it. And they said they weren’t dealing with side issues. 

Rosemarie: There you go! At least their honest!

Gillian:  Yeah. And I sat down and said, I’m not playing anymore. I’m not going to take part in this because this is…And nobody had seen it. And I wonder, Rosemary, if there’s sort of it’s, it’s part of a bigger threat to our institutions in the west at the moment. There’s something really big going on with Covid and the breakdown of the nation state and what’s happening around communications and all our big institutions are now under threat or perceived themselves to be under threat. And I was curious, as I was researching before interviewing you, I was reminded of this Sewell report, it was a government commissioned report on race and ethnic disparities came out this year, I think, or it must have been last year, I can’t remember. And they were, it was a report researching institutional racism. And they concluded that the church and other institutions did not have a problem of racism and made the accusation that we shouldn’t be saying that there’s racism unless we’ve got proper evidence. And there is there’s two sides to there is the other side of the argument that doubts critical race theory and does not want to see these changes. And it just seems sort of there’s this top down anger and resistance against the movement. And I wonder to what degree that might be playing into the church’s ability to ignore what’s going on?

Rosemarie: Well it’s not even playing into it, it’s woven into the church’s inabilities, woven, it’s part of its DNA because the church is made up of its structures, are led by people who were plucked out of these places and spaces of society. 

You, you come, we come to Christ as we are, with everything, the good, the bad and the and the ugly. And we learn how to hide the things that we don’t want to until we find places and spaces where we can work that moves sort of work that out. But, you know, I kept thinking of phrases like, that I’d grown up with ‘those who feel it, know it.’ And, you know, I agree the whole thing about about research. Yes, we do need to have more research. Research costs money. People who want to do research can’t find people to give them money to do it because it’s not sexy enough, it’s, it’s, it’s a third rail subject. And so, you know, and so there is that issue. 

There is the conversation around whiteness and how that in plays in and becomes the lens through which everything is is seen. So and you see that right the way through society, things are a bit different now. I again, I, I, I like to use my girls as a, as a lens through which to see things through. And I, I said to them, when I you know, there was a period of time when you barely saw black people on television and they were like, what? What does that mean? Magazines. But the fact that they are surprising that, you know, the first or that, you know, you have you have a black man editing British Vogue and that being shock, horror. Why? Why, if we’ve been in this country since before…Well, historically, before Roman times and more recently, since it’s the nineteen forties, maybe sometimes earlier than that, certainly my friend’s mum, who who died in her 80s, she was born here. Her parents moved here in the 1920s, she was born in Poplar. She and her sister were the only black people for ages, she’s only ever lived here. She married somebody who moved here in the forties. You know, so she…there are people who have a long history here. Why? Why has that not been reflected in our wider society until recently? And it is about the lens of whiteness and the power of whiteness.

If you deny it and you say it’s not there, that’s where the power is. If you don’t acknowledge it, then it doesn’t exist. If I close my eyes, you’re not there. See, I’ve never seen Gillian. If you open your eyes…no, no need to open my eyes, I’m quite happy doing what I’m doing and everything is tickety-boo. 

Gillian: So is this an education thing? This is why…

Rosemarie:  It’s it’s it’s an education thing…it’s a trans…It’s a deconstruction thing and and and it’s a heritage thing. So one of the illustrations I like to use in my work is the Antiques Roadshow. Only because I’m, I’m addicted to the antiques road show…

Gillian: Oh I love…Sunday night. 

Rosemarie: Yeah, it’s a one of one of the yeah…it’s not a good thing. But one of the things that always strikes me about the antique road show is that people come from all over. They bring the most obscure things. And more often than not, that person can tell you how they came by it. They can tell you the story, whether it was something that was handed down generations  generations, or they went to an estate sale or what. There is a story. They know that story well enough to pass it on to another person so that they can know that story. That hasn’t happened with regards to how we move forward as a multiethnic, multicultural country, that hasn’t happened with regard to race, so with people’s lived experience and research, experience around racism and cross-cultural understanding and

misunderstanding, because when, when people like me, before I came onto the scene and people who’ve come onto the scene since, go in tell their stories, do the training in inverted commas, I’ve got an issue with that. But that’s something else. And and then leave. People think, OK, well, I’ve done it, but they don’t pass it on, it’s not valued, it doesn’t have the Antiques Roadshow element to it. The treasure, what I’ve received enough to pass it on? What if when the disciples went out telling people around about Jesus, the people they told it to, just kept it to themselves? 

Gillian: You’re talking about education. You’ve talked about deconstruction. You’ve talked about passing on the story. So it’s like an embodiment or listening on a deep level to see how it affects your story and then being able to pass it on to other people 

Rosemarie: And allowing it to transform your thinking, your doing, your being and your reading. 

Gillian: And I want to come back to the training, facilitating thing in the second, but could you say a bit more about deconstruction, because I think that’s the one, you said…So one of the things we can do is deconstruct. Tell us more about that and how that might be carried forth into people’s lives of faith and also maybe their lives at church. 

Rosemarie: It’s, it’s a big one. It’s almost its own podcast really. It is, because it’s not it’s not simple and it’s not simple because what it has woven into it are people’s…the things that people understand as being their foundation. So it becomes emotional. It becomes something that they are really well…that they can’t let go of. And so when you have folks, then they get a bit nervous about what that means for them.

But when I say deconstruction, I think the help the. OK, let’s do it this way. 

So very often we get we get told or we hear about institutional racism and structural racism. I think that’s the two, right. So structural racism – if you think of a building, a house, it’s a large house. Now, everything that house is built for a purpose and that purpose is to house every every one that it’s built for. So the idea that anybody else, apart from the people that that house was built for living in it doesn’t even come into, into being. 

So you say if you think of the house as an institution, an institution is built for a particular purpose and a particular people. The idea that other people may be part of that is not even…you know, we’re building this house for who we’ve got here. OK, so the fabric of it is brought into that, how it’s constructed, how many rooms all of that is, is, is part of that. The air that is breathed in that space is all so that people in it can survive and, and and thrive within it.

And then there are people who come and go but essentially it is…When you have..as more and different people have come into the…wanting to come into the house, extensions have been made. But has been made with the same material that the House was originally made with, but the people who was built for the people who are going to have to inhabit it, it wasn’t built for them. But they have to inhabit it. They have to breathe that air, which for them is a little bit constrictive.

The institutional part of it is the people who function within that building. They keep it going the way that it has always been because it works for them. And if you coming in from the outside, you’re there, you’re in it, but you’re like, this really? Could we not have different air conditioning? I’m not sure if this air conditioning is appropriate. And could we have a little bit more space? Because there’s a little bit more of us now and we just need to do things as…Can we? Wouldn’t it be good if we could do something that’s a little bit more multifaceted and the people within it would say, well it works for us, it’s always worked. You’re here, aren’t you? You’re welcome. You haven’t felt unwelcome, have you?

Well, folk have been nice, but it’s been hard to thrive. And I’d like to thrive please. 

Oh, that’s a bit ungrateful. 

You know, so there are all of these little things that go into it. If you want to transform a situation, you have to bulldoze the house.

And have different people around the table saying, OK, we need a house where everyone here can can function and it can be expanded to include, organically, other folk so that people feel that they’ve got some, not just feel, but they actually have some buy-in to the growth of this particular space.

And that’s kind of scary. Because that means that folk have to let go of things that they’ve interwoven their identity into, and that if they let go of it, it might come back to them in a way that they might have to shift.

Change is traumatic. Trauma is real. How you have those conversations and allow people to express their trauma without then them being accused of something or someone and just say, I am scared here, I don’t understand. Well, I you know, our history has been that folk who have in one way express that, clumsily some times, because that’s what you do when you’re scared, you just babble and it all comes out, then gets canceled rather than someone saying, do you know when you said that I heard X, Y and Z? Is that what you mean? And sometimes when people have that put up to them, this is what you said, they like, oh, no. And so what did you mean? Well, I meant this. OK, so right, you said that. So when you said that I’ve heard this, is that what you mean? Now, those conversations are a lot slower and take much longer, but they generate more understanding and the development of a language for people to have constructive, healthy, healing conversation.

Gillian: I love your illustration of that house. I think it’s great, if you could get some clever computer person to make me like an info graphic. And they would build extensions and other people come in and they don’t fit and, but they have to. And I just think, it’s a really beautiful metaphor and has helped me understand in greater depth, I think, the issues that we’re facing right now. But, and it was that word deconstruction that something went off in my head, because what we promote at the Guild is the Christian Healing Ministry, and I must say that phrase like a thousand times a day. But what I mean by it, what we mean by that is that it’s not some magic trick that is done for ill people, you know, the last Sunday of the month, that’s not what we’re about.

The healing ministry is about helping all people to flourish. And when I talk about the healing ministry, I often say, well, what is health? And then what is illness and illness  impacts on our identity, if it’s serious, you know, you might lose a leg or have a bit of your body cut off or you might not be able to leave the house so then your social life changes. So you’re, an illness impacts identity. Therefore healing, the type of healing we talk, we’re talking about is finding out your identity in light of what you’ve been through.

And. And so when talking about the impact of racism on the church and this need for institutional, personal or institutional deconstruction, I just thought, yes, well, that’s what that’s actually what we’re doing with the healing ministry often. You know, people are coming who are traumatised, often can’t articulate, but something’s happened and they feel at a distance from themselves or from the world or from God. Now, the healing ministry comes in and says, you’re your beloved by God, we need to get you back into that space where you can feel it. God always loves us, but sometimes you don’t feel it. And when we do have that sort of integration or an embodied approach, then, then people find healing and wholeness. And it just seemed to me, as you were talking there about the kind of work that’s needed, this is a healing ministry. And we need to also sort of import this healing ministry into the church right now to help with this process. Do people, do people talk about it in terms of healing? Is that a word that comes up or  human flourishing?

Rosemarie: No, no, no. And I’m a great believer in how something starts very much indicates as to how it moves forward. And so if something starts without elements you have to, it takes a it takes a lot more effort to weave it in. So the conversations around racism, when they, when we were first talking about it within society and within church, it’s do’s and don’ts. Apathetic people, bad people. So it’s sort of like this or that, this or this or that. So what has happened is that the conversations around racism did not…were robust and, you know, ‘racism is a sin. OK, so you have to confess your sin and get forgiveness and so on and so forth.’

Gillian: Mm hmm. 

Rosemarie: People people can be forgiven from the sin, but the consequences of that sin will still stay with them. So I’m in, I remember in one, in the church that my husband ministered in when we came back from the States, there was a guy there who was a builder, and his, his testimony was, was one of transformation and reconstruction. You know, in his life. And he, he his lifestyle had led him to a place where he found himself where he had to have surgery and he had lost the muscle one of his glute muscles and so forth, so he walks with a limp. And he, I think he does sometimes to experience pain and discomfort because of that. But he is now, he has gone past through that horrible phase, and he is a Christian and his life has turned around and so on and so forth. And he said something to me, or at least in my presence, where he was saying that he hoped that when he became a Christian, that somehow the fact that he has these injuries in evidence  of the consequence of his last past life would also be healed. And while we were discussing, well, you can be healed from your past, but not necessarily the physical consequences of that. And it’s how, how do you how do you use that? So he has used that in talking to people about drug taking and the consequences of that kind of life. What that can do to your body and some of this and not everything is necessarily hidden. Sometimes those consequences are, physically change you and change you and how you move in the world. And that is part of the conversation that hasn’t been had around racism.

And I often wonder what it would have been like if it had. 

I wonder if we would still be struggling with the denial of it. If if the church had taken up its its mandate and spoke and spoken into it or led with it from a sin, redemption, healing, moving forward, using that story, you know, and how, how much how much more dynamic that conversation would be if the church had let it from that biblical standpoint? 

Gillian: Oh, absolutely. I mean the idea that it’s a new suggestion that the church begin its discussions in theology is it’s shocking, but it happens time and time again. It tries to be a secular organisation and work on secular values but actually, if we start with our core teaching, which is a flourishing of all people, or is that just have to be that technical or theological? Another friend of the Guild, Alison Webster, who’s a theologian based in the Malvens and she reminded me of an African proverb, she she wrote something beautiful for us on healing. She she was struck one morning when she was in Africa saying somebody said, how are you? And she said, how are you? The reply was, I am well, if you are well.

And this very simple and I’ve used that example so often in sermons, this is one thing people remember, really simply express that we are interconnected with one another, with children of God and with God. If we started at that, maybe it wouldn’t have been in the pickle we’re in at the moment. But I wonder to what extent we might be, you know, maybe to try to we end on a slightly optimistic note in a way that, you know, the pandemic that we continue to live through has disproportionally hit BAME harder than whites. And we have the stats now, people of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, other Asian, Caribbean and other black ethnicity have had between 10 and 50 percent higher risk of death compared to white British. I mean, this is this is from a report that came out over the summer, actually. Public Health England report that we now have the data that, that this is simply higher death rate because and they’re still analysing it, but probably a combination of occupation and poverty. This is it being exacerbated by a disadvantage in all accounts. Is this…

Rosemarie: I would challenge that. I would challenge that. Poverty, yes, but that doesn’t account for the, for for the for the highly educated, very well, very well financed people of colour who have also died. 

Gillian: So what do you think? Is it genetic? Trauma?

Rosemarie: No, I don’t. But I do think that it is something that much further back. So I don’t know if you watched the documentary that David Harwood hosted about this very thing and he oh, gosh, he was speaking to an American researcher who has been researching this whole. Gosh, I can’t remember her name, but she was researching how it is that people of colour tend to come off worse with a lot of diseases. And she used this phrase ‘weathering’. That people of colour, because of their lived experience, whether they’re cognisant of it or not, it has a weathering effect. So if you think of it as going back to a house where you’ve got a house that’s painted and over a period of time, the paint gets strips away by the heat and the rain and that constant going…that that that is what people of colour do. So our experience in white society is that, so, for example, if you are a person of colour you have to work three times as hard to even get to first base. That is a stressor. You you, it’s a mental stressor and it’s a physical stressor because adrenaline, weathers your body. If you are on high alert in any situation, it has a weathering effect. But if you, if there are lots of layers of your life where you have to be vigilant and on high alert that weathers you. So her hypothesis is that for people of colour, that weathering means that things like cancer, things like mental health, things like Covid have an unexpectedly high impact because we haven’t because we’re on alert when, our body is not healing, our physicality is not healing enough to fight off things.

Gillian: The weathering impacts on the immune system.

Rosemarie: The weathering impacts the immune system. It impacts our mental health. 

Gillian: Yeah. And so it can be like, well, syndemic effects. So there’s a number of impacts who, they interact together and make it worse.

Rosemarie: Yes, that’s a good word. 

Gillian: And I’ve also, I’ve also, I think that’s extremely interesting. And I’m a generally very interested in the links between the, what psychological impact, how our psychology or stress impacts on our immune function as as well, I think that’s really important. But I’ve also read actually there’s a lot around inherited trauma. Some of the healing texts, The body keeps the score, and the fact that trauma can be inherited and I think is still up in the air whether that’s an epigenetic genetic thing or whether it is a psychological thing but it has, but there’s there is interesting research about the trauma of slave trade and so on, on people of black and ethnic…

Rosemarie: The next generation. 

Gillian: Generational stress makes some sense. 

Rosemarie: And and, you know, some of a lot of work has been done with regards to people who are, who have been who are the next few generations of Holocaust survivors

So the work is there. I just think it’s just really interesting that the conversation hasn’t really, hadn’t it wasn’t even a conversation that was seemed to be in the public sphere until it was research done on Holocaust survivors. And there and then it’s like, oh, I wonder if that’s the same thing with people who are of, whose ancestors were slaves and that whole experience, because I see that, I see aspects of that that enslaved heritage in  in the Caribbean community. I see that I’ve grown up with it. And, you know, my peers and I, we we talk about it, we laugh about it now. But that stuff, the stuff that was said to us, the way that we were raised, the way that we were taught to function in the world has its roots from back then. And we, that that is something that I think as as people of colour we need to talk about. Yes, we are doing better and we’ve survived it and so forth but at what cost and what is it that we are passing on without realising we’re passing on?

So, you know, and, you know, when you have interwoven with that, the hesitancy within UKME communities to engage in mental health issues, it makes it more difficult to have certain conversations, because our survival mechanism is that you just keep going and any sign of weakness, any hint that we are struggling. It’s been used against us. You know, I know that I’ve worked in places where, I where I don’t know how to do stuff. I don’t tell anyone, I go and I find it out myself, because my experience has been that when a white colleague has said, I don’t know anything about that, there’s a oh, let us help you out on this. Yes. But her, his or her ability to do the job is never called into question. But when I have asked for help, my ability to do the job and to cope is automatically called into question. So, I’m not going to tell anyone I can’t do this. I’ve built up for myself over the years a group of people who I can go to and say, tell me about this. What do I need to know about that, what is it I’m not looking? Signpost me to whatever, outside of that space. And that’s how we have survived. And those people who don’t have that, they struggle, you know, and they wonder why they’re struggling, because the fact of their, their being is that it’s assumed that you are not capable. So you’re constantly having to prove that you are, in a way that your white colleagues don’t. And that stress, you know, and that whole African proverb of I’m OK if you’re okay, kind of thing is, is something that has, is interesting to me because I hear echoes of that in my own experience and upbringing and how, how the communities I’ve lived and grown up in has has expressed that in ways. 

And one of my favourite I’ve got one of my favourite playlists. I’ve got various playlists like everyone else, depending on what I’m doing, by Hezekiah Walker. I’m familiar with Hezekiah Walker. He has…and I think Wanita Bynum has done a version of it. And it’s good. I need you to survive. Oh, it’s, it’s like a covenant song. And it said, you know, you know, ‘I’ll pray for you. You pray for me. I need you to survive. You know, I won’t hurt you with words from my mouth. I need you to survive. And you are important to me. I need you to survive.’ And I think that the congregation is encouraged to sing, to sing, to one another, not just say it but sing it..

And when I first heard that in the context of the church service, I was a mess, I was a mess. That’s why I went back and went back to waterproof mascara. You know, just that,  someone saying to you, you are important to me, I need you to survive. It’s nice, but for someone to actually intentionally to think about the tune, to think about the singing and singing it to you. Or for me, singing it to me hit someplace that wasn’t being touched by the spoken word and just…I looked like a crazy woman in church. I was like, I cannot be listening to this song again. And that and that was actually I needed to hear that. It was a very healing moment and why I cling to music for more than… I like to read and I like to hear the spoken word. But, but, but there’s something very special about something set to music. 

Gillian: I need you to survive. It’s quite interesting, in the Healthy, Healing, Hub project of the Guild, me and the team we sometimes chat about, you know, what would the banner look like outside the church?

You know in Alpha it’s come and explore or whatever Alpha is. And I obviously think what Healthy, Healing Hubs should be ‘Come here when that **** hits the fan’ kind of thing. ‘Because, you know, we can deal with that.’ But actually, I need you to survive, I could see that on a banner, you know, like, like we all matter. In this place, in our churches, in our healthy hubs, you’ll be welcome as somebody that matters. You know, that would be just…

you know, let’s not get into what a healing service looks like and what you do with your hands, what prayers you say. Just that’s it. How healing that would be for people to experience. 

Rosemarie: So, yeah, it is, it is, it is incredible. And again, in church, we’ve got these we’ve got these tools. We’ve got these places and spaces that we can draw upon. And, you know there are things and resources that you would come across that I would be like – never heard of that, never seen that. But that is really helping me. And stuff that I would come across that I would bring in and you would go, have not a clue, but cheers anyway thank you.

Gillian: Yes. And this is what we want to do in our project. We want to, we want to collate and collect and promote as well. So people…often, I think, particularly around racism and  I speak as a white woman and I only speak as me, but, you know, we do want to to learn and to embody and I want to know how to equip our Healthy, Healing Hubs to make a difference and to, you know, to do what they can. So what, what as we come to the end of the podcast, Rosemarie, people have maybe listened to us for the last 40 minutes or so. What can they do? How can they put this into practice? Can you give us the three most important things to do now? I mean, there’ll be a bunch of stuff, but if you talking to people of faith, perhaps people who are especially motivated or maybe people who run churches, what what are the most important things to do now?

Rosemarie: Oh, waow. OK, so one of the things I like to say to people is educate yourself. Everything you need to know is out there in the public domain. And while you’re educating yourself, educate your children. These conversations are not too young. There are ways that you can speak to children about this. What does it mean to be a good friend? What does it mean to be an advocate? What does it mean? What does racism mean? What are the many facets of that?

I remember and you know, again, another podcast where someone was asked, when did you start telling, as a black father, when did you start telling your, talking to your children about what they’re going to face when they were out there? And he said, three, four, five. Because very quickly, his son will move from being a very cute toddler to being perceived at 10 and 12 as a threat and a moving target. And so his children need to know what to say and do.

Our Children can’t be going to school and hearing about this the first time, as Christians or even as people who are not…of all faiths and none. That needs to be in your home, it needs to be part of your conversation and not with trepidation, but asking kids, what do you think about that? Did you know that this happens to people? What do you want to do that’s different? Very often as kids sitting down there, eating your food, eating you out of house and home and wrecking your house – they’ve got it sorted.

They’ve they’ve already been they’re already thinking about this in their head. It’s a it’s it’s a thing. So, um. Yeah. Be confident in what you know and which is the other thing, be confident in what you know and build on it. Which is also connected to the educating yourself and be a functional ally. Don’t just wringing your hands and say how horrible, how shocking, how, how, you know…dot, dot, dot. Stand up and ask questions. You know, I applaud you for standing up and asking questions.

My follow up question would have been with that answer, then what’s the point of this conference? Why are we here? And that would generate, you know, how is this biblical? Those kinds of questions, be confident in your cross-cultural conversations. It’s sometimes in order to get clarity, you have to say things like when you say such and such, I heard X, Y and Z, is that what you mean? Now, what’s the purpose of that question? You have given, you have said, I don’t know everything, I think I’ve understood it. I need for you to, to clarify for me if that’s what you meant. So empowers the, the person to explain themselves and maybe even to reflect on what they said. And if that is what they meant and it was offensive, then you need to say, are you, so you’re not, so maybe you’re not aware of how offensive that is. And if you’ve done your own homework, if you’ve done your own research, you can signpost that person. 

And, and just be don’t be afraid to get it wrong, you know, embarrassment. And, you know, people literally die from embarrassment. They die because they haven’t said something that could have transformed someone else’s life or they could have done something. Don’t be afraid to get it wrong. It’s not everyone’s, not everyone is going to respond in a way that’s helpful. But you need to build up your skin on this, people of colour have had to build up their skin living in a largely white society where things are said and done and they’ve had to get up and keep going for. And that has had benefits, but it’s had consequences. But this is this is, this is a warfare, this is this is on the level of spiritual warfare. You just have to keep moving and and don’t be afraid to get it wrong and find and find people that you can, that you can talk to, build up those relationships where you can say, I got it wrong, everybody hates me – nobody hates you, just got it wrong and it will be fine. That is going to transform a lot of people’s lives. 

Fear of not knowing. Fear of getting it wrong is, is hindering a lot of this work unnecessarily. 

Gillian: Rosemarie, thank you so much for giving us your time here on the GoHealth podcast. Oh, it’s always lovely to chat. And thank you for giving us your time.

Rosemarie: You’re welcome. 

Gillian: Thank you for listening to this episode of the GoHealth Podcast. This month, we have been resourcing our GoHealth community members with blogs and prayers, practices around racism and healing. So why not consider becoming a member? Members receive a monthly bundle of resources and opportunities to connect with a wider GoHealth community. We’ve got events going on. We’ve got something really interesting coming up in Advent. And you also get a free Learning to Heal course. An online course worth £50. So it’s just a snap, four pounds a month for all these goodies from the GoHealth community. And, we, we want want to grow this community. We want to invite people to join our movement, to help people to learn to heal and to be healing for other people. Because together, we flourish.