Tag: Lindsay Airey

Tangela Harris—Remembering a Fierce Midwife of Justice

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of WitnessesLeave a comment

TangelaBy Lindsay Airey

The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us—the poet—whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free.
Audre Lorde

Tangela. Dear, fierce and tender Tangela. I just heard the news. I don’t even know how you died. I just got word pouring in over social media. 40 years old. How can you be dead? How can it be true?

Mind racing with questions. And tears. Tears and tears and tears. How can it be so? You were so ALIVE! Oh, and the children. The babies who must be grieving your loss. You were so beloved. So depended upon. So ready to respond in the time of need. So true a human. Oh, and how great were the burdens you carried. Rest now, dear Sister. Though our tears and cries long to bring you back, to fill the great void you have left.
Continue reading “Tangela Harris—Remembering a Fierce Midwife of Justice” →

Taking The First Step: Reflections on Powerlessness from an Adult Child of a Non-Alcoholic Family (and Citizen of a World Gone Mad)

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses1 Comment

L and RyBy Lindsay Airey (right, with nephew Riley), on the occasion of working her First Step, prodded by the context and struggle of Beloved Detroit…

Admitting our powerlessness may be very difficult for us. After all, we are the competent ones who held the family, the job, or the world together while the alcoholics in our lives created chaos. How can it be that we, the responsible ones, are powerless?
Pathways to Recovery, AlAnon Family Groups

It is so true. I thought my being “good,” “perfect,” “responsible,” “aware,” “sensitive,” and “insightful” would all be what saved my family and stopped the chaos I felt. If I just figured out what was wrong, what was hurtful, and told them, they would surely change. They just didn’t see it (I told myself), and when they do, they’ll change! But all my tears, insight, responsibility, “goodness,” and withdrawing never saved a single one.
Continue reading “Taking The First Step: Reflections on Powerlessness from an Adult Child of a Non-Alcoholic Family (and Citizen of a World Gone Mad)” →

Twas Grace

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race1 Comment

black christBy Lindsay Airey. Originally published in the Detroit Catholic Worker paper On the Edge. Lindsay is a marriage & family therapist, radical disciple, and recovering AlAnon member, living and working alongside her husband Tom, the Larkins St. Community, and St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. Her activist work has been focused with We The People of Detroit, organizing around the ongoing water struggle.

“T’was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.”      -John Newton, Amazing Grace

If not for grace, I could never meaningfully engage the inner work of healing and repenting from white supremacy. This “taught my heart to fear” kind of grace is what compels me into this work. It is also what keeps me in it. Perhaps understood most deeply by recovering addicts and abusers, this “amazing” grace is foreign to the distorted, cheap & enabling grace vended on the daily at your local mainstream, white-dominated, suburban and affluent Christian church. Meanwhile, on the outer fringes of the (c)hristian tradition, this slave-trader-turned-abolitionist kind of grace may be the penultimate anti-white supremacist/anti-racist “program” we Christians have uniquely to offer the struggle for racial equity and reconciliation in America. Continue reading “Twas Grace” →

Upstream Swimming Made Easy: Resisting the God of Personal Health & Being Re-arranged by Beloved Community

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology1 Comment

neighborhood gardenBy Lindsay Airey

When I walked past the magazine racks at the CVS the other day, I inadvertently glanced at a magazine that had a nondescript, mid-30’s, white woman on the front cover. She was scantily clad in sports bra and spandex, totally toned, abs of steel and zero body fat. You know the cover I’m talking about. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all—placed and marketed strategically and relentlessly around every corner to make all us women feel bad enough about ourselves that we will become better consumers of the latest diet fad or work-out craze.
Continue reading “Upstream Swimming Made Easy: Resisting the God of Personal Health & Being Re-arranged by Beloved Community” →