OHF WEEKLY, Volume 4 Number 18

Letter from the Editor

💛 Hey Reader,

To say there’s a lot going on in the world would be an understatement. When you consider the strain of inflation; navigating our involvement in the war in Ukraine; partisan fractures within local, state, and federal government; social unrest; constantly shifting Covid mask mandates; suppression of the Black vote; not to mention the ways these events impact the lives of all Americans—it feels like society is being catapulted from one trauma headlong into the next. What a uniquely turbulent time to be alive.

A lack of time to process and recover from the trauma, the loss, the grief, the rage we find ourselves awash in as a response to these upheavals only worsens things. I don’t know about you, but that’s certainly been the case for me for at least the past few months. There are a number of topics that have weighed heavy on my mind I’ve wanted to address here in my letters from the editor. But in an effort to muscle through the day, I’ve brushed them aside—because who wants to hear what I’ve got to say about that stuff when experts in the field, people with more insight, more experience, funnier perspectives, more insightful perspectives, more extensive vocabularies, blah, blah, blah . . . can address these topics more adroitly.

Enter Providence, stage right.

Richard Hine, the mastermind behind the online publication, The Daily Edge, reached out to me for another interview about matters close to my heart as viewed through the lens of faith. The interview proved to be a deep dive into several topics. So, instead of cobbling together a hasty letter from the editor, I present to you my latest interview with The Daily Edge’s Richard Hine, entitled, “Is God Love?”

Love one another.

Clay Rivers
OHF Weekly, Editor-in-Chief

NEW THIS WEEK

Such a Thing as Grace

By John Metta
Photo by Mike Vonn at Unsplash.com

“A Letter to My Nephew,” by James Baldwin, one of America’s foremost authors, activists, and playwrights, who addressed the themes of race, the political promise and peril of America, and the human condition, served as the inspiration for OHF Magazine, Issue No. 2: The Baldwin Issue. John Metta’s letter to his beloved niece, Jayla, emulates Baldwin’s, but it focuses on surviving and thriving in the face of the rigors common to living as a Black person in a predominantly white world.

Dear Jayla,

For five years I have considered writing this letter, and for five years I have let cowardice stay my hand. I keep hearing voices in my memory, voices I loved as a child and love still.

They tell me with hugs and reassurances that we are all the same. That there is no need to talk of these things. That, indeed, they only exist because we, by continuing to talk of them, breathe into them life. A Black childhood in a white family is an ocean of words you cling to for breath even as they pull you into their depths. I have avoided writing to you for five years because for ten times as many years I heeded those words, trying to believe them because they came from a place of love. Only after having children of my own did I even begin to see love’s cowardice. Your mother, I am given to understand, has seen this too, now, and faced it. That is a commendable feat. It is one thing for a white mother to adopt a Black child and remain unchanged and unchanging in a society which condemns the child. It is another experience wholly to, in the words of your mother, realize how many friends and family do not believe your child has a right to exist. To face the demon at his very gates. I have always loved your mother as the bird loves the summer sky. I hope facing that demon has not drained her summer’s golden warmth. (Read the entire article at OHF Weekly.)

In Case You Missed It

Confronting Our Nation’s Racist Past
What America can learn about enacting restorative justice.
OHF WEEKLY•Michael Greiner
Michael Che, the Enlightenment, and Whiteness
To ask “what was here before whiteness” is to open the more dangerous question: what had to be eliminated, for this way of organizing reality to appear natural
OHF WEEKLY•Rebecca Hyman

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Final Thoughts

Top photo by Rod Long on Unsplash