Process and the God of COLOR
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After centuries of white people colonizing everything, its long past time
we pray to a God of COLOR and bring her spirit to the altar of action.

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learning from Courtney Ariel,
​ Songwriter and Storyteller
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Courtney Ariel is a songwriter and storyteller. She is committed to building bridges of deeper understanding through stories,

Courtney Ariel

white-washed walls have never provided a safe space for us; they will not now.  And as i watch folx tirelessly clinging to uphold institutions as they have always understood them—ignoring the suffering of those around them, protectors of constructs, and champions of whiteness—i keep praying to a God of COLOR~coming to this altar. imagining something new, then reimagining it again, broader this time: to make more space for more experiences, to burn down something that has never served me, and will not now. If we are not listening, and changing from this place, i struggle to imagine we ever will.  I hope we will, and in vibrant color."

Courtney Ariel
​Facebook Post, April 14, 2020

​"For Our White Friends
​ Desiring to be Allies"
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Courtney Ariel's Article (2017)

For Our White Friends Desiring to be Allies

"I am not going to do much coddling here; I don’t know that I believe that love requires coddling. Here are six things you can do to be stronger allies....

1. Listen more; talk less. You don’t have to have something to say all of the time. You don’t have to post something on social media that points to how liberal/how aware/how cool/how good you are. You are lovely, human, and amazing. You have also had the microphone for most of the time, for a very long time, and it will be good to give the microphone to someone else who is living a different experience than your own.

2. For one out of every three opinions/insights shared by a person of color in your life, try to resist the need to respond with a better or different insight about something that you read or listened to as it relates to their shared opinion. Try just to listen and sit with someone else’s experience. When you do share in response to what someone has shared with you, it can sometimes (not always) feel like “whitesplaining” — meaning to explain or comment on something in an over-confident or condescending way. This adds to the silencing of the voices of people of color." ...

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Her assessment of the Article (2020)

I need to say: this article does not come close, not by many miles.  And if you are living with the kind of privilege it speaks of (to those i hold dearly and to those i do not know), you need to be doing so much more than what is here to be doing the work of anti-racism.  And fast.

Written as a letter to dear friends about three years ago, it was the beginning of imagining a tangible way for marginalized folx (specifically for Black People) to provide something to the white people in their lives that ask "what can i be doing?"  I desired for marginalized folx to save their breath, energy, if they chose to engage at all (and we do not need to choose to engage at all).
I wanted for us to stop experiencing the horror of being Black in America while simultaneously being asked how to dismantle systems created to keep Black bodies in bondage, while maintaining whiteness as superior.
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When i was in college, I often drove the road from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara late at night.  I knew that i could keep myself awake as soon as i felt the energy relax and some of the bodies in the car shift into more comfortable positions to find rest,
or saw the tiny flashlights illuminate pages that needed to be read before class on Monday,  It gave me the energy to make the journey. It woke me up! Their trust, it energized me.
because i can't count the times and ways that i've been cared for like this, because this kind of care can be divine.
and now, we are still journeying.  I wrote this article because i wanted marginalized people to find a more comfortable position, or finish a really good book, or laugh loudly,
and SING! LIVE!!! shine, and be so BLACK AF, I LOVE US!!!
I wanted us to BE FREE.
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i wrote this article FOR free. 💰👀
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I did not write this FOR white people, but so that white people might decide, after centuries of colonizing everything under the WHOLE ENTIRE sun to WAKE UP and own the work that is theirs to do. AND FAST, your country is burning.

-- Facebook, 2020

Courtney Ariel's Album "Folklore" on Spotity

COLOR God
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postcript by white person
​for white process theologians

​Dear Courtney, thank you for your posts and your music.   No need to read this postript.   I worry that this note is just one more attempt to add an 'additional' or 'different' insight to what you said above.  You tell us that what is important is "just to listen and sit what someone else's spirit for while."   You also want to invite us to make space for all kinds of experiences not our own.  As we listen we need to talk with one another just a bit, so we can better understand our role in space-making.  Your tell us we must act fast.  This postcript is not for you.  It's for my white friends, especially the process theologians.  I am one of them.

As a process theologian, I grow weary of the idea that God is beyond color.  As I see things, the spacious heart in whose life the universe lives and moves and has its being is a God of COLOR.  She is all colors; she is the multitude of the world as enfolded into cosmic love.  The colors are not eliminated by her love, they are loved in their uniqueness and enhanced in their relations to the others.  Imagine a rainbow the an infinite number of hues and shades, all quite beautiful.  That's God.

We (mainly white) process theologians speak of the multi-colored One as the “consequent nature of God,” although surely there are more poetic ways to speak of Her than this.  More ways to pray to her, sing with her, dance with her,  too.  How is it that those of us with pale faces began to imagine her as beyond color but also (if truth be told) a little white?  It's hard to face the arrogance and self-delusion. 

​Worse than that, how is it that that we've imagined ourselves as having the right to own property, wield power, establish norms, and conquer so much of the world in the name of what we dared call civilization?  In the name of progress?  In the name of religion?  In the name of a colorless God?   And how is it that we decided we had the right to talk all the time, to proclaim our gospels and laws, to proclaim our own greatness, lacking any semblance of a humility to listen to others and to be transformed by what they hear?  Is this not sin?  Is this not blasphemy?  Don’t we need to own our shadow? 

In the spiritual alphabet of process theology, “L” is for listening and “S” is for shadow.  Ownining the shadow including hearing critiques from others, especially those who who have been marginalized from the power dynamics from which we benefit.  "S" is also for silence.  This isn't just contemplative silence of resing in divine presence, is the silence of relinquishing one's own internal chatter in order to hear others: hear their stories and their feelings, their aims and frustrations.

And “I” is for imagination.  Isn’t it llong past time to imagine a world that is beyond our whiteness, step aside, and let it unfold.  Isn't it?   Don't the non-coddling words of Courtney Ariel invite, cajole, and spur us into this.  And don't her love songs provide stimulation as well, because human-to-human love is indeed a window into the deeper love in which we believe. 

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