Category Archives: Spirit Filled Network

NETWORK Lobby Advocates for Catholic Social Justice

Ecological Justice Means Holistic Justice

Laudato Si Week Calls Us To Advocate For Our Whole Community

Virginia Schilder
May 27, 2022

This is part three in a three part reflection on Laudato Si Week, which is May 22-29, celebrates the anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical on integral ecology and care for creation by inviting all people of goodwill and prayer and study to on how they can tackle the climate crisis.

Read Part One Here | Read Part Two Here

The Catholic tradition affirms this interrelationality and calls us to honor our interdependence in holistic, grounded, ecological communities. One of the key principles of Catholic Social Justice is “Care for Creation.” In addition to conserving the Earth and curbing climate change, this principle calls us to critically examine how we live — how we encounter and treat living, breathing bodies and how we understand ourselves and what we need to live well.

This means reflectively asking ourselves: What does it mean to live in ecological community?

Luckily, ecological community exists all around us – in the interactions between plants and animals (including humans) outside your window, for example, but also among humans anytime we help one another and work for our mutual flourishing. Alternatives to the alienation of our present structures are already in practice, modeled by those who choose, as best they can within damaging systems, to live out ecological harmony. Through even small acts of connection, we participate in our common ecosystem life, and thereby resist systems of destruction and disconnection.

Promoting ecological justice policies, especially as they arise in NETWORK’s Build Anew agenda, embody Catholic Social Justice in their care for the earth and its inhabitants. These policies include ending fossil fuel tax subsidies, guaranteeing clean, safe drinking water as a right in all communities, updating water infrastructure and protecting watersheds, restoring ecosystems, instituting widespread renewable energy access, and developing other green infrastructure and natural solutions. They include curbing the ongoing conversion and destructive development of land (especially Native lands), and supporting green economies, localized agriculture, and responsible and integrated land stewardship.

As we enact other social and economic policies, we have a responsibility to make equitable ecological impact a key consideration. Dr. Kate Ward writes that in a just economy, “The environmental costs of economic production, which impact human health and livelihood, would be borne equitably when they cannot be eliminated.”

The same goes for environmental benefits, which we must equitably share. Our economic restructuring, including with the recovery package, must center ecological impact while prioritizing equity and community needs – because protecting the most vulnerable communities necessarily means protecting the land, air, and water on which they depend.

But above all, we are called to adopt an integral ecological orientation in our advocacy work and in the way we envision a just society. This means taking an ecosystems-view: highlighting our interrelationality, rooting more deeply in the land, and working from and in communities to conserve and promote mutual flourishing. It means taking seriously our interdependence with and embeddedness in all of creation, and letting that realization transform our politics.

Additionally, we can never discuss ecological justice without speaking of colonialism. Colonialism operates in large part via the stealing and destruction of the lands, waters, and wildlife on which Indigenous peoples’ livelihoods and cultures depend. Native Americans and First Nations peoples have sustainably inhabited and skillfully stewarded North America for millennia. It is impossible to truly respect and honor Native communities without also respecting and honoring their rights to land access, inhabitation, protection, and stewardship. Ecological justice means ensuring that economic development does not further burden Native communities with environmental destruction, and that our policies cease the ongoing usurpation and poisoning of Native lands.

Regardless of our issue area or community role, we are called to see that building thriving communities requires not domination over but harmony with the Earth. Because in an ecological sense, justice means the fullness of all God’s holy creation in integrated community.

Virginia Schilder, a graduate student attending divinity school in Massachusetts, completed a one-year fellowship with NETWORK’s Communications team in early May 2022.

NETWORK Lobby Advocates for Catholic Social Justice

Ecological Justice Means Economic Justice

Laudato Si Week Calls Us To Reject Oppressive Structures

Virginia Schilder
May 26, 2022

This is part two in a three part reflection on Laudato Si Week (May 22-29, 2022) which celebrates the anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical on integral ecology and care for creation by inviting all people of goodwill and prayer and study to on how they can tackle the climate crisis. 

Read Part One Here | Read Part Three Here

Ecological injustice is intimately linked to economic injustice. They both refer to how we live in our common home, Earth – in fact, the “eco” in both “ecology” and “economy” comes from the Greek word “oikos,” meaning house!

At present, we distribute the resources of our home through a global economy that is based on accumulation, consumption, competition, extraction, and exploitation. Global, imperial capitalism has long been driving the degradation of local sustainable economies and food systems, as well as natural resources depletion, habitat destruction, and the mass pollution that has created climate change. In this way, our capitalist system and its concentration of resources is fundamentally at odds with ecological flourishing, which is predicated on practices of sharing, cooperation, reciprocity, and respecting limits.

The central role of capitalism in ecological degradation further exemplifies the way in which the ecological crisis is inseparable from our structures of economic, racial, and social oppression. All of these interconnected realities reflect a need for something that Pope Francis calls “integral ecology” in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si.

Integral ecology refers to an interstructural and holistic approach to political, social, economic, and environmental problems. What integral ecology gets at, essentially, is that we live in an interconnected world. We are connected to each other, as well as to the Earth’s lands, waters, air, non-human life, and climate. Similarly, structures of power and oppression – such as capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and colonialism – are also intertwined.

This is why Pope Francis observes, “We are not faced with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.” Francis emphasizes that the health of our institutions has implications for the health of the environment, our bodies, and our communities. As a result, Francis offers, “Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.”

Integral ecology has much to teach us about ourselves as holistic, interdependent communities. It helps us see the ways in which our present socioeconomic structures disrupt harmony with other humans and the Earth. Many of us may feel alienated from one another, from the land we inhabit and the other creatures around us, from what we produce and what we consume. But in ecosystems, all beings are enwrapped in an enormous web of reciprocal interrelation.

Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese highlights Pope Francis’ teaching that “Relationships take place at the atomic and molecular level, between plants and animals, and among species in ecological networks and systems. For example, [Francis] points out, ‘We need only recall how ecosystems interact in dispersing carbon dioxide, purifying water, controlling illnesses and epidemics, forming soil, breaking down waste, and in many other ways which we overlook or simply do not know about.’”

We too are embedded in these webs. Pope Francis affirms that the natural world is not simply our “environment.” Nature is not something separate from us, nor the mere setting in which we live. Rather, “we are a part of nature.” Plants, animals, the air, water, fungi, bacteria, and soils are members of our communities — or rather, we are members of their communities! — and our flourishing is linked to theirs.

We have the choice of either participating in our ecosystems with care and respect, or forgetting our embeddedness, taking more than we need, and ravaging the land and each another.

Virginia Schilder, a graduate student attending divinity school in Massachusetts, completed a one-year fellowship with NETWORK’s Communications team in early May 2022.

NETWORK Mourns the Lives Lost in Uvalde

NETWORK Mourns the Lives Lost in Uvalde

May 24, 2022

We grieve the murder of innocent children in Uvalde, Texas. The loss of so many lives to gun violence in our country is a tragedy that must not be acceptable to us or to our elected officials.

This perpetual violence in our society is evil. We must envision, and create, a better future. May we come together to transform our politics and transform our country so that we consistently affirm and protect the God-given dignity of every person,

We hold the children, families, teachers, and entire Uvalde community in our prayers  and all whose lives have been impacted by gun violence.

Prayer: Let the Shooting End from Sisters of Mercy of the Americas.

Social Poet Award Winners | NETWORK Lobby Celebrates 50 years of Justice

Gratitude and Memories from Our Spirit-Filled Celebration

Gratitude and Memories from Our Spirit-Filled Celebration

Joan Neal and Mary Novak
April 25, 2022

We are full of joy, hope, and gratitude for the NETWORK community! Our time together at the Advocates Training and Justice Ablaze Gala was the perfect way to honor the 50 years of work we’ve done together.

We have selected a few favorite photos to share with you, with more to come in the weeks ahead! Thank you to those who celebrated in D.C. and those who held us in your hearts. We are on this sacred journey together.

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NETWORK Lobby invites you to join your Lent 2022 journey with ours. Our weekly Lenten lesson includes reflections and a video series on individual bias and racism and racist policy built into the US tax code

Lent 2022: Lent Calls Us to Atone

Lent 2022, Week 6: Lent Calls Us to Atone

View earlier Lenten Reflections: Ash Wednesday | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 

Mary Novak
April 8, 2022

Watch Tax Justice For All

The Conclusion (starting at at 38:37)
As Lent gives way to Easter, we must ask ourselves, how can we atone for our part in the systemic evils that oppress so many? How can we carry the lessons that we’ve learned this Lent with us? One practical exercise is found in NETWORK’s Tax Justice Calculator. In the final video installment, our interactive tax calculator lets you simulate the impact that a more just tax code could have.

Questions for reflection:

  1. How can I incorporate what Tax Justice For All taught me about racist policies and laws into my daily life?
  2. How can I continue to do the work of recognizing racist structures and policies and (if applicable) how they directly or indirectly benefit me?
  3. What would it look like for our society to be transformed into one that has eradicated racist structures and policies?

What does it mean for us to atone?

This Lenten season, NETWORK invited you to journey with us in exploring racist impacts hidden in something mundane: the tax code. Through our Tax Justice for All resource, we examined how tax policies historically and systematically disadvantage Black and Brown families and disproportionately benefit white people and the ultra-wealthy.

We all have a part in this. Those of us with the right to vote to bear a responsibility for who we elect and the policies they enact. And Catholics and other people of goodwill have a moral duty to see that our government policies benefit people pushed to the peripheries of society. Pope Francis calls this a lofty form of love.

As we journey through Lent in preparation for Holy Week, the language associated with Jesus’ suffering and death becomes familiar: atonement. But this complex concept is too often oversimplified as Jesus dying “for our sins.” Accepting this shortened summary fails to capture the pernicious nature of sin in our world and convey what is demanded of us as participants in God’s transforming grace. This is why we have focused on one aspect of structural sin with our Tax Justice For All series.

It is important to reflect more broadly as well. On April 9, 2022, NETWORK will host a special conversation on “White Supremacy and American Christianity,” featuring Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), Father Bryan Massingale of Fordham University, and Dr. Marcia Chatelain of Georgetown University, the recipient of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History. Watching this conversation can also serve as a form of penance, educating ourselves about the reality of white supremacy in U.S. Christianity. 

Many people do not realize that the Catholic Church did not abolish ‘penitential days’ on Fridays year-round. In fact, the Bishops’ 1966 statement says “Friday should be in each week something of what Lent is in the entire year.” Today, in place of — or in addition to — fasting from meat on Fridays, people are encouraged to engage in other personal penance.  

As someone who holds many privileged identities in our society, I can think of no worthier personal penance than the reflecting on systemic racism, examining my own complicity in it, and finding paths forward to end the sin of racism.  

In the hope of Easter, I believe accepting this work of penance will allow each of us to atone and be transformed. 

Good and gracious God, as we prepare ourselves to share in the joy of Easter, open our hearts and minds. Help us to see what we would rather not see, especially the suffering caused by the injustice of systemic racism. Help us reflect on these painful realities and see them for what they are. Help us to avoid despair and to move from reflection to action, galvanized by your Spirit. Grant us the courage to speak out and the clarity to cooperate with your grace in building the world anew. Amen. NETWORK Prayer to Move from Reflection to Action
NETWORK Lobby invites you to join your Lent 2022 journey with ours. Our weekly Lenten lesson includes reflections and a video series on individual bias and racism and racist policy built into the US tax code

Lent 2022: Lent Calls Us to See Injustice and Build Anew

Lent 2022, Week 3: Lent Calls Us to See Injustice and Build Anew

Now that we’re aware of government discrimination, we may balk at feeling responsible for it. But, we’ve seen it. The discrimination has been laid bare. We can’t unsee the injustice.

View other 2022 Lenten Reflections: Ash Wednesday | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 4 | Week 5|
Week 6

Meg Olson
March 18, 2022
Watch Tax Justice For All – Week 3 (at the 14 minutes and 24 seconds mark).
This week, we see how wealth and education intersect to impact economic outcomes for our families. Consider how tax codes and laws can cause real harm. We’ve compared current marginal tax rates to those of the 1960’s and have seen how the 1960’s tax schemes contributed to equitable economic prosperity. Today we tolerate a destabilizing stratification of wealth where the ultra-wealthy and wealthy are favored under the tax code. Why should those who earn exponentially more than the rest of us, like CEOS, be exempt from paying their fair share of taxes?

Questions for reflection:

  1. When is a time that I have benefitted from something I didn’t earn?
  2. When I encounter someone who is suffering some misfortune such as poverty, do I assume they somehow deserve it? Does my opinion change based on that person’s race?
  3. What am I prepared to do to ensure that structures in my world are more equitable?

Thank you to NETWORK Grassroots Mobilization team members Sr. Emily TeKolste, SP and Colin Martinez Longmore for leading us through these lessons. We’ll watch more together next week!

View earlier Lenten Reflections: Week 1 | Week 2 | Ash Wednesday

When we encounter something unpleasant, we sometimes say we ‘can’t unsee’ that, and residual trauma can linger for years, or even decades. Seeing can change us forever – so it’s important that we do it. When we navigate through life with blinders on, we don’t see the harm we cause, but Lenten repentance relies on clear and honest reflection. Without clarity, how can we achieve true conversion and foster a deeper relationship with Jesus and His Father?

We know that you want to create change that makes life more just. But before we advocate for policies that dismantles systemic racism, we must free ourselves from harmful biases, like the idea that wealth correlates to deservingness. In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus underscores this point: “Those eighteen people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means!” (Luke 13:4-5). It’s a striking comment on our culture that people are tempted to expect bad things to happen, like drive-by shootings or failing schools, in rougher neighborhoods; and good things to happen, like new single-family homes and dog parks in good neighborhoods.

Federal, state, and local laws have negatively impacted economic progress for Black and Brown people. From post-WWI federal public housing policy, red-lining, and the tax code to the ‘War on Drugs’ and school funding, the dire gap in wealth disparity between white and Black families can be traced to government intervention. A 2015 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston showed that the median net wealth of Boston’s white households is nearly $250,000, while that of Black households is $8. Let that sink in. All Black and Brown people aren’t prevented from wealth-building opportunities like buying a home, contributing to a child’s 529 college savings plan, and saving for retirement. But as the Boston data shows, far too many have been unable to overcome the obstacles of discriminatory lending, housing, and tax policy to live the liberative, dignified life that God wants for ALL OF US.

Now that we’re aware of government discrimination, we may balk at feeling responsible for it. But, we’ve seen it. The discrimination has been laid bare. We can’t unsee the injustice.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, a market spawned for on demand, short term contracted work. This “gig economy” boomed during the COVID-19 shutdown as services like Lyft, Uber Eats and dog walking were in high demand. The people in these jobs may  provide vital services, but they don’t enjoy wages, benefits and labor protections that traditional employers must provide. A significant portion of gig economy workers are Black, Brown, and immigrants. Their wages are unpredictable and stagnant and they are practically barred from the opportunity to build wealth.

St. Joseph’s feast day is tomorrow. Use his example to see the sacred character of all who seek to make a home for themselves and provide for their families. Consider how what we’ve seen together in the Tax Justice For All resource can help us Build Anew the economic and social structures that are just for all, especially those who struggle to overcome racist policies and laws.

Good and gracious God, as we prepare ourselves to share in the joy of Easter, open our hearts and minds. Help us to see what we would rather not see, especially the suffering caused by the injustice of systemic racism. Help us reflect on these painful realities and see them for what they are. Help us to avoid despair and to move from reflection to action, galvanized by your Spirit. Grant us the courage to speak out and the clarity to cooperate with your grace in building the world anew. Amen. NETWORK Prayer to Move from Reflection to Action
NETWORK Lobby invites you to join your Lent 2022 journey with ours. Our weekly Lenten lesson includes reflections and a video series on individual bias and racism and racist policy built into the US tax code

Lent 2022: Lent Calls us To Recognize Our Limits

Lent 2022, Week 2: Lent Calls us To Recognize Our Limits

This Sunday’s Gospel, the Transfiguration, offers a vivid account of the disciples being shown what was hidden from them, the divine reality of Jesus’ identity. We too must strive to recognize the divine in every person and learn to reverence them and their stories in ways that reflect and honor the truth embedded in them. 

View other 2022 Lenten Reflections: Ash Wednesday | Week 1 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6

Sr. Erin Zubal, OSU
March 11, 2022

Watch Tax Justice For All – Week 2 (at 7:47)

In this week’s reflection we’ll explore inequities and racist policies embedded in our tax structures with individual and family scenarios. I encourage you to reflect on financial issues like college savings and student loan debt, and how they impact communities disparately. For instance, student debt and slower income growth are among drivers of the growing racial wealth gap.

More than 84% of college-educated Black households in their 30’s have student debt, up from 35% three decades ago, when today’s Baby Boomers were the same age. The amount of debt has also soared higher. Yet, many older people assume that today’s young adults have the same advantages they did and should have no problem achieving the similar success.

Questions for reflection:

  1. What are privileges I enjoy in my life without fully appreciating it?
  2. When have I avoided seeing or recognizing the suffering of another person?
  3. How does it make me feel, emotionally and physically, to realize the depth of the disadvantage or injustice faced by another person?
  4. What keeps me from recognizing God in every person?

Thank you to NETWORK Grassroots Mobilization team members Sr. Emily TeKolste, SP and Colin Martinez Longmore for leading us through these lessons. We’ll watch more together next week!

Lent calls us to repent

In Lent, God challenges us to let go of pride and recognize our limits and our dependence on the divine. When we fast during Lent, we seek to escape the limits of our experience by being in solidarity with those who go without food and feeling the pain of hunger even briefly. But we also need to recognize the limits of our perspective and life experience in other areas.

When we only experience our own background and its privileges, it’s easy to assume that everyone is like us. In many ways, I had to become a social worker providing direct service in the county jail to realize what I had taken for granted growing up as a middle class white woman in Ohio. Those early years as a social worker, and then as an educator, formed and shaped me to be a better woman religious, social worker, and educator who could name and understand her privilege. Pope Francis preaches integral ecology, which is the recognition that we are all interconnected. This recognition should extend to our neighbors we can’t see. Especially those pushed into the margins in ways we don’t understand and are disadvantaged by our very laws and policies.

Good and gracious God, as we prepare ourselves to share in the joy of Easter, open our hearts and minds. Help us to see what we would rather not see, especially the suffering caused by the injustice of systemic racism. Help us reflect on these painful realities and see them for what they are. Help us to avoid despair and to move from reflection to action, galvanized by your Spirit. Grant us the courage to speak out and the clarity to cooperate with your grace in building the world anew. Amen. NETWORK Prayer to Move from Reflection to Action
NETWORK Lobby invites you to join your Lent 2022 journey with ours. Our weekly Lenten lesson includes reflections and a video series on individual bias and racism and racist policy built into the US tax code

Lent 2022: Lent Calls Us to See True Gifts

Lent 2022, Week 4: Lent Calls Us to See True Gifts

Wealthy white people cling to the narrative that they’ve earned their wealth and shouldn’t have it taxed, while Black and Brown families whose sweat and blood built that wealth for white families face heavier tax burdens and fewer tax benefits. The reality, though, is that all we have is gift. The whole of Creation and our very lives are unearned gifts from God.

View earlier Lenten Reflections: Ash Wednesday | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

Emily TeKolste, SP
March 25, 2022

Watch Tax Justice For All – Week 4 (starting at at 19:06).
This week, we explore the impact of tax codes on employment-based income and reveal preferences enjoyed by the well-resourced. Areas like Joint filing bonuses, Earned Income and Child Tax Credits, and corporate CEO compensation are discussed. Did you know that in the last 40 years, CEO’s compensation has increased 1,070%; but typical workers’ compensation has increased by 11%?
Following his election nine years ago, Pope Francis spoke of desiring “a church that is poor and for the poor.” We must always remember whose Good News we proclaim – Good News for the poor.
Questions for reflection:

  1. Do our policies live up to that promise of good news for the poor?
  2. How can we be for those who are unjustly burdened by our system?
  3. How can we witness to the actions of Jesus and reflect the values of the Good News that casts down the mighty from their thrones, lifts up the lowly, and sets captives free?

Thank you to my NETWORK Grassroots Mobilization teammate, Colin Martinez Longmore, for co-leading us through these lessons. We’ll watch more together next week!

Today we celebrate the Annunciation, the feast of the shocking announcement of an angel to a young Palestinian girl that God would enter into and redeem human history in the humble form of a child born to her. Her response “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” could be read as ‘I have done nothing that could have caused this to happen.’ It’s a reaction of amazement and grace, recognizing the great generosity of God.

This past weekend, I participated in a discussion group for one of my sisters who is preparing to profess final vows this summer. A group of eight sisters – some who have lived religious life for over 50 years – gathered to discuss the vow of poverty and reflect on the related chapter from Sr. Juliet Mousseau’s new book, Prophetic Witness to Joy: A Theology of the Vowed Life. One theme that stuck out for me from this reading and the discussion was that of believing that all we have is gift.

In communal ownership, the vow of poverty, women religious abandon the idea of the need to earn basic sustenance for ourselves and for all in society. 

As Sr. Juliet says, “A practical result of this common ownership and sharing is to remove the connection between what I have earned and what I can spend. No longer is personal worth or worthiness equated to financial income.” She continues, “In disavowing personal wealth and ownership, we also recognize that all we have is gift…Because those resources are recognized as gift, they must be used for the benefit of the society as a whole.”

In my work over the past couple of years, particularly in researching and teaching about injustice in the U.S. tax code, I see how little the attitude of gift is reflected in our society, especially in light of the giftedness that wealth and it’s preferential treatment in the U.S. tax code are to white people in our country. White families benefitted from stolen land and stolen labor to build their wealth and then built a tax code that preferences the ultra-wealthy while taxing most Black and Brown families at higher rates due to their lower levels of wealth.

Wealthy white people cling to the narrative that they’ve earned their wealth and shouldn’t have it taxed, while Black and Brown families whose sweat and blood built that wealth for white families face heavier tax burdens and fewer tax benefits. The reality, though, is that all we have is gift. The whole of Creation and our very lives are unearned gifts from God.

Perhaps this is why immediately after the angel announces to her the gift of Jesus, Mary proclaims the “Magnificat,” a prayer that declares and celebrates a God who casts down the mighty and lifts up the powerless. This prayer is a continuation of the entire prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures and a precursor of the Gospel – the Good News of Jesus’s life.

Good and gracious God, as we prepare ourselves to share in the joy of Easter, open our hearts and minds. Help us to see what we would rather not see, especially the suffering caused by the injustice of systemic racism. Help us reflect on these painful realities and see them for what they are. Help us to avoid despair and to move from reflection to action, galvanized by your Spirit. Grant us the courage to speak out and the clarity to cooperate with your grace in building the world anew. Amen. NETWORK Prayer to Move from Reflection to Action
NETWORK Lobby invites you to join your Lent 2022 journey with ours. Our weekly Lenten lesson includes reflections and a video series on individual bias and racism and racist policy built into the US tax code

Lent 2022: Lent Calls us to Individual and Communal Repentance

Lent 2022: Lent Calls us to Individual and Communal Repentance

View our Lenten Reflections: Ash Wednesday | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5

Joan Neal
March 4, 2022

Lent calls us to repentance. It calls us individually and as a community. Sometimes it can be difficult to see our individual failings. Sometimes they’re right in front of us, whether we like it or not. It can be even harder to see our collective failings.

But Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) has unearthed and distilled one collective failing that should distress justice-seekers in the United States. Studying public opinion data year after year, he has found that white Christians are consistently more likely than religiously unaffiliated whites to deny the existence of systemic racism.

This disturbing fact is a driving force behind next month’s NETWORK-sponsored event, “White Supremacy and American Christianity,” featuring Dr. Jones, Father Bryan Massingale of Fordham University, and Dr. Marcia Chatelain of Georgetown University.

But as we look forward to that event and prepare ourselves for the joy of the Resurrection at Easter, it is appropriate that we hone our capacity to recognize systemic racism and to be equipped to act in response to it. As writer, activist, and NETWORK board member Leslye Colvin puts it, “We can’t have reconciliation when you are unwilling to do your own work, as painful and difficult as it is for you.”  As Dr. Jones points out, this is work that Christians, particularly white Christians, must do and Lent is an opportune time to do it.

“We can’t have reconciliation when you are unwilling to do your own work, as painful and difficult as it is for you.”  ~Leslye Colvin, writer, activist, and NETWORK board member
So for the next six weeks, we will explore systemic racism in a form truly obscured from our view in a system we take for granted: the U.S. tax code. We will do this by intentionally working our way through the NETWORK resource Tax Justice for All, which pinpoints inequities and racist policies embedded in our tax structures.

While Lent and taxes may seem like an unusual combination, the reality is summed up by comedian and commentator John Oliver: “If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring.”

And so it’s incumbent on us to learn. If we can’t see it, how can we ever repent and make amends? So I encourage you to watch the introduction to this resource and begin to wrestle with the questions below. To confront systemic racism, we must move from reflection to action. And that begins with understanding this reality.

Watch the Introduction to NETWORK’s Tax Justice For All Experience

Watch the first 7 minutes and 45 seconds of the Tax Justice for All workshop to learn from NETWORK Grassroots Mobilization team members Sr. Emily TeKolste, SP and Colin Martinez Longmore why it is so important to learn about the inequities embedded in the U.S. tax code. Next week, we’ll watch more together!

Questions for reflection:

  • What are privileges I enjoy in my life without fully appreciating it?
  • When have I avoided seeing or recognizing the suffering of another person?
  • How does it make me feel, emotionally and physically, to realize the depth of the disadvantage or injustice faced by another person?
Good and gracious God, as we prepare ourselves to share in the joy of Easter, open our hearts and minds. Help us to see what we would rather not see, especially the suffering caused by the injustice of systemic racism. Help us reflect on these painful realities and see them for what they are. Help us to avoid despair and to move from reflection to action, galvanized by your Spirit. Grant us the courage to speak out and the clarity to cooperate with your grace in building the world anew. Amen. NETWORK Prayer to Move from Reflection to Action