Over time, my songs and now hymns have moved more and more toward social justice and healing.
Learning
I was 17 years old when I wrote my first song. I called it “At Random,” and it was literally a random collection of the thoughts and musings of a White middle-class teenager. The music was good, but the words alone had little serious meaning. I’m 72 as I write now, and I like to think that my music has matured both melodically and lyrically, and can reflect both the world as it is and the world that we are working to create. My journey with anti-racism has had similar qualities, from a naïve sense of comfort with the world to what I hope is a more conscious and intentional way of living.
The notion of calling has been an important part of my faith journey. When I have asked myself over many years about what calling I might have, the answer has always been the same: music. Over time, my songs and now hymns have moved more and more toward social justice and healing, to a more critical look at the use of language, and to anti-racism.
I joined an Indigenous book study group some years ago. We read books that brought us face to face with the brutality and continuing injustices of colonialism, the impacts of residential schools, and the wisdom of Indigenous spiritualities. I began to understand that I was a part of this history of oppression. I wrote songs. I sang them to the book study group. I sang them in church. The work of reconciliation took on life and breath for me.
The song “Where Have You Been” was inspired by some painful conversations with a loved one after the murder of George Floyd. My racial ignorance, passivity, and racism were called out in ways that I had not experienced before. I was shaken. But even with the changes I tried to make in myself, many opportunities for learning remained and still remain. I am a White woman and have never been called names or faced barriers to employment or housing based on my skin colour. My understanding of racism is necessarily limited by my socialization and lived experience. Every thought and assumption that I have about “race” must be looked at and questioned.
I collaborated with an Indigenous friend, Kathryn Fournier, around the words to the song “Where Have You Been.” (Kathryn is Cree on her mother’s side and a member of the Pinaymootang First Nation in Manitoba. She is Franco-Ontarian on her father’s side.) The song I had originally started writing was “Who Did You See?” I knew there was something distant and disconnected about these words but was unable to figure out where to go with the song. In conversation with Kathryn, the song evolved and became a challenge to myself and, I hoped, to other people of privilege. Here are a few of the words:
Where have you been she said to me
The weary, the wounded are calling out for wakening
Where have you been she said to me
No justice no freedom no peace
Where will you go you said to me
There’s work that is waiting
And lives that are crying out to breathe
Where will you go now that you know
No justice no freedom no peace
Words are important and can have the power to either harm or heal. For me, an essential aspect of writing music is that language is inclusive and pushes the boundaries of our understanding of what it is to be human and a part of Creation. A simple awareness of how words like “darkness” and “Black” have been used to portray what is evil and bad remains one of many filters that challenge me to write lyrics that don’t perpetuate racism.
It’s an ongoing journey, with many pitfalls, especially for those of us raised and steeped in racial privilege. Making the commitment to anti-racism is a life’s work.
Faith Reflection
Prayer
Creator God, ever-present, ever blessing,
We seek to find you in all that surrounds us,
in each person we meet,
each heart that beats,
in every rock and tree,
in every gathering of souls that works for justice and healing and reconciliation.
Some among us have lived lives of privilege inside the skin we were born to
and have ignored the racism that lives around us
and the racism that we ourselves have supported or perpetrated.
Some among us have lived with racism from the day we were born
and have suffered the living wounds of oppression and injustice.
These things must change.
Holy One, we ask for your blessing
as we continue the hard work of dismantling all that excludes and oppresses
within our own beloved United Church.
Guide us, God,
to that place where we can have the sacred conversations
that empower and transform,
to that place of listening and learning that comes
from the deepest places in our hearts.
Amen
Living It Out
In her book True Reconciliation,* Jody Wilson-Raybould writes that we need to learn, understand, and act.
I would offer these suggestions for White people like me:
- Learn and understand what systemic racism is and how it presents in the places you find yourself most often: your church, your workplace, your family.
- Act: We can all act in the work of anti-racism. Ask yourself what your part is and find your way into it. “It may not seem significant, but it is most important that you do it” (Ghandi).
I also think that people from diverse racial backgrounds might consider reading True Reconciliation by Jody Wilson-Raybould and consider what “learn, understand, and act” may mean for them.
—Pat Mayberry (she/her) is a singer songwriter and a United Church musician. She is one of the Music United convenors for the Eastern Ottawa Outaouais Regional Council. She has released several albums of original music and has four hymns in the More Voices hymnbook. Pat divides her time between Ottawa and a small hobby farm in Eastern Ontario where she lives with her partner, 9 chickens, 12 barn cats, 2 dogs, 5 horses, and 3 pigs. Her website is patmayberrymusic.com.
*Jody Wilson-Raybould, True Reconciliation: How to Be a Force for Change (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2022).