Dear Earth, I don’t want to look at my racism.

I am tired. I’m one of the good guys already. I don’t want to use the wrong words and be judged. I don’t want to take up space. I don’t want to crash into any more pockets of shame, anger or despair. I’m afraid of what I’ll find inside me.

Darling Earth, we all knelt in silence for eight minutes and forty seconds. This is how long it takes to know that a light has been extinguished forever. We felt your steady presence underneath us, and we breathed. There – the grief rises in me again.

Earth, if I want to help heal you, I need to take an unflinching look at myself. I need to see the privileges I enjoy, reliant on the blood and sweat of others. I need to check the assumptions I make. I need to acknowledge how I read ‘white’ (a sea of faces on Antiques Roadshow, upper management, our own congregation) as ‘normal’.

I will get it wrong. I will be called out, and I will welcome that, whilst other parts of me resist and try to hide. I will keep finding layers under layers of internalised white supremacy. This ossified fear and hate will be layered with contrition. I will be sorry.

I am sorry, dear Earth, for the racism I contain. I didn’t put it all there, and it’s my responsibility to root it out.

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If you’re white like me & ready to do some work (with thanks to Yasmin) here are a few books you could start with: Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala, Why I am no longer talking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge, Me and White Supremacy by Layla F Saad. There is plenty of material already available – seek it out. Here’s an article about the links between Racial Justice & Climate Justice. Go gently and be brave <3