In her book, “The Very Good Gospel,” Lisa Sharon Harper defines “shalom” as “everything wrong made right again.” It is my favorite definition of the word. As the world catches fire– literally and metaphorically through increasing social rhetoric and violent policies that strip the civil rights of millions, I find myself longing for shalom: particularly green pastures and the bubbling waters of a low mountain stream. 

Having lived in places with increasingly hot summers for much of my life, even now, I tend to find myself longing for the disruptive coolness of Autumn– the point when the winds shift, the temperature sighs and sinks below eighty and ninety, and a cooling rain both alleviates months of oppressive heat and signals that relief is coming. As we bring in the last of the harvest, leaves change in a growing cascade of color and gradually release themselves from their summer labor. Autumn is a time of release and change; it is when our priorities shift, and communities gather together for learning or sport or for celebration. In so many ways, Autumn is when I, like the leaves, feel like my truest self– Autumn is the season when I feel closest to shalom.

However, as I get older– and the disparities of the world become harder to ignore, I feel my summer longing carrying over. As leaves release the cloak of summer chlorophyll, students of every color and cultural and social identity will now have had the opportunity to browse classroom and library shelves. Many will have noticed that their stories– the stories of their families and their struggles are no longer represented. Some students will raise their hands to ask a question and their voices will be silenced because there are now people that we don’t talk about in class anymore– including the student asking the question. In a few weeks, some students will arrive late to school because their adults had to travel farther and press past armed poll watchers in order to vote. 

When I was a librarian in a small Texas community, there was a little boy who asked his mother if the reason he couldn’t read was because he was Black. Now I wonder how long it will take before that belief will be undeniably true. Not because there has been any change in capability or intelligence– or Black excellence, for that matter, but in basic access and representation. Terrified white and whitewashed legislators are doing their best to reclaim the only culture that they will accommodate- that of white domination and supremacy. In order to do that, they are following the sad pathway of other authoritarian regimes: attempting to control the narrative by literally controlling the narrative. 

This past week has been Banned Books Week. We used to pacify outraged library patrons who saw our displays by reassuring them that banning books was not legal in the United States of America. Unfortunately– legal or not– banned books are now a profound reality in many states and communities across the Country. We also used to say, “It’s just books,” but it has never been “just books.”  Books are history. Books are a representation. When a child– or any person– finds themselves between the pages of a book, they, their story, their experience, their identity– are all validated. There is a reason why white enslavers outlawed and punished reading– and why they later censored Christian scripture by publishing “The Negro Bible.” There is a reason why in September, a candidate for Missouri governor participated in a symbolic burning of “woke” policies at a political event and threatened to burn “woke” books on the lawn of the governor’s mansion. Sadly, they are the same reasons why aggressors throughout history destroyed cultural symbols and forbade the native stories and songs of those they oppressed. Stories are identity; and, Identity is liberation.

If the only books students see on the shelf are those that validate the narrow experience of white colonialism, then they will have little choice other than to believe that the history and experience of white colonial descendants is more true and more valid than that of Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, or other people of color: the diverse excellence of the BIPOC experience whitewashed under the cheap guise of homogenous “greatness.”

W. E. B. Du Bois, Black liberation author and historian once wrote, “The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging, he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost… He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American…” Although terminology has changed, it would not be difficult to argue that today’s proponents of white supremacy are determined that there should be no other self than the whitewashed American with a certain boxed set of ideals, values, beliefs, and expressions.

Sometimes folks confuse “peace” with “quiet;” however, when the proverbial lion lies down with the lamb, neither has given up their lion-ness or lamb-ness. Rather, both have allowed the other to live into the full expression of who they are. For this to be true, we also must assume that violence is not an innate character trait. It is not naturally created in us to commit the violence of erasure or the aggression of silence. Like the leaves of Autumn, we must release the mask that no longer serves us and embrace the diversity of true shalom.