From your admin, Marlise

I am sitting here peeling oranges for my sick kiddos and me, thinking about how encouraging the metaphor of the orange tree truly is for our space here at Lace on Race. We started with what appeared to be a dead tree, or at least a tree in need of some desperate care. We addressed our habits, asked for help, changed our focus, and started the important work of making fertilizer. Read Lace’s reflection here if you have not already. http://bit.ly/porangetree

I am realizing, as I watch my children’s faces turn sticky orange, that the fruit we bear is proactive and preventative. The important nutrients and vitamins contained in that orange ball enable us to continue caring for that tree (and others) in health. Much in the same way, the skills we are now starting to use are proactive and preventative. We are learning how to build a community that not only nourishes others, but a community that also widens its gaze to see future harm, taking the necessary steps to shift our grounding away from harming others. Proactive and preventative. 

We are learning how to build a community that not only nourishes others, but a community that also widens its gaze to see future harm, taking the necessary steps to shift our grounding away from harming others. Proactive and preventative. 

With that approach in mind, we are excited to be taking steps to widen the ways we interact as a community. A new year means a new form for Sustainers to fill out. In the past year, we have seen a wide shift in those that started walking with us but did not continue. We want to make sure we are efficient in reaching out to our community. Please fill out this new form to help us do so, even if you filled out our previous one. We will be using this list for reaching out concerning extra resources, new opportunities, and community groups. https://forms.gle/xRkyGLThzeejSMXd8

As a refresher for all, being a Sustainer means a commitment to monthly contributions, both financial and conversational. We purposefully do not make Lace on Race a pay to access space. However, we have found that as people invest their resources, both time and money, they grow exponentially. Commitment matters. Consistent watering of our orange tree is a promise for future fruit to grow.

Those of you who are regular contributors, this is your January reminder. If you are new to the space and wondering what contributions are for, I encourage you to read this post. http://bit.ly/sustainLOR

Lace devotes herself to guiding and walking with this space and community daily. We also have a small admin team that helps with guiding conversation, walking with and in community, and creating content. We are looking to expand our outreach by adding more online content, deeper educational support, and actual community outreach through conferences and presentations. We are finally reaching a level of monthly support where we are able to bring collaborators into our midst AND be able to pay them for their labor and insight. This step is HUGE! Your contributions not only support the daily work we do, but also build the foundation for Lace on Race to thrive as a community. 

I leave you with a prompt to eat an orange to fight off any future colds. We are excited to be learning how to be proactive and preventative with all of you. As always, keep walking!

A note from Lace:

We want to become the standard of what racial justice work looks like. In my view, we are doing New Things with New People in New Ways like I have not seen elsewhere. 

We have not done an ask since before Christmas; we hesitated to seem to bombard you during the holidays when both time and budgets were stretched. As well, I have been ill (though almost fully recovered!) and did not have the emotional bandwidth for what is, for me as well as for Admin, is always a fraught task.

It has been gratifying indeed that, as of this writing, we are already almost at our halfway mark for Basic Budget without our prompting any of you! My confidence is growing that we can go beyond Basic, so we can continue to honor the work of our staff, and continue to pay still more contributors who seed Lace on Race with thought provoking material for us that act as nitrogen; enriching our soil so we can grow good fruit to share. 

This is so encouraging. What this means, if this trend continues, is that in the coming months I can indeed release this task that I dread and know you all will show up, with or without promptings from Admin, and can even more fully focus on the things I love: engagement with you and with others outside this space, like we did this weekend, devoting a significant amount of time in the Jen Hatmaker environment, taking our method of kind candor to a wider audience; focusing on the upcoming conference, mentoring, research, covering the upcoming elections in our signature way, and delivering new content. 

We want to become the standard of what racial justice work looks like. In my view, we are doing New Things with New People in New Ways like I have not seen elsewhere. This is no small thing. We are needed, particularly in this moment in time.

This was brought home to us this past weekend in the space where we engaged. We don’t have a three quarters of a million followers, and that is a great good thing. I don’t know that it is possible to do the work in the granular way that we do with those numbers. Of the hundreds of responses, very few were answered by Jen or her staff. That is not how we do. I want to see each of you; to see your eyes and minds and hearts. I want to stumble with you, and struggle with you, and rejoice with you. I want to abide with you. Every one of you.

Every one of you matters, no matter how you identify. We ask, if not more, then certainly differently, than other spaces. We ask differently of you in thoughtfulness, in engagement, in method, in commitment, in resilience, in faithfulness to both your walk, and the walk of others, both within and without this community. If you are here, the assumption is that you are here to dig into soil, and muddy your knees. No spectators; no leaning on the rake. The water you drink is the water you pump from our shared well. We are here to grow.

Because each of you matters, each of you have, should you take this community mantle, a shared responsibility for the health and viability of this space. This is also different than in other spaces, where only certain cohorts are invited and expected to support. We enrich each other; we look each other in the eye at a flat and round table. We support each other, all of us, and while this is by no means the only way to do so, it is important indeed.

All of us have skin in the game. All of us walk together in shared resolve and commitment. We have, in our first two years, been hesitant about this expanding of praxis and ethos. We believe firmly however, that this invitation and exhortation is crucial to becoming a truly different kind of community; where we can learn from and also teach; receive and also give; lead and trust and cleave to each other, all of us to each other. This is what we have been walking toward; becoming a true community that leans and can be leaned upon.

What we do is valuable and needed. And with your help, we can change not just the landscape of racial justice, but of how we live and who we are–and we will indeed move the needle in ways far greater than our numbers suggest we should. Grand goals indeed, but we are already doing so; being able to do so as a given, with resilient and reliable resolve will allow us to go even farther and deeper, with ourselves and with the wider world.

Thank you all so much for showing up in this mighty way.

Going forward, we will begin to share with you our weekly numbers for Basic and Enhanced budget levels. It is important that you see how the sausage is made, and that you know how the community is faring in terms of long range stability. You are not just eyeballs, you are part of a community, that we hope you value as much as I do. I want you to partner with us, and that includes how we do and how we keep the doors open and the lights on. This will take enhanced admin effort. But as we grow, it is important. Our budget is small, but we do mighty things.

For those of you who have not yet become Sustainers, our offer of the gift book still stands for those of you who choose to engage in this enhanced way.

‘God Is A Black Woman’ will be in the hands of Sustainers (defined as anyone who chooses to engage monthly to the viability and longevity of this space for a sustained amount of time, or as a quarterly, semi yearly, or yearly commitment) as soon as it’s published. We are so excited!

For those of you who contribute to the space ‘a la carte’, we see you and honor your contributions with no less enthusiasm and gratitude. 

In exactly one week, we will be celebrating the two year anniversary of Lace on Race. 

That would be impossible without all of you. 

Our job is to continue to give you content to chew on, community that nourishes, challenges, and succors, encouragement and exhortation on the walk along Lumpy Crossings. Our promise is to steward the tangible trust you show in us and in this space, and with each other. 

Gratitude is a given. 

Keep walking.

With humility and hesed, 

Your Lace

Basic Monthly Budget: $998/$2k