Blog Posts
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The Personal is Utterly Political
In this moving video , Rep Ayanna Pressley talks about her recent hair loss. It broke me. Like her, I have alopecia; I have lived with it for over a decade now. Like her I have deeply considered the meanings of hair, and its loss, and the social, cultural, and political implications of it. Like…
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The First Rule of Racial Justice Fight Club
Show. Up. So, then. People have asked me what they can do to support the space and ensure its viability for the long haul. Since our move to the website in October we have not lacked for page views, and we have been gratified at the continued tangible support that keeps the doors open and…
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We Need You!
We have been talking about all the things we will be doing in the year 2020. Here are a few items we can’t wait to tackle: Going deep into the history of IQ testing, and intelligence in general, using the Radiolab series ‘Q’ as kindling Creating, implementing, and offering to others a truly sustainable mentoring…
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January Ask–Orange Zest
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…
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Lace on Faith–Fourth Night of Hanukkah
Ancient Rabbis understood the Torah’s assertion that all humans descended from Adam to mean that we are all created equal. No one can ever say “My ancestor is greater than yours,” because we all have the same ancestor. This isn’t a scientific statement, it’s a moral one: We are all part of the same human…
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Lace on Faith: Dispatch From Behind The Dumpster: A Christmas Story
I wrote this last year to complement the original post by Jason Chestnut, which you will also find below. This adaptation, showing how God is found in dirty rags used to wipe up Slurpees and those awful 7-Eleven hot dog juices stopped me short. This birth was not in a pristine birthing room at Scripps…
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Lace on Faith–Third Night of Hanukkah
THE INFINITE WORTH OF EACH HUMAN LIFE: One who destroys a life, Jewish tradition tells us, is considered to have destroyed the entire world; one who saves a life has saved the entire world. A person is not a statistic, or a unit of GDP, but a boundlessly precious being who has an entire universe…
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Lace on Faith–Second Night of Hanukkah
We proudly point out that tzedakah means “justice,” not “charity,” but why does that distinction matter? Charity is given out of the kindness of our hearts, when we feel moved to do so. Tzedakah is considered mandatory under Jewish law. We’re supposed to give it whether we feel like it or not. It’s like ensuring…
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Lace on Faith–First Night of Hanukkah
Tikkun olam has become a catchphrase for social justice in contemporary Jewish life—and for good reason. Our emphasis on repairing the world speaks to something centrally Jewish: our belief in human responsibility. Jewish worship isn’t just about contemplation or petition, it’s about action. We don’t just sit around believing in God, or asking God for…
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Onward to 2020
Sometime between sips of orange water and coughing so hard I felt like I cracked a rib, I checked. Something I had been loathe to do. For all my talk about funding, I hate talking about funding. Almost as much as I hate dealing with funding. So I didn’t look. Marlise, braver than I, did…