Personal and Interpersonal Formation:

Lucas Sharma, SJ, Jesuits West, Seattle University.

An excerpt from “I’m Not Welcome Here,” 8/15/2017 at the Jesuit Post[i]

“One day, I received news that I must call my mother immediately…And then I heard words I will never forget – someone has painted a racial slur against you on our family fence: Lucas is a sand nigger.

I still cannot fully articulate the complex mixture of feelings that followed. Confusion – how is this even possible? Dumbfounded – racist people lived elsewhere, not in my community. Fear – will something worse happen? Do people in my own community prefer I didn’t exist?

Knowing that most of us are not victims of violence based on our skin color or other aspects of who we are, can we challenge ourselves to understand the feelings of those who are? Can we use our hearts to imagine what it would be like to suddenly be unwelcome and hated? Can we imagine what it might feel like to know that millions of people in our country would rather we didn’t exist?

With imagination, perhaps we can imagine a new way to live together. Then, perhaps then we’d become more empathetic.”