Love letters to the unloved.

Growing up, I was never pressured into any religion and, for that, I consider myself to be lucky. As I got older, a few people starting talking to me about their faith, the Bible, Adam and Eve and so on. While a couple of those people were pushy, ultimately, I was still free to explore my own faith. When I moved to the States and plugged into a Methodist church, I was (and continue to be) treated with nothing but abundant love. To this day, people at my church embrace me even from afar and when I stop by during my trips back. Here is the flip side, though: the more people I talk to about faith and religion (two very different things in my opinion), the more I realize that not everyone is this lucky. A white, straight person from a stable enough economic background and with exclusively positive experience of "church", even I stopped being able to find motivation to come to church. The problem was never my home church, not was it ever with God and I. Rather, it was organized...

I live in a country that still fundamentally misunderstands racial injustice. ("He/She is going off of statistics...", "I am not racist, but...") Conversations about racial inequality are, admittedly, exhausting. As a post-Soviet country, Russia has been shut down from the rest of the world for so long that many people here have cannot even begin to grasp racism in places like the US, its complexity and historical implications. I have accompanied/ helped/ interpreted for several musicians from the USA in the last few months. Unbelievably talented, gorgeous, fun, humble, warm, kind and black. Each time they'd play a show, they would stick around afterwards to sign CD's and thank the audience. Never turning anyone down, they took time to chat and take photos. Amazed at their ability to still be nice to people after giving their all on that stage and disgusted by how inappropriate some listeners were, I'd ask "Should I just tell them to back off? Th...