We are so excited to invite you to sign-up for our next Sophia Reading Group on Layla Saad's book Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor that begins on Sunday, June 28th at 8PM.

I would like to personally invite everyone in our Santa Barbara community and beyond to participate in this important study together. Whether you've been a part of the Way Collective community for some time or are a member of the wider SB community, or whether you are just on our e-mail list or just heard about it through a friend, we'd like to invite you to join this significant conversation! If your initial reaction to this invitation or to the title of this book is either hesitation or a sense that this work does not apply to you, we'd like you to please reconsider joining these dialogues. This work is for all of us, no matter where we are on our journey toward antiracism. 

Hey, we know that inquiring into and awakening to our own racist tendencies is uncomfortable at best. But, we are going to take the charge of our friend Micky Scott-Bey Jones who led the People's Supper with us in holding "brave space" for each other -- because safe space doesn't yet exist, we will be brave in entering into this work side by side, together. We will mess up, and we will grow together. If you've been wondering how you can do your part to respond to these times, please consider joining us for these vital conversations. To be sure, this is also a time of action and of dismantling racism from within our systems and structures, and we realize that this reading group is solely a small part of the much larger work that needs to be done. But, we hope that this journey of inquiring together into the ways we might be complicit in the systems of white supremacy will help change us to be the kind of people who, as our collective aim statement below says, choose the way of love to create a more just world by working to end racism.

This book will walk you step-by-step through the work of examining:

• Examining your own white privilege

• What allyship really means

• Anti-blackness, racial stereotypes, and cultural appropriation

• Changing the way that you view and respond to race

• How to continue the work to create social change

We are a community of shared practices and values living the way of love in conversation with Christianity, and we'd love to have as much community participation as possible so we can continue on this journey together of healing our own lives and our community through the work of anti-racism. That means that no matter who you are or what you believe or don't, you are welcome into these conversations. We'll be doing Zoom gatherings so everyone can participate, but would also love to have some backyard options as well. If you'd like to be a backyard host for these 6 weeks over the next couple months, please e-mail me HERE. You can sign up for the group online HERE.

Here are the Dates & Times for the Sophia Group Group Zooms/Backyard Gatherings -

Session 1 - 6/28 - 8pm
Session 2 - 7/12 - 8pm
Session 3 - 7/26 - 8pm
Session 4 - 8/9 - 8pm
Session 5 - 8/23 - 8pm
Session 6 - 8/30 - 8pm