Imagining Equitable Communities: Privilege Beads and other hands-on ways to help your community understand the dynamics of power and privilege
Location: Ruby 5 (Saturday – 2:15 PM and 4:15 PM)
In our world today, we all face barriers in our lives in many ways. We usually recognize the barriers, but we don’t always recognize the privileges that we enjoy. When we engage in Privilege Exercises, we understand the privileges we don’t realize that we enjoy every day. When we engage in these exercises, we move closer to the child that God created us to be.
How do we help people understand the dynamics of power and privilege? In this workshop, you will participate in the privilege beads activity and discussion, and learn about other ways to teach these dynamics.
Increasing our awareness of the privileges we hold presents us with opportunities to find out where we can intervene and what it means to us as people of faith. The privilege beads activity is an introductory exercise that can be helpful for raising our awareness of things we take for granted by the very nature of the fact that we don’t have to think about them in our daily lived experience.
Presenters:
Pastor Elizabeth Goehring and Sister Mary Arie are rostered leaders in the Nebraska Synod.
Sister Mary K. Arie is a deaconess in the Deaconess Community of the ELCA. Sr. Mary has been a deaconess for over 30 years, serving in congregations in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Kansas. She is now retired and teaching confirmation at Fridhem Lutheran Church in Hordville, Nebraska.
Elizabeth Goehring is currently serving Immanuel-Zion Lutheran Church in rural Albion, NE. She and her family arrived there from Connecticut on the heels of a blizzard on Christmas Eve, 2020, to begin her internship at both Immanuel-Zion and Zion Lutheran Churches in Albion. At the completion of her internship, she was asked to continue to serve the rural congregation as she completed her candidacy process and was then ordained and installed at the congregation in 2022.
Elizabeth has served in the public sector for the past 20 years in various capacities. She started her community service adventure managing contributions and volunteer programs for a corporation based in Danbury, CT. She then worked for the United Way of Western Connecticut, where she managed the grants distribution effort across the region. In 2017, she started as the grants manager for a Danbury nonprofit that provided health care, preschool (Head Start), and housing services to the community. She started seminary in January 2019, and graduated in May 2022.
She currently lives in the parsonage surrounded by fields of corn and beans with her husband, Tim, one of their adult sons, Dylan, and their found cats Walter (courtesy of a congregation member), and Sweet Pea. Their other son Joshua is working as a theater electrician in Utah. She enjoys her quiet time, as well as reading (mostly science fiction and fantasy), crocheting, and cross-stitching.