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REV. CAROLYN WILKINS

Las Cruces minister believes in connection, communication in dealing with life, Covid, Floyd murder

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“The very air we breathe connects us all,” said the Rev. Carol Wilkins, who began her own ministry in Las Cruces in 2020 after a year as pastor at Wellspring Church.

That connection has been vital, Wilkins said, as people have dealt with the “global awakening” that resulted from Covid-19 and the murder of George Floyd.

“The power of communication” has never been more apparent, she said, even through the isolation caused by the pandemic.

Through her Inspiration Ministry and other local, national and international platforms, Wilkins has provided “support to lonely people all over the world,” she said.

Black people especially, Wilkins said, “needed a space to express their pain,” not only to talk about Covid and the Floyd murder, but “to express the pain of everyday living.”

Through her own ministry, national online Black healing circles that began a week after Floyd’s murder in May 2020 and other programs, Wilkins provides a “safe place” for those who connect with her. She offers spiritual guidance along with self-help tips like breathing exercises to release negative feelings and ways to activate the vagus nerve, which is the main component of the parasympathetic nervous system that controls major bodily organs.

“It’s effective,” Wilkins said. “I’m not looking at numbers. I’m looking at sharing.”

She said she encourages people to “live a life that is creative, compassionate and inspirational.”

“I teach dignity,” Wilkins said, which has been vital in helping people say goodbye to loved ones lost during Covid. Remembering refrigerator trucks carrying the bodies of pandemic victims in New York City, “my heart opened and ached for them,” she said.

Wilkins said she also has given a voice to people of color who have worked on the front lines since the onset of Covid but haven’t been talked about or recognized, including nurses’ aides, orderlies and others working in “lesser jobs” to support doctors and nurses at hospitals and to staff senior centers across the country.

“They saved our lives, yet we don’t pay people living wages,” Wilkins said, who is clergy engagement and donor development manager for NM CAFé, a Las Cruces nonprofit that works to shape public policy.

Many Black people are part of a nationwide counterculture that began when their ancestors were slaves and then became indentured servants, she said. “They never made it out,” Wilkins said. “They never came out of debt.”

The Floyd murder has also had a greater impact on Blacks, Wilkins said, who thought of her partner, her brother and her adopted son when she heard about Floyd’s death.

“It could have been any one of them,” she said.

And while many white people are concerned about the murder and compassionate about its impact on the Black community, “the feelings aren’t the same,” she said.

While living in California before coming to Las Cruces, Wilkins said she also encountered a “depth of pain” among young Blacks – including her partner’s two children and her own students – as a result of the way they were treated by the police because of their race.

Wilkins said she is saddened because of “things we just swallowed.”

“We live with it. We encourage our children to get over it,” she said. “That’s what people don’t see.”

Without the video of Floyd’s murder that was captured by a Black teenager, “there would never have been a conviction” of the police officer who killed Floyd, Wilkins said. “I am grateful to her.”

“I am not anti-police,” she added. “I have opened my heart to interactions with the police. I am a great American. I believe in democracy. I remember learning the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Since the Floyd murder, Wilkins said, young Blacks are “now taking up the mantle, marching and protesting. I am just so touched by that.”

At the same time, Wilkins said, the notion of white privilege is “so disrespectful” and “the rhetoric of today” can be frightening, especially to people who don’t know the truth about what’s going on.

“I have never seen such a divide before,” she said. “There’s more work to be done.”

Wilkins is continuing her monthly gatherings online for the present because of Covid, and also offers online classes and workshops. She reaches out nationally via Zoom to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and to advocate for peace and nonviolence. Wilkins co-hosts “Take On Faith” with Unitarian Universalist Minister Xolani Kacela at 10 a.m. Saturdays on KTAL-LP 101.5 FM.

Wilkins, who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, said she is “inspired, committed and expanded” because of her work, and believes she came to Las Cruces at a good time.

“I think God gave us deserts as healing spaces,” she said. “I’ve been given the opportunity to explore the world and see the commonalities and beauty and the possibilities in the world we live in.”

Contact Wilkins at revcarolyn@organize.nm.org.

Carol Wilkins

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