How can we meet this moment with courage?

Simple, and yet seemingly so frightening.

We are called to stay engaged. Called by what, you say? By whom? By our shared faith, by our covenant with one another, by our individual and collective consciousness.

I don’t hear anybody calling! You say. Then maybe you not are listening.

Don’t only listen to the voices that are saying what you already know. Listen to the ones that challenge you, that defy your sense of reason, of order, of progress, of the way the world “ought” to be. Maybe those were just stories we told one another and ourselves for so long we believed them. And denial can be a very helpful tool! I learned a long time ago that if we all realized everything at once, we’d have a total psychic split. Reality is too much to comprehend. We take it in small doses. As we do, we become more connected with one another, with the Universe and its mysteries, until finally we disappear and leave this physical world for others to save or destroy.

This week, I will be talking about how we re-learn and re-know the world anew as we pass through it.

One of the things we are all coming to terms with in new ways is racism and the ways it permeates all of our lives.

Here’s a poem I read recently:

DRIVING AT NIGHT

Rio Cortez

For Laquan McDonald

I think it’s quails lining the road but it's fallen Birchwood.

What look like white clouds in a grassy basin, sprinklers.

I mistake the woman walking her retrieve as a pair of fawns.

Could-be animals. Unexplained weather. Maybe they see us

that way. Knowing better, the closer they get. Not quite ready

to let it go.

Laquan McDonald was one of many young Black men shot and killed by police. 2014. The poem explores the territory of how we think we know something by what we perceive, and yet, how often we perceive wrong. Here’s a link to an NPR series that goes in detail about his life, his killing, and the trial. Click here.

Laquan was what was called a “throwaway” kid. He was bounced around in the system. His life did not matter. My Seth would have been such a kid, too, if Eric and I hadn’t fought to have permanent custody of him. Would he have been shot down like Laquan? Maybe not, because he’s white… but then again, maybe so, because he’s autistic, and autistic kids are five times as likely to be assaulted by police as neurotypical ones.

In our book discussion of How to Be an Antiracist, which began Sunday, we started with the question, “what made you think or understand something in a new or different way than you had before?” I believe that GNUUC has the courage and the fortitude to have these talks productively. You have proved me right!

Truly, every day is an opportunity to learn something new.

It takes courage to admit we don’t know everything, that what we think we’ve known may be wrong, that indeed we may have been terribly wrong and may even have wronged others.

The root word for courage is the same as the word for heart. In French le cœur. In Spanish, corazon.

Take heart. You have more heart and more courage than you think.

September 9, 2020: TAKE HEART!