This blog started as a place for contemplation of what we leave in our wakes as we move through life. I have sometimes deviated from that purpose, but it remains my principle focus. There are lots of ways that we affect those around us—or the earth, or the universe—as we walk our paths, but for some of us, words are the most important tools that we have. So, it is a problem when one can’t find any; no words to speak or write about something that has triggered a signal moment for our community, our nation, our world.
Don’t take my silence before this post as a sign that I don’t feel deeply wounded by the injustice so brutally displayed by the murder of George Floyd, or Breanna Taylor, or Philando Castile, or the legions of other African Americans whose lives have been taken by those who should have been protecting them. As a white man I can’t claim to have a visceral understanding of the fear experienced by people of color when they encounter a policeman, or by women who face a threatening world every day. Yet as an American I have a deeply rooted sense of justice, one that is reinforced, not overridden, by my faith. When I see such monstrous inhumanity, my heart aches for those victims, and the flame of my hope flickers in the ill wind of despair.
Ah, but…if you ask me why it has taken so long for me to see, I have no good answer. Maybe it’s the way I was taught—or not taught. Maybe it’s the zero-sum mentality that I have railed against before, but in which I have been steeped all of my life; a mode of thinking that demands others to lose in order for me to gain. Maybe it’s the necessity I have felt to busy myself with my own plans and schemes that leaves me little time and no energy to be my brother’s keeper. Maybe Noam Chomsky was right to observe that the power structures in our society are designed to strip us of our sense of empathy.
Maybe those are all excuses. Maybe it’s just always been easier to keep my head down; not speak up; be glad it’s “them,” not me.
But the time has come for me to raise my voice. As all humankind is being ravaged by a virus that knows no boundaries, has no limits, and sees no color, the ugly truth about our own propensity for bigotry and injustice has never been more clear. On top of that, the virus has forced me to slow down. It has given me the time to stop and look, and taken away whatever excuses I may have had for not seeing—or speaking.
Beating in Air 