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Don’t get me to hope just yet / Let me abide for a while with my Holy Lamentation
Blue triangle
I didn’t look.
Like you, I didn’t look.
I turned my head,
averted my eyes,
plugged my ears,
stilled my tongue,
believing if I waited
someone else would see,
someone else would hear,
someone else would speak,
because it all happened
to someone else.
I never understood
I would be
someone else someday
because I didn’t
look like you.
From ally to advocate
Thought I was so smart
Till I didn’t know the answer
To why evil exists in the world
Thought I was so enlightened
Till I discovered comfort
In darkness for a while
Thought I was so liberal
Till my good intentions
Produced the opposite results
Thought I was colorblind
Till my eyes began to see
Differences that should be honored
Thought I was an ally
When what was called for
Was an advocate instead
Help us to find our way through the turmoil that turns people against each other instead of turning toward each other in love. Help us to see that little good ever comes out of viewing each other as the “other.” Only when we find our common humanity can we co-exist peacefully and with lovingkindness.
—Xolani Kacela
We are confined, unfree, contained because in this culture of division built upon the pain of the people at the margins, even the decent people hold our love too tightly.
So often we resist with our rational brains the experiences our hearts most crave. We talk ourselves out of the love that stands so close we could almost eat it up if we would just . . . stop. Let go. Love.
To receive love like that would mean an ongoing willingness to be vulnerable, an ongoing journey of transformation, breaking open and changing, being born and reborn again.
—Gretchen Haley
Writing of the holy family—Mary, Joseph, and the babe Jesus—Wendell Berry once asked what would happen if “we ourselves, opening a stall (a latch thrown open countless times before), might find them breathing there.” . . .
What would it mean for us to be startled away from our distracted thoughts, pulled suddenly into the intense needs of the moment—warm blankets, soft pillows, hot food? To understand immediately that we would have to make a choice, set aside the list of tasks—the laundry, the child’s play date, the stack of papers teetering on the desk—or set aside this . . . this what? This miracle, this wonder, this invitation into another life.
—Jodi Cohen Hayashida
Selections from To Wake, To Rise: Meditations on Justice and Resilience, edited by William G. Sinkford, Skinner House, 2017.
To Wake, To Rise: Meditations on Justice and Resilience, ed. by William G. Sinkford (Skinner House, 2017).