In The Ring

“What does one do with all of the collective fear and unknowns right now? It is an interesting thing to observe and ponder…”.  I wrote these words on March 13th as an introduction to a blog entry I created after I got a phone call from the school’s administration, notifying me that my kids would not be going back to school the following week.  In efforts to decrease the spread of Covid 19, life as we knew would come to a halt.  Panicked and a little in shock, I determined to be a part of the conversation as a healer in my community, offering my ideas and wisdom to my clients and anyone who was looking for guidance and hope on how to proceed during this turbulent time.  I posted it on my website’s blog along with other resources and I wrote with optimism about the opportunity this pause could create for all of us. In my mind’s eye I began weaving together a beautiful tapestry of humanity coming together as a collective whole, emerging stronger and more unified because of this crisis.  But I didn’t see this coming…

I entered into the experience alongside everyone else; laughed about the stupidity of masks, only to read something new and then proceed to wear the strongest mask I could find in order to protect others who are more vulnerable.  I declared of the pandemic, “This is overblown”, and then proceeded to learn more, and to later decide, “No, it’s not.  This matters and we should pay attention.” I have shaken my fist at what has been lost, and then felt simultaneously grateful for how this “reset” has provided something new. I  believed one thing I read one day, only to read something new the next  that seemed to contradict and muddy yesterday’s illusion of clarity. I have heard people on every side of this new reality express unique and opposing viewpoints.  “We have never done this before”, I heard Brene Brown say at the beginning, which has helped me continue to have grace for it all, grace for us all.   

There were many days in the beginning of this pandemic when I went on in my routine trying to behave as “normally” as possible, to not let this new reality encroach into my safe and comfortable world.  I took online yoga classes and tried to cook healthy meals for my family to keep our immune systems bolstered.  I watched Netflix and laughed at funny Reddit videos my sons would show me. Privileges I have been given that I know many others do not share.  This illusion of “separateness” from the suffering waned at four am, in that dark space before dawn, when I couldn’t run from myself anymore, when my eyes opened against my own will and when I always become most honest. I am absolutely affected by this Collective Fear. One cannot be breathing without sensing and feeling the panic. I am a part of this.  I must engage. I didn’t want this fight with Fear.  I wanted to peacefully go on doing what I do, living my life and not be impacted by hard realities, yet I reluctantly found myself in the ring.

But that was only the beginning of “the ring”, I have since learned.  It was a backdrop for another story, one that is older and more insidious than a novel virus.  I read a news story about a young man named Ahmaud Arbery, and then another about a woman named Breonna Taylor, and then weeks later I watched a video alongside the rest of our country of George Floyd being murdered.  Then I learned about Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. I learned the names Philando Castile, Alton Sterling and Delrawn Small. I am humbled and ashamed to confess that I hadn’t listened to those stories sooner and have chosen to live removed from the suffering around me until it was in my face and I refused to marginalize it any longer.  I realize I still have the choice to stay separate and unaffected if I really wanted to.  But I don’t.  But if I’m honest, I still sometimes want to unknow what I know. I see that for a portion of the population, I am part of their experience of fear. There are others in the ring too and I am a part of the system that benefits and causes them even more fear than a global pandemic.  I can never unknow that knowledge.   

In my March blog I wrote;

“[It is a wake-up call that we have lost our center] when we stop thinking collectively and begin thinking about protecting and guarding our own, to the detriment of the whole. So my challenge for myself is when I start to feel grippy and clingy, to open my hands up more in generosity and open heartedness. When I start to want to hoard and make sure I have enough for myself, it is a wake-up call that is time for me to start giving away what I have. Calling in and cultivating the abundance to which we have access while celebrating that our human-ness is a miracle and every breath we are given is a gift. We have forgotten that there is enough and so we have forgotten how to share. Polarities and fear are dividing walls that have kept us from loving and connecting and being radically generous and open with one another.  The sorting, as Brene Brown, has called it creates an “us and them” so that we can go without our consciences pricked as we maintain the fear-based attitude of “taking care of our own”.  The ways in which we have not welcomed our neighbors in the name of protecting our turf has made us unwelcoming and less capable of seeing that when we give away, we receive so much more.  Have I lost the very real truth that in fact, it is better to give, than to receive.”

I didn’t know those words were about something so much bigger than I could conceive at the time I wrote them. I get chills reading them now in light of the exploding conversations and evidence of the racial injustice and white supremacy that exists in our country and inside my own body.  I didn’t mean to write those words about racial inequality, I wish I had though. I wish I didn’t need George Floyd’s death to wake me out of my trance.  I also wrote about “antidotes to fear” and “practicing gratitude”, I wrote about this pandemic creating a “rich opportunity”, but it wasn’t the opportunity I thought it was, it was so much larger than I knew. We have an opportunity to do better, now that we know more.  May we move forward with our eyes a little more open.  May we find liberation as we seek to see, to hear and to hold what is true of our collective human experience.  The wholeness and the healing cannot just be for one part of humanity, it must be for all, or it’s not really healing.  The “good news”, the gospel isn’t just good for some, it must be good for all, or it isn’t good news.

For years I have celebrated that I trust in God and feel strongly supported and held, but with little consideration about my brothers and sisters who don’t feel covered and protected?  I have been involved in organizations internationally to help educate underprivileged kids, reduce numbers of sex trafficking and offer healing and rehabilitation to it’s victims.  I have helped women set up businesses to provide for themselves and their families and have counseled people oppressed by religious institutions that tell them they are not full participating members in the kingdom of God because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.  Yet I have turned my back in denial on what was happening to indigenous people and people of color in my own country.  After reading my March 13th blog I was tempted to take it down and revise it to a more “evolved” or “awakened” version, one where I didn’t mention hand sanitizer and toilet paper shortages, (an obvious give away of my small sheltered and privileged lenses) but one where I dreamed and demanded that we do better, and care about the things that matter more, calling out the racial inequality and white supremacy that I have benefitted from my whole life.  But I am leaving it up, as a reminder of where I have come from and a commitment to keep listening.  There is an entire group of people here who have been saying they can’t breathe and I never listened like I am now. 

Yet, even with a more “aware” blog post that I write today, I have a hunch that I will blush in shame at these soon-to-be-dated words that will reveal my own blind racism in months to come. Hopefully I will cringe and blush as it might mean that I will have learned even more, seen even more, listened even more to what today I do not yet understand. Thank you Dr. Maya Angelou for giving me the courage with your gracious words; “Do your best, until you know better, then do better.” May it be so for all of us. May my vision of a more unified humanity be a glimpse into a larger story of which I get to be a part.  May I be part of the healing, beginning now. May we do better.

Selah.