This perhaps will not be a super clear post. I am not gathered and so my thoughts are not either, but I am giving myself permission to be just as I am.
[I also want to preface this post with space for however anyone else may be in their humanity in this moment. This isn’t a post of judgment or of advice, this post (like this blog) is a reflection of the spaces that I’m currently exploring, in my full humanity, because sometimes, through writing, I can find those more easily than any other way.]
I have been thinking a lot this week about what it means to sit with discomfort, what it means to come alongside others, when to speak and when to be silent, and what it means to honor one’s truth.
In sitting with the election results this week (which were, to me, unsurprising given the polarized nature of our country), I have been thinking about what it means to live in community, what it means that I was unsurprised by the results, and how, even though I find myself (perhaps slightly) more vulnerable than I may have thought I was a few days ago, I am, in reality, and in the day to day, dealing with the same micro and macro-aggressions that I was dealing with last week, last month, last year. Perhaps this week, the emboldening of some have shifted the micro to the macro, but when one is subject to regular aggressions, honestly, while the macro can be more jarring, at least there’s some strange understanding or acknowledgment that you are being aggressed. People can’t actually ignore (or at least they have a harder time ignoring) when someone spits on you, but it is easy (easier?) to justify away when someone dismisses your competence. I am “too sensitive” (perhaps even a snowflake) when I am incensed that someone questions my expertise (within my own area of study) or gives lip service to something I value so deeply. In the last year, people who I thought truly knew and loved me were willing to completely write me off, despite the fact that I was holding them so close to my heart, because I didn’t move in the ways they thought I should, didn’t say the right things, wasn’t who they thought I was. Funnily enough, whether these (micro/macro)aggressions and loss are acknowledged, they are embodied in similar ways, perhaps for different durations, but perhaps, actually, not so different.
In thinking about community, I am thinking also about my responsibility. For a long time, I have been a bridge builder, a connector, someone who is able to make space for more people’s full humanity than most. Because I have experienced a lot and chosen to respond with deep compassion, this is what I do, particularly when others around me are struggling, and even when space has not been made for my humanity. It is my superpower, perhaps (as my friend Carla’s video reminded the children this week following the election), that I’ve (more often than not) chosen to use the power I have for good, to create spaces for others to thrive. It is my responsibility to continue to build as long as I can build, to continue to use my powers for good as long as I have any power, to continue to pour into teachers, to pour into those who are suffering, to listen, to hold space, to breathe, to give, to embrace the moments of precious life I am given. It is my responsibility to act, in ways that are grounded in deep love.
These things aren’t always easy to hold together. It has been much work in these moments to hold on to the heart of the work, the love of community, when even some of those around me fail to see me, fail to see the importance of community, fail to see the beauty and power that could be possible together, if we truly honored one another.
It is hard, it is sometimes uncomfortable, but through the most challenging moments, I have been blessed with reminders of the joy of family and community. If we refuse to be broken, refuse to let go of those truths, lean into faith with works, there will be joy in the morning, at the end of a sometimes seemingly endless dark. But we can’t let go of one another.