The Whole Picture

I’ve worn bifocals for years. They allow me to see both near and far, read, and safely drive a car. Without my dual lenses life would become a bit one-dimensional.

The state in which we find ourselves today, where the racism upon which this country was built and continues to be sustained, has been laid bare. The needs that must be addressed have been brought into sharp focus, and we must not look away. It is difficult to view life through any other lens.

The danger in only seeing the world through a single lens is that we become one-dimensional people.

Lately, whenever I turn my attention elsewhere, away from the shame of our racist past and my part in it, the pain of our racist present, and the threat of a continuing racist future, I feel a little guilty. Like I am being shallow or selfish for finding moments of hilarity, causes for joy, or the simple pleasures found in a good novel, good food, good wine, or a hike in the woods. How can I allow myself to feel good when there is so much bad to be reckoned with?

I let myself feel good because I must.

We all must.

We must stay connected to our innate goodness in order to oppose that which is bad.

We must laugh every chance we get because a merry heart does good like a medicine. And when it comes to the virus of racism, we are all called to be healers. Especially if we are white.

We must find causes for joy so that we can address the issues that are causing such deep sorrow.

We must delight in simple pleasures lest we give up because it is simply too hard.

We must never lose sight of the whole picture.

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Six Words

Last week I read a post on FB shared by a woman I’ve known for many years. While the words were not hers, they accurately speak of what she is feeling and experiencing after the murder of George Floyd. The post was hard to read. It was raw, real, and filled with righteous anger. I wanted to stop reading part way through. I wanted to look away. For perhaps the first time in my 66 years I didn’t. I kept reading. Six words began to echo inside.

I am part of the problem. I am part of the problem. I am part of the problem.

Letting those six words in wasn’t easy, but it was too late. They were already in. Looking for a way out I jumped to problem solving. What can I do to become part of the solution? That’s the deal with most of us. We see a problem and want to do something to fix it. To make the problem go away. The problem with doing something is that it can be a convenient way to avoid an inconvenient truth—I am part of the problem.

Before I can become a part of the solution, I have to be willing to encounter the ways in which I am responsible for the racism upon which this country was built and continues to run. I have to be willing to do nothing but sit with the awful discomfort of accepting my own responsibility in bringing about this moment in which we all find ourselves.

So maybe doing nothing is actually doing something.


Since reading that FB post, I continue to sit with the many difficult emotions that arise. As things to do emerge, I do them. But what I am also coming to know is that doing nothing, staying put, sitting in the midst of the ugly emotional mess is actually doing something. It is changing me.

I am part of the solution.

Time to go do something.


A very short list of possible things to do:

Watch the video of George Floyd’s murder and bear witness to his death.

Watch the video of George Floyd’s funeral and bear witness to his life.

Read this FB post by Dara Njeri (noted above)

Make financial donations to organizations that are diligently and effectively working to address racism in all its forms and its impacts on our fellow citizens of color.

Join the MLPP 21-Day Anti-Racist Challenge.

Speak up.

Read books that are hard to read. (A few lists to check out: NPR, USA Today, Chicago Sun-Times

Choose love over fear.

Do your work to become the best version of yourself. Get a therapist. Engage a spiritual director. Face your shit, own your shit, and heal your shit. The world needs the best we have to offer.

Support and vote for candidates that get it and will do something about it.

Cultivate joy, appreciation, gratitude, and curiosity.

Practice radical hope in the midst of all that feels hopeless.

Be willing to make mistakes and learn from them.

Risk saying it wrong in order to learn how to say it right. (Watch this video by Jay Smooth to learn more.)

Stay in community.

Challenge your community.

Enlarge your community.

Extend love and grace to all, including yourself.

We are part of the solution.

A Molten Moment

Nobody is going to make this easy for us once on the other side of this life-altering time when things will supposedly return to normal. Except they won’t, or at least they don’t have to. Not if normal means how things were before, not the possibility of what they can be in the future

Living under conditions that separate us from one another, we remember that we are all connected, and that our individual survival is hardwired with that of the collective.

As the price of oil plummets, we can almost hear the sound of Earth catching her breath. The absence of noise reminds us to listen the deep quiet beneath it all.

Living as we are, under our own microscopes, everything about us is magnified. On any given day, the best of us might make her presence know, or be completely overshadowed by the worst, Most days it is a dance between the two, and the invitation at our feet is to learn to let the better angels of our nature take the lead.

We are discovering just how little we really need, and how much we don’t.

We are remembering what it means to be neighbors again. As we care for one another the world becomes a safer place, and while tribalism might have kept us alive in the past, it will do nothing but insure our demise in the future.

The powers that be are going to work mightily to persuade us to forget the hard-earned wisdom that we belong to one another and are indeed one another’s keepers including the care for this fragile planet we all call home.

This is a molten moment.

We have the chance to be changed for the greater good, and our calling is to remember what we are learning in the here and now once we step back out into our shared world of the there and then.

No matter what anyone tells us, and I mean anyone, things will not return to normal. At least that is my deepest hope and my most fervent prayer.

Photo: USGS

Photo: USGS




Old Glory

Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.

~Roald Dahl

Today I ordered a new flag pole so that we can hang our faded-but-still-symbolic American flag. The old pole is bent and no longer in good working order, kind of like our country. Time to provide a stronger staff on which to hang Old Glory.

Election season is upon us, and as is true in any neighborhood, town, or city across this beautiful, broken country of ours, the way we will cast our votes will not be the same as that of all of our neighbors. And while I deeply care about who others vote for, I care even more that we all care enough to show up and have an informed say in the state of our union.

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Lost In Translation

A sign of wisdom is not believing everything you think. A sign of emotional intelligence is not internalizing everything you feel. Thoughts and emotions are possibilities to entertain, not certainties to take for granted. Question them before you accept them.

~ Adam Grant


Have you ever had the experience of listening to another person, usually someone close to you, and hearing one thing only to find out that they were saying something completely different?

Me too.

All.

The.

Time.

It’s like we have a private internal app that converts what someone else says into a different language entirely. A language that we are so familiar with that we don’t think to question it. We simply believe that what we heard is what they meant to say. They meant to judge us, criticize us, correct us, or hurt our feelings, and then we respond accordingly by reacting, defending, retreating, or any number of personal protective mechanisms. At that point, their internal translation app (because we all have one) kicks into gear and converts our response into their internal language. In other words, no pun intended, a lot can get lost in translation.

It’s a crazy, self-perpetuated, vicious cycle that can only be stopped when we are willing to consider that what we heard isn’t necessarily what they said, and then have the courage to go find out.

Photo: Pexels.com

Photo: Pexels.com







Final Word Of The Day: CULTIVATE

For the past few weeks I have focusedon a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.


CULTIVATE

As I write about this, the last word from my list, it seems fitting that today is the exact midway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Also known as the Vernal Equinox, the first day of spring ushers in a season of new growth.

Driving home from church today we passed fields that last week were unplowed, but are now tilled and readied for new crops. As it is for farmers, ranchers, and community gardeners, now is the time to set our minds upon that which we want to grow within us.

Whatever it is that wants to take root in our lives, it is time to prepare the soil, plant the seeds, and provide them with what they need to grow and thrive.

Photo by PhotoMIX Ltd. from Pexels

Photo by PhotoMIX Ltd. from Pexels

Is This The ______________ That I Want?


Tom and I had been married about eight years when he spent a couple of weeks teaching at a remote retreat center in the North Cascades, while I stayed home minding the fort. During those two weeks it became clear to me that there was no question that I wanted to be married to Tom. However, that wasn’t the real question. The real question was—Is the marriage we have the one that I want?

It wasn’t.

Those aren’t thoughts one can keep to oneself if one wants things to change.

After he returned we were out running errands one day, and stopped at a Starbucks. I can still see the table where we were sitting out on the sidewalk. I’m sure he was expecting just a nice catch-up visit, so when I quietly told him I wanted to talk about our marriage, a deer in the headlights about sums up his initial reaction. Thankfully, unlike a deer he didn’t disappear into the woods, but leaned forward, and leaned in. That conversation, over lattes, on a sidewalk outside of Starbucks is the conversation that changed the trajectory of our marriage.

Together we began to give voice to what was working, and what was not. We needed plenty of help along the way from therapists who could help us navigate all of the issues that could derail us if we let them. After 25 years together, we still hit brick walls and have to talk about scary things. On any given day, we work hard to bring the best of what we have to each other, with varying degrees of success, but always with the commitment of building the kind of relationship and life we want. Our conversation over coffee that started all those years ago is one that we will probably be having for the rest of our lives. At least it should be if we want to keep building the marriage we want.

The changes in our marriage all started with a hard question, as most hard changes do, and, it is a hard question that can help any of us get to the heart of any matter that matters to us.

Is this the…relationship, parenting approach, community, fitness level, body, friendship, career path, communication pattern, story emotional health, financial reality, team culture, family dynamic, belief system, outcome, home-life, fill-in-your-own-blank…that I want?

If the answer is yes, then we keep on keeping on.

If the answer is no, maybe today is the day to figure out what it is we do want and how to go about getting it.

Photo by James Wheeler from Pexels

Photo by James Wheeler from Pexels





Insight + Action = Transformation

Every day there is the possibility of discovering new things about ourselves and our way of being in the world.

If we pay attention, we can gain insight that can help us become more of the person we want to be.

Insight however, is cheap.

It’s what we do with it that counts.

Question 1: What insight have you discovered about yourself?

Question 2: What are you going to do about it?

Photo by Moises Besada from Pexels

Photo by Moises Besada from Pexels