I just watched Valarie Kaur hold her solidarity vigil for the Sikh community after the mass murders in Indianapolis last week. It’s hard to understand how people keep going on when violence keeps happening at the frequency it does now. Which makes it so important to have people like her repeating “Breath,” then “Push” with a tremor of love in her voice.
I do find myself forgetting to breath when these things keep escalating the way they seem to. It’s hard to even count the number of atrocities that have happened since covid hit. Which I believe is part of the plan to push our country toward the big race war some factions would like to see. That includes all the police shootings. I’m sure many police hold race bias, and that they’re also the ones on the front line of tension. I’m sure – bias or not – many of ‘em go to work every day wondering if they’ll get home to their families safely that night. You know that won’t improve their hair-trigger responses.
Even though it can be hard to imagine any good outcome for the way the country seems to be moving (especially Arkansas), I feel like Valarie is right that love is the way to victory with our values and our true humanity intact. And I also agree it’s true that the way to manage love in the face of hate and violence is by standing together in community.
What other option do we have friends? As progressives we BELIEVE we’re all in this together. We say that we should be able to resolve our differences in dialogue, like grown-ups. We say violence and war are not the answer.
When push comes to shove, and hate is at our own doors like it is to so many minority communities, do we have the resolve and the emotional fortitude to choose love as the once-again stricken Sikh community is doing? It’s in my mind to wonder that for myself. I’m remembering that Sikh’s have generations of strong community built on bases of both faith and culture. White Americans have been pushed hard into the rugged individual corner, and our job culture has spread families out all over the world, which has damaged our sense of close and supportive community.
When my grandmother got married in the 1920’s and moved from Deep Water Missouri to Kansas City where there was work, that must have seemed like moving to Hong Kong might feel now. My mother didn’t know her own grandmother very well since they could only visit infrequently. A generation before, they might have lived on the same farm. Or at least in the same town, like multi-generational families lived for eons.
There are pros, and there are cons to that. But the sense of connection and place, and the certainty that the people around you know you, gave children of earlier generations some kind of confidence in the world and their place in it.
How are children of today managing that? If I ask myself what made my own life choices different because my grandparents left the farm, I don’t think I could figure that out. It’s the stuff of some sociological study, I’m sure.
When we try to envision a world that works for people, planet and community, lots of this is woven into the ponderings. It’s pretty well established that there is no such thing as the good ol’ days. As we re-create the world like it must be for life to survive, part of the challenge is the absence of models for success that we have confidence in. What Valarie and other wise teachers like her are sharing is totally relevant here. And part of the lesson of covid.
It’s critical that we come to terms with the absolute truth that the relationships … the networks of relationship with people, nature and community that we’re woven in to … are the single most important reality of our lives. Nothing else is a close second. I suggest that a new world that prioritizes relationships will be a successful new world, no matter what else it entails.
Well, I guess breathing might be more important. Another lesson from covid.
But wealth, prestige, power, possessions, the American Dream … forget that stuff. We don’t need to be gasping on our death beds to realize that we should be prioritizing the people we love.
What might a new world prioritizing people, planet and community look like? Wow, I’d sure like to know. After this year of isolation, I think most of us would like it to be a lot more social. The big “if” of whether covid is passing on makes all planning uncertain. But a thought that comes to me is that any infrastructure for weaving healthy relationship is a mission of peace. In the family…. In the schools… in workplaces where shootings like Indianapolis have happened too often, the new culture of peace will need to weave in curiosity, understanding, resolution of conflict and dialogue, and weave out violence. What can Omni Center and Fayetteville do to help build infrastructure like that? Now there’s a never-ending pondering that’s worth our effort to engage.