The United States’ Supreme Court has been busy. The nine people with lifetime appointments to sit on the Court have “handed down” decisions that will affect millions, perhaps tens of millions of people in the United States. I am not a legal scholar and I don’t pretend to even remotely be; in many ways I am an ordinary citizen who is trying to live my life, earn a living, guide my kids, and in a number of small to medium-sized ways try to make a difference in the world. I find myself baffled as I have watched the Supreme Court–these nine intelligent but imperfect people–on one occasion extending freedoms and on another taking them away. Depending on which “side” you are on of the numerous contentious issues decided within the last several days, one could argue either way.
For my part, as one who has actively worked for equity and social justice for most of my adult life I find myself in a state of uncertainty about the impacts of these decisions on my life, on the lives of people I care about, and those millions whom I don’t know but with whom I share some common hopes and dreams. I find myself disheartened by so much of what I see around me that at times I can scarcely take it all in: “man’s inhumanity to man” on display on a daily basis. But even as I watch these decisions being rendered and then dissected line by line, bit by bit, I remind myself that for some engaged in the struggle for equity and freedom it’s just another day.
Freedoms and rights have always been gained through difficult, arduous, painful and often dangerous work–those who hold power over others are loath to give it up and will fight tooth and nail to keep things exactly the way they are. Whatever progress has been made in so many areas was gained in halting, laborious steps–inch by inch, yard by yard, mile by mile. And if recent actions by the courts and legislatures across the country have taken some of that ground back, the people who fought for it will go back, regroup, and take it on again. One would hope that everything does not have to be fought for, but if it does, there are always warriors.
What has all this to do with gratitude? Good question. I guess I would respond by saying that I am grateful that people fought and sacrificed and sometimes died for some of the freedoms I enjoy today. My father fought against the Nazis in World War II only to come home to the United States and be treated like a second-class citizen, subject to racism and mistreatment. He fought for civil rights during the 1960s so that millions of disenfranchised US citizens won the right to vote, attend schools and colleges of their choice, have access to the same basic rights and privileges that were supposedly guaranteed to everyone under the constitution. Because of tens of thousands of people like my parents who struggled to gain ground in the push for equality, I am a college-educated, voting citizen who like my parents before me, work in my own small ways to ensure that people who have historically been marginalized and disenfranchised also have access.
I don’t often write about political matters in this blog; it is not what people read a gratitude blog for. And my apologies to those who perhaps don’t share my particular political leanings. Every day when I offer prayers of love and goodwill to all beings, I offer the same prayers for my “enemies” as I do for my “loved ones.” Every day. And to the best of my ability I pray as fervently as I can for them. I am even grateful for that, for it surely is a gift from God that I can do that. In doing that I try to remember that we are “all as frail boats on the sea,” we are all tossed and driven by the winds of fate and my guess is that at our core we share some very basic, fundamental values. I am grateful every time I remember to turn to prayer and forgiveness instead of anger (no matter how “righteous”) and hatred. Sometimes I get tired; it seems as though the fight for equality and justice is endless–and perhaps it is. But so is the strength and resilience of the human spirit. And for that, I am most definitely grateful.
