Today I tried to go on strike. I was pretty determined that I was going to be in a funk all day, sitting around vegging in front of the television and not doing anything useful whatsoever. I failed. Not miserably, but I failed nonetheless. My morning journal was filled with my determination to be ill tempered. I was frustrated not only with my own life, but with the general state of affairs in the country and world around me. I railed against all the things that felt wrong to me and the things I cannot fix or explain or even comprehend. And of course I ranted a bit at and about God. I allowed myself to be completely bitter, sarcastic, angry, and a whole lot of other “negative things” I don’t express very often. I even briefly took on my experience of writing this blog:
“I have spent 730 days of my life over the last two years picking away each day through the rubble of challenges and difficulties to find shreds and threads of something I could celebrate, that I could be grateful for. I wonder what the impact of that has been on me. Has it made anything easier or better? Perhaps. I don’t know.”
Oh dear, I can almost hear my mother saying to me, you are cranky. And I suppose that I was. I closed this morning’s journal with, “We’ll see how long I allow myself to be cranky. I’m going to shoot for all day. We’ll see how that goes…” In the end, my attempt to be cranky all day failed miserably. And while I am not in the space of grace and gratitude I often inhabit when I sit down to write this blog, I am in an okay place all things considered.
I have spent some time reading today, essays on social media and people’s reactions to them. All in response to the most recent of current events that would seek to tell me that some people are more important than other people, that the world opens up to and revolves around some people and remains closed off and unaccessible to others. I have, unfortunately, lived much of my life as the “other.” Recent events have left the country split and confused about what constitutes “justice.” The word has been overused, misused, or misinterpreted so as to be rendered nearly meaningless and tonight a segment of US society is wondering if the phrase, “with liberty and justice for all” really applies to them. I mean, what does all mean anyway?
As a child of two civil rights activists I grew up understanding that all meant something different for our family than it did for other people. I might not have known it in a historical or political context, but I definitely knew it in a personal one, particularly after we moved to the “white neighborhood” in 1962, during my 5th year of life. I knew that the neighbors weren’t pleased to be living next door to us–they wouldn’t wave or speak or acknowledge our presence. (I confess that at times I waved vigorously and called out to them just to be contrary.) Then there was the summer somewhere around my 10th year when someone sent two shotgun blasts through our house (I actually discovered one of two holes in the dining room.) No doubt my older siblings have many more detailed recollections of what life was like for Negroes back in the day. So I grew up somewhat sheltered but not totally unaware of the forces acting around me and over time that awareness blossomed into what became accidental activism; not something I set out to do, it just sort of…happened.
I’ve spent most of my adult life quietly working for what is now called social justice. I haven’t made a lot of speeches on courthouse steps or done a lot of public activism. My work has been much more low key and under the radar–often working one-on-one supporting individuals as well as helping create programs and policies to help larger numbers of people. Somehow I have been doing this work for the majority of my adult life: nearly 30 years. In that time I have had moments of absolute frustration and burnout and the keen desire to walk away from it all and do something else, anything else. But I’ve come to understand that you can’t simply walk away from this work, to lay down the tools of your trade and walk away from the worksite (or a soldier doesn’t simply lay down her weapons and walk off the field.)
So as tired and dispirited as I’ve found myself over the course of the last few weeks, and particularly over the last 24 hours, I will not leave my tools scattered around me and the worksite in disarray. I will finish the building I’ve been working on, hopefully having left things better than when I found them. I will turn over my tools to younger, stronger, more energetic people to continue the work. Several years ago I heard the voice of God asking me if I would give ten more years. At the time I didn’t know what God meant, but I assumed it was a request for ten more years trying to work for equity and social justice. By my reckoning I am coming close to the end of my tenure and then I believe I will have fulfilled my obligation. I do not know what God has for me next, but I’m hoping it involves farming (yes, the kind that involves cows and corn and such.) Until that day arrives, I’ll continue to do the work I do as best I can in service to those people like me who dwell on the margins of the “all” promised by constitutions and bills of rights.
I am grateful for all the people–my parents included–who have gone before me and paved the way for me to be where I am, now trying to help pave the way for others. I am grateful for the perseverance and resilience, the strength of will and spirit that we the other people of the Unites States of America have always shown in the face of hardship, tragedy, abuse, misuse and calamity. I am grateful that though there still remains a tremendous amount of difficult work to be done to bring more of us from the margins into the mainstream into the promise of the mythical “American Dream,” I am free to write and speak and act. I am grateful that at the end of this day that I had committed to being ill tempered, antisocial, and unproductive I have been anything but. That is the beauty of grace and gratitude; it is this wellspring in me that even when I try to push it down, it finds its way back. And for that I am exceedingly grateful.
