Hallelujah it’s Friday. I stayed home, working on a variety of work-related things while nursing a sore back. Not sure what I did to it, but it has been troubling me since early in the week. And oh what a week it’s been. One need only read this blog and my morning journal to experience the ride on Mephisto that this week has represented for me–up and down, side to side, back and forth. And now it is relatively quiet, all things considered. After a week like this, after riding the bull, one can feel like things are still moving even though you’ve gotten off the ride. It was kind of like after the 12 hour drive home from Gainesville a few weeks ago: for hour after I’d gotten out of the car, I still felt like I was moving, still rolling down the road. After this week of emotional bull riding, feeling relatively quiet and still has been a blessing, even if just for a little while.
In the quiet and the stillness I can feel my exhaustion again. At least in the bustle and rush of the work day I can ignore the emotional and mental exhaustion resulting from all the hateful rhetoric and vitriol surrounding recent events unfolding on the national stage. People all over the country and around the world are talking from all sides of the racial ad social spectrum. I have found some of the comments deeply disturbing and painful in their ignorance, hate, and negativity. How, O God, does one find the good in all of this?
I spoke with my son this evening–he called me as he was on his way to work. I think about him a lot and pray often for his safety. As a single mom I prayed for and worried a lot about my son and how he would fare in this world, particularly once he moved away from the shelter of my home, out of my sight and protection. He lives on his own now, 2800 miles away in one of the most dangerous cities in the country. When all is said and done, however, all I can do is what I’ve always done since he was a little boy that I sent out the door to go to school by himself: pray. And so I do, for him and my daughter.
I am grateful that both of them are doing relatively well, in spite of some of the challenges they’ve faced in their young lives. I can only pray that they continue to do and be well in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. That and continue working to try to make the world they’re walking in a better place for them and their children than it has been for so many people who have not been as blessed and privileged as we have been.
I am grateful to have been raised in a family that valued education and could afford to help us get it. In 1962, when I was five years old, my parents moved out into the “white neighborhood,” an area where many people didn’t want us and weren’t afraid to let us know it. (We had to “trick” the realtor into selling us the house–a white friend of ours actually pretended to be the buyer, or so my recollection of the story goes.) As a child, I was only dimly aware of the racism and distrust that surrounded us in that neighborhood. I attended Catholic school in which my siblings and I were probably the only Black people in the school. Life was interesting, and while it was isolating in its way, we got good educations and our parents’ expectation was that we’d all go to college. And so we did, only one of us didn’t finish a degree.
That education has opened doors for each of us that are not accessible to others without it, this is particularly true for many, many people of color. Because of my education, I’ve been able to provide not only the basic necessities for my family, but many things to make their lives easier and more comfortable. I am grateful for that and yet know I need to keep working, at least for now, to try and make education and other basic life necessities more available to more people. It is part of my purpose and my calling at this time in my life, and so I will continue the work as best I can without complaint.
Sometimes it’s hard to find the kernel of gratitude hiding under the shell, but I’m grateful that most days when I look for it, I find it. These are indeed times “that try men’s souls,” and yet they also offer opportunities for people of good will, faith, and good sense to come together to work collectively to bring about needed change. I am looking forward to the day when I can hand the baton off to someone who can continue the work, taking it farther and accomplishing more. May it be soon.
