I thought a global pandemic was enough: enough pain, suffering, fear, restriction, uncertainty, and dread.
Turns out I was wrong. We now have violent riots (most of which, from all I’m reading in the news and hearing from eye witnesses, seem fueled by outside forces bent on division and hatred) topping off hundreds of peaceful protests, the national guard called into 20 states (as of this morning), a president ratcheting up the tension with deadly threats, and a whole lot of people being further exposed to the coronavirus. I don’t dare ask if attack monkeys are about to fall from the sky or dog-size locusts will soon sweep across the land.
In the world of cognitive dissonance, which is our world writ large lately, there is also this: the wind sweeping up and across the cottonwood tree in that way that tells me summer has landed. Three indigo buntings on the ground under the bird feeder. Carpenter bees floating above the windows. Moxie the dog pressing her jaw into the deck and falling asleep. The early evening shadows competing with the last long rays of afternoon across the grass, which is full of ticks, chiggers, and other summer pests.
There is all of this: “I can’t breathe” — George Floyd’s last words as well as the last words of too many others murdered out of hatred and bigotry — and all this summer air inhaling and exhaling us, day by day. I understand that I can’t fully understand what it is to have my life threatened because of race, to live with the weight of that for days, years, generations. But I can respect the rage and pain, and for all those suffering, I can, remembering a song Kelley Hunt leads us in at Brave Voice each year, breathe in the peace I’m so privileged to find right here and now, and breathe out love for all who are hurting. I can also do the usual things: march, write, give money, support people acting for the good, and keep educating myself on what it means to be an ally.
I can also embrace another slant of cognitive dissonance as I wish for the peace that surpasses understanding to take root everywhere right now.
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