I do like to mark the seasons of the year. This advent (the time of waiting and expectation for the coming of Jesus Christ at Christmas), we have been burning an advent candle to mark the progress of the days. And we’ve been making our winter window that we’ve been doing for the past few years, since someone who lives nearby had the idea to set up an advent windows scheme here. Each day in December another household lights up their window. And I have been reading Stick with Love, which has a short chapter for each day.
In Stick with Love, my friend Arun presents to us a plethora of people from every tongue, tribe and nation, who have somehow managed to enact genuine selfless love in their lives in a way that has brought about profound, positive and lasting change in the world. As he does this, he highlights his and others’ lived experience of racism, and adds his voice to the many who are now helping us to at least begin to set the record straight, and to count black lives as those that matter as much as any.
One of the recurring themes of the book, which I’m just now allowing to sink in, is the way half a story is no story at all. This was particularly highlighted for me by the chapter about George Floyd, whose tragic death in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic re-ignited the Black Lives Matter movement and brought it to the attention of a mostly neglectful world, finally.
Like many others, I listened to the news reports about what happened to George Floyd, and saw the footage of his neck being kneeled on and heard him gasping « I can’t breathe, man, » and the gist that there was something about him being accused of shop lifting or something. The reports did their job, in that I saw the injustice of the situation and the use of an unreasonable degree of force on him, and I got totally behind the Black Lives Matter protest. But…
I never heard much (any?) background about George Floyd’s life. And that background, sketched out in this book (pages 60-63), sheds a whole new light on the situation. On the depth of systemic racism and also on the goodness and honesty at work in George Floyd himself. It makes me realise again the endless, grinding effect of systemic injustice, and the complexity at work in the lives of those afflicted by it. Arun has written this chapter partly in response to comments posted on social media at the time filled with racist bile, which pile yet more hate onto those who absolutely don’t need. Any. More. Hate.
In response, I am challenged about how often I respond prematurely with hate or rejection in a situation where I barely know half the story? In a stage of life where I don’t suffer fools gladly, « cancel culture » can be a real temptation. But I am reminded that there are real people behind the half formed news stories we hear or read, and in fact everyone I meet is human, too. And I am challenged to find out a bigger story about anyone black, specifically; to educate myself, so I at least begin to understand better where it’s at. Let me do my work and find out a fuller story. And may Black Lives Matter, finally, as they always have done.
la perle 