Stick with Love

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.

The day is just rising…

I was in the queue behind a guy this morning who was on the phone while completing his transaction. “You’re too emotional… women, they’re always too emotional,” he declared into the phone, while demanding she put their child on the phone (I grimaced, imagining the irritation of this woman, who I guessed was probably doing the bulk of the bringing up of the child [also, how is it possible to be “too emotional”? Grrr…]). “Woman; the day is just rising…give thanks and be glad you opened your eyes this morning to greet it!” I exchanged knowing grins with the Muslim guy behind the till and said, “He’s preaching to us all this morning”.

I was just sitting on a low wall writing this when another guy began talking to me. People round here have an instinct for who has got time to listen. We said how much we were enjoying the sun. He said he didn’t like the cold so he was glad for the sun. I pointed to the trees and said how the blossoms were coming. He said, “Yeah this is our world… we gotta look after it isn’t it?” His words were very slurred and in a strong dialect so he had to repeat that three times before I could grasp it. I wasn’t expecting such care for the natural world from someone so vulnerable. But he probably spends way more time outside than I do. I stand corrected.

This is Easter where I live. Three completely different cultural backgrounds, at least two different faiths, shared human needs and flaws and an encouragement to notice that the day is just rising. We give thanks we opened our eyes to see it. And we resolve to look after this beautiful planet with all her creatures. 🙏💕

Do the best you can…

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this quote from Maya Angelou lately:

I often gaslight myself for not knowing things it feels like I should’ve known. But actually I’m coming to see that what matters is that often in my life I have been doing the best I could based on what I did know. And no one can know everything. Now is the time not for dwelling on my past limitations, but recognising what I now know, and “doing better”.

This was brought to my mind a couple of times lately. In one situation, I was feeling righteous indignation about someone powerful’s poor knowledge and response to a damaging state of affairs. I caught myself feeling angry at them for their woeful lack of understanding. But then realised in many ways I was in their shoes not very long ago. I don’t have the same kind of power and responsibility as them, but I do have some power and some responsibility. And I also hadn’t taken the time and trouble to listen and understand; to know better.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know. But now I am beginning to know better, and attempting to do better. This is the way of hope.

The second situation where this sprang to mind was in listening to someone who recounted a great question she had been asked when facing a sticky situation; “What would the best version of yourself do?” Now I know that question, I think it may help me to know better and also to do better going forward. Although I am also making allowances for myself to sometimes do less well due to being tired or over stretched. (These doughnuts didn’t buy themselves today. And the missing ones didn’t eat themselves, either!…)

Black Lives Matter

We physically distanced ourselves, we wore masks, we knelt in silence, fists of resistance raised. The air hummed with our anger, our sorrow and our determination to bring about change. One moment, feeling a bit foolish, kneeling there, the next looking again at the young black woman at the front, fist never lowering even for a moment. She knows what it is to be black. She knows this isn’t just another issue; this is life or death. Then our anger mixed with humiliation for generation upon generation of our collective failure to act or to speak up. Or to even see the people around us as they really are, and listen to them talk, at length, about their lived experience, their pain; their reality.

My friend wrote a chant in response to this which serves as a song of lament and also a way of reminding ourselves repeatedly to wake up and pay attention, to prevent us falling back into our well worn grooves of inaction, silence or complicity:

“The beginning of evil is heedlessness; Lord have mercy”
Abba Poeman

Lucy Bolster, Play in Chants

Another friend blogged a response to do with the controversial dismantling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol. What he writes is astonishing and in my view should be read by anyone in the UK currently or who has an interest in what is happening here.

“…it was only in 2015 that we [UK Government] finally finished paying the debt borrowed by the UK state to pay off the slave owners after the abolition of slavery act in 1833. It was the biggest payment in our history, more than the bankers bailout in 2008. It was 40% of our entire GDP. Not a penny went to slaves who still had to work as interns for free for a further 5 years.”

Find Chris Howson’s full blog post here: http://ajustchurch.blogspot.com/2020/06/statues-and-slavery.html?m=1