Dear Friends,
How are you today? I wonder how you are managing life in this time of Covid and Trump? Things are difficult and I wonder how you are making it through?
Were you able to get out of bed today? If not, take a deep breath, linger in the scent of your aliveness, and do not judge yourself. There will be days like this. Days when you clench your jaw as you listen to the news. Days when your heart tap dances in your chest trying to find the rhythm of reality. Days when you cry without being able to name just what outrage you grieve. It is okay to descend into that shadow land. Your responses make sense. You are not over the overreacting.
If this is where you are, know that others have hoisted the burden and rose to challenge injustice and cruelty today. Let your work come from under your covers as you pray for their courage and safety. Let their work help carve out a space for hope to take hold so that tomorrow or the next day you are able join the battle for the soul of our nation again.
If this is a good day, I hope you are honoring it by moving the arc toward justice a little further along. What songs are you singing to put steel in your spine? What do you love enough to make this work imperative? Is it the sweet green earth crying out for care? Is it black lives that have not mattered for way way too long? Is it your trans neighbor struggling to survive?
The work that is being done, from marching in the streets to making a plan to vote to volunteering to phone bank, is work we do together. Sometimes it is on a crowded zoom call and sometimes it is a relay race where we hand off to the next person and ready ourselves for the next hand off to us. Together we will be enough to make the necessary change.
I close here with this invitation, whether you are energized or struggling: reach out and share with one other person today and every day. Share your fears and your hopes. Share your struggles and your triumphs. Not the calculable results of your actions, but the experience of acting. Nurture the connections that remind us why what we are doing matters.
Dear friends, today I got out of bed. Today I prayed for you. Tomorrow I may march. Today I wrestled with the demon of despair. Today I won.
Blessings,
Connie