{"id":432,"date":"2017-04-10T13:43:42","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T17:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/?p=432"},"modified":"2017-04-10T13:44:40","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T17:44:40","slug":"the-power-of-our-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/the-power-of-our-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of our Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Yesterday we said these words in our Seder meal:\u00a0 \u201cLaughter and tears life and death, good and evil \u2013 these are bound \u00a0irrevocably together. We bless them together for we know that with without death we would not fully value life. Without tears we would not fully value laughter. As we learn to maximize the good and valuable, let us \u00a0remember the evil we would reject, lest it creep, unrecognized, back into our presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Has Pharaoh crept back into power? In our day \u2018pharaohs\u2019 are the ones who live in luxury while families struggle to make ends meet. \u2018Pharaohs\u2019 are those who get tax cuts while the most vulnerable lose benefits like meals-on-wheels, childcare assistance, reproductive healthcare, social security, and disability benefits. \u2018Pharaohs\u2019 are the ones who wrangle power from the people and centralize it among friends and family.<\/p>\n

Today I wonder how we can celebrate the journey to freedom when Pharaoh skulks around every corner working hard to corrode our freedoms. Pharaoh lives in the White House, in the Senate and House. Pharaoh now resides on the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

So how do we become free?<\/em> We remember our history and tell those stores along with new stories as we begin again our journey to freedom. For those of us in the United States our stories are of our constitution and bill of rights, and stories of our march toward the liberation of all: the abolition movement, the women\u2019s movement, the civil rights movement, the movement for LGBTQ rights, for immigrant rights. These are the stories we need to remember<\/p>\n

How do we become free?<\/em> We wake up for the hundredth morning and grope for words to describe what is wrong. We engage in small heroic acts of disobedience until our disparate voices come together into the cry of the people. We continue to move forward even though the way looks impossible and pharaoh nips at our heels.<\/p>\n

We open our doors and make ourselves see the crimes of rape, violence, hatred, intolerance, prejudice, and the dehumanization of those called \u2018other\u2019 who are really our sisters and brothers and friends. And we care enough to act.<\/p>\n

We have begun. We are marching and speaking and writing and calling and voting. We are wading into a sea and we\u00a0are in it up to our necks. But our stories give up hope and tell us we will make\u00a0a way through to the other side. So let’s\u00a0keep telling our stories and singing our stories as we travel on the road to liberation. Let the children of today represented by the Children’s Choir of Boston sing a story for us and inspire us not to let anyone turn us ’round on this journey.<\/p>\n