What Can We Do? Tip the World Toward Love.

In light of the latest headlines, another African-American man killed yesterday at the hands of four police officers in plain view of stunned and protesting onlookers and recorded on a cell phone video, I could not find my way to the page today. The stories I wanted to write were drowned out by images from the news and my Facebook feed, my mind consumed with a swirl of competing thoughts and emotions. It is hard to find the words that even begin capture the way I feel today, but I feel compelled to try.

I cannot begin to comprehend the fear that our black and brown sisters and brothers in this country live with day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. Headline after headline about a system, a society, a culture that shows little or no regard for their lives. To take just the most recent examples:

• February 23, 2020: Ahmaud Arbery, a 25 year-old man, is stopped, shot and killed while jogging in a Georgia suburb. It became national news only after a video emerged on May 5th.
• March 13, 2020: Breonna Taylor, a 26 year-old EMT is shot eight times and killed in a botched police raid in her own home in Louisville, Kentucky.
• May 26, 2020: George Floyd, a 46 year-old restaurant worker suspected of forgery is pinned to the street by an officer's knee to his neck and dies pleading for his life.

The very real toll these events must be taking on the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well being of our black and brown sisters and brothers cannot, must not, be underestimated. Not to mention the stress and anxiety brought on by the uncertainty of waking up each day and worrying for your personal safety and the safety of your child, spouse, partner, relative, or friends in the course of going about their daily lives.

I, for one, am tired of clicking on the sad or mad (or recently added care) emoji each time these stories show up in my Facebook feed, knowing it is simply not enough. Even with the best of intentions, it is an empty gesture, worth as much as the routinely offered thoughts and prayers after each new school shooting. To be silent about these injustices is to be complicit in the systemic racism that has infected and afflicted our country for centuries.

We must do more.
We must speak out.
We must educate ourselves and others.
We must bring awareness to the problem.
We must call out aggressions against all members of our human family.
We must stand up in solidarity and raise our voices to call for justice to be served.

It is easy to say, but I have caught myself censoring my social media posts on more than one occasion to avoid being dragged down in the muck and mudslinging of internet comments or to avoid the bullying and ire of internet trolls who hide behind the relative anonymity of the web, let alone by friends or acquaintances who take issue when a light is shined on racial injustices. I have silenced myself for fear of saying the wrong thing, but it is even worse to say nothing at all when innocent lives are being lost.

While listening to a podcast this weekend, a conversation between Brene Brown and 19th Surgeon General of the U.S. Dr. Vivek Murthy on the topic of loneliness and connection, I was struck by Dr. Murthy's observation that our world is locked in a struggle between love and fear. He posed these questions, which resonate even louder in light of recent events:

• How do we move the world away from fear and toward love? 
• What can we do to tip the world toward love?

It is easy to get lost in the busy-ness of our lives, to say these things are in other places, affecting other people or other communities. But they affect all of us. We cannot afford to look the other way and hope for the best.

How do we move toward healing and tip the world toward love?
It will take connection and forgiveness.
It will take acting and living from a place of love.
It will take listening with open and non-judgmental hearts.
It will take acts of ordinary kindness and extraordinary courage.
It will take standing together against the voices of hatred and intolerance.
It will take not hiding behind our beliefs or our privilege.
It will take a shift in perception from fear to love -- in other words, a miracle.*
It will take many miracles that begin with each one of us.

In every great story where forces of good and evil clash in epic battles, love wins. And what gets me through each new day is the belief that love can -- that love will -- win again.


*This definition is often attributed to Marianne Williamson, who in turn borrowed it from Helen Schucman's A Course in Miracles

NOTE: If you are looking for a place to begin, some concrete actions you can take on behalf of racial justice, start with this list.