Called

numinousnimon:

We are called to be our best selves in this moment.

We stand on the precipice of an unknown future, in fear of what it may portend and in grief at what it reveals. Let us not lose sight of either.

The fear is real, and it calls us to be more than we have been. How many times have we looked back at history’s horrors and wondered what we would have done if it were us, living next door to a Jewish family in Nazi Germany the night before the SS arrived, or whether we would have been courageous enough to stand up to our neighbors and speak out for Civil Rights when Dr. King moved the nation, or whether we would have the strength to defend the victims of McCarthyism at the risk of joining their number. We may face a world in which we will find out. I hope and pray that it does not come to that, but if it does I hope and pray that we may rise to the challenge. We may have joked in the lead up to the election about moving to Canada, but we know that we must stay and fight, for those who cannot flee. We are called to be our best selves in this moment.

And at the same time, I hope and pray that we do not turn a blind eye to the hurt and pain which this moment reveals. The grief and pain is real, and deserves our attention and compassion. However ugly and frightening the xenophobic rhetoric sweeping the nation may be, and however painful it may be to be present to it, it would not resonate were it not for the very real pain, both economic and personal, that sits behind it. Embracing that suffering with compassion even in the face of the terror it threatens to unleash, may take even more strength than risking our own safety and security to defend the victims of that rage. But we will never move beyond this rift unless it is through genuine healing. And that healing can only come through love and understanding being offered to the sinner even as we deplore the sin. That is a hard ask right now. But we are called to be our best selves in this moment.

And ultimately, that only sharpens and the duality we faced yesterday and the day before that. We live in a world of tremendous suffering in which power is wielded to gratify the ego of the powerful and crush the dignity of the powerless. Responding to that reality takes courage and struggle, it takes organizing and rallying and pressure. It takes the creativity and the discipline to challenge injustice in ways that leverage collective power productively.

And yet, this struggle must be paired with an engagement with the root causes of those messed up power structures, of the deep woundedness that leads to mistaking of aggression and posturing for genuine internal strength and agency, and of the alienation that leads us to interact with one another as objects of use rather than subjects of transcendent moral worth.

Balancing those two is hard, it requires a “creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony” as Dr. King called it, being both tough-minded and tender-hearted, cultivating the will to fight and the strength to embrace simultaneously. It isn’t easy, but it is what the moment calls us towards.

We are called to be our best selves in this moment. I hope and pray that we rise to the challenge.