Books in Community

I love a good book club. I've done one via email (The Aeneid), one via Facebook (Between the World and Me), some formal for work, and many casual with friends. As someone who is relational, having someone to share the reading experience with makes it more fun for me. As someone who loves to process aloud, book clubs offer me the most lasting impressions of books. I'm grateful that I get to be involved with book clubs for work, and I'm hoping that my summer read (The Price of Inequality) is useful throughout the year!

Update 9/23: While at an Ed Sheeran concert tonight, I was reminded of how powerful music can be in community. Music can feel like it is touching my soul. When that happens it is nice to experience that moment of clarity when there are others around, similar to Meeting for Worship.

Music of a Movement

Yesterday my friend Dwight, a musician himself (http://www.muchcitylove.com), commented that the thing about music is that it gets in your bones. I knew he was right because I had just heard Janelle Monae and Wondaland's song "Hell You Talmbout" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=SttWb9mDp3Q), which had made me sob. It is a song that is intentionally a conversation starter and a reminder of why we are fighting for the Black Lives Matter cause ever harder as the battle feels ever more uphill.  There are precious lives at stake and she names some of those that have been lost. I'm also grateful for songs like "Glory" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUZOKvYcx_o) that brought the conversation about Ferguson into the mainstream. It's powerful message connecting the Civil Rights Movement to current events that had enough of an impact on our society to win an Academy Award. Seamus Heaney has a great stanza in The Cure at Troy: 

"History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme."

Often it is the music of the movement that can make the rhyme come alive.

In the Body of the World

I love Eve Ensler. I love the Vagina Monologues because they make me feel empowered as a woman. In that same vein, I also love a book that she wrote more recently, In the Body of the World, which is about her work in the Congo, her experience with ovarian cancer and the connection between them. It is a moving account of experiences that serve as important reminders about what matters most in life. Here were some of my favorite quotes:

"Doctors never believe how simple it is to give patients dignity It takes a sentence. It takes a short walk around a table" (25). I think this is true for more than doctors alone!

"Maybe loves comes to some of us differently. Maybe we love our women friends as deeply or humanity as deeply" (167). A good reminder that society can't dictate how we feel love in our lives.

"... if the superpowers were able to send militia proxies to do their bidding and steal the Congo's minerals, if the international community was able to turn a blind eye for thirteen years and eight million people were dead and hundreds of thousands of women raped and tortured and babies were cooked in pots, then all of us, every single one of us, was complicit and were bankrupt and hopeless" (193) A good reminder that silence is support for the oppressors.

"The only salvation is kindness. The only way out is care." (214)

And the very end of the book states: "Build the circles. Listen to the voice inside. And when they come and say, 'This is the one way only some can profit, we need the oil, we need the drilling, the reactors, the tar sands, the fracking, the contain, the coal,' stay tight in your circle. Dance in the circles. Sing in the circles. Join arms in the circles. Surrender your comfort. We must be willing to go to the distance. We must be willing to leave the kingdom and surrender the treasures. We are the people of the second wind. We who have been undermined, reduced, and minimized, we know who we are. Let us be taken. Let us turn our pain to power, our victimhood to fire, our self-hatred to action, our self-obsession to service, to fire, to wind. Wind. Wind. Be transparent as wind, be as possible and relentless and dangerous, be what moves things forward without needing to leave a mark, be part of this collection of molecules that begins somewhere unknown and can't help be keep rising. Rising. Rising. Rising." (216)

#FergusonTaughtMe

It is a year since Michael Brown died. It has been a painful and disappointing year in the United States as issues of race and justice have been put under a spotlight. We have often reassured ourselves that it is not more dangerous to be black now than in the past, we just hear more about the tragedies now because the media knows that people are interested. We have raised our collective voices and spoken up that Black Lives Matter. And the "we" is beautifully broad. The "we" at the National Rally for Justice in December included many of my friends and many of my students. The tangible changes are slow, but the conversations are important. History taught us if we continue to speak Truth to Power, these slow changes can build over time. When we refuse to accept things the way they are, we can be a part of forcing them to evolve. Evolution or revolution. I believe in that old protest chant - the people united can never be defeated!

A Lesson from the Universe

I got an important lesson from the universe this week. I was headed toward a Quaker retreat when I was pulled over and given a ticket for speeding. How symbolic of how desperately I needed to take the pause of retreat, to slow down. How often do I create a race unnecessarily? How much more often could I be intentional about taking a deep breath and lowering my shoulders? On the way home, as I got closer to DC, everyone around me was driving significantly faster than I had been when I got the ticket. It was an addendum to my lesson - I am the way I am because of my environment. If I want to make different choices about the speed of my life, I need to do so strategically. Mindfulness is central to my growth.