Impotent Evidence

I’ve seen in my own healing journey, and as a guide to many others, how wrestling with a memory creates a longing for a transcript or a video of the moment.

Did my mother’s voice really sound that harsh or was I an overly sensitive child? Was I forgotten at the store for hours or did it just feel that long? Was my older sister actually jealous when my grades were praised or did I imagine that?

Somehow, we’ve come to believe that an accurate telling of events only comes from an outside perspective rather than learning to trust the inner experience of our mind, heart and body.

The black community in America has understood this truth since 1991.

Speaking last week on behalf of the doubts of the black community that a recording of the death of Ahmaud Arbery will result in a conviction of his murderers, Jimmy McGee, director of The Impact Movement, shared his memory (see time stamp 40:02) of when the “first video” was shared with the world:

I can tell you the first time there was a video camera that recorded Rodney King getting beat down by a whole bunch of cops. I can tell you across the nation, even though I wasn’t in LA, we all said with a big sigh, ‘Now everybody can see how we’re abused.’

The understanding was that now that it’s on video, these cops are going to be found guilty and now we can live as black people. And the riots came when they were all exonerated by a jury,

Now I know that they can see something recorded and still not be provoked to see value in my black body.

Validation of an experience doesn’t come because you have a video of the event.

Yesterday, I watched Sterling K. Brown’s video after his 2.23 mile run for Ahmaud. It is another type of “evidence”—a heart-felt description of his racial experience as a black man in American in the metaphor of being unable to breath while wearing a quarantine mask while exercising.

White America will not believe the stories of our black brothers’ and sisters’ racial experiences until we validate the inner experience of our own life stories. We need to listen to their wisdom from 19 years of disappointment—a video is impotent evidence in believing the truth of our experience.

What story have you wanted “video evidence” for in order to feel validated to speak or write about? What story do you need to tell in order to be present with the emotions of people in your life?

Denigration as Protection

A year ago, this video by Dr. Joy DeGruy left me speechless. Could public denigration of a young black boy, by his very own mother, have its roots in an act of protection? Now, rewatching this in the midst of COVID-19 disproportionately ravaging communities of color is even more heartbreaking.

In January, my son’s history teacher lent me Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. He writes:

When I was six, Ma and Dad took me to a local park. I slipped from their gaze and found a playground. Your grandparents spent anxious minutes looking for me. When they found me, Dad did what every parent I knew would have done—he reached for his belt. I remember watching him in a kind of daze, awed at the distance between punishment and offense. Later, I would hear it in Dad’s voice—”Either I can beat him, or the police.” Maybe that saved me. Maybe it didn’t. All I know is, the violence rose from the fear like smoke from a fire, and I cannot say whether that violence, even administered in fear and love, sounded the alarm or choked us at the exit.

During quarantine Matthew Desmond’s Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City has taught me that eviction is for black women what mass incarceration is for black men. Telling the story of one black mother and her two sons navigating cycles of homelessness and eviction, Desmond writes:

Arleen sacrificed for her boys, fed them as best she could, clothed them with what she had. But when they wanted more than she could give, she had ways of telling them they didn’t deserve it. When Jori wanted something most teenagers want, new shoes or a hair product, she would tell him he was selfish, or just bad. Sometimes when Jafaris was hungry, Arleen would tell him to stay out of the barren cupboards because he was getting too fat. You could only say “I’m sorry, I can’t” so many times before you began to feel worthless, edging closer to a breaking point. So you protected yourself by finding ways to say “No, I won’t.” I cannot help you. So, I will find you unworthy of help.

Connecting these dots, on behalf of all my friends of color, has been sobering. Though these stories are specific to the black experience in America’s white supremacist culture, I can imagine there is a unique translation for my Asian-American, Latin-X and Native American friends as well. These writers have also left me wondering if there is truth here for my own story? How might my mother’s history of trauma, coupled with the powerlessness she experienced as she raised me, translated into denigrating messages meant to protect either mine or her’s tenuous survival?

How do you remember feeling devalued as a child? Who communicated you were unworthy in some way because they were unable to provide something, tangible or intangible, that you needed or wanted? What story of fear driven punishment do you need to tell in order to excavate the flawed care that left you wounded? How was this story, in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s words, both an alarm and a choking of your sense of worth?

I’m greatly indebted to the Young Life staff who have expanded my story lens through the privilege of entering into their narratives. This stretching process began with feeling mystified as I explored a generational racial history unlike my own, but the journey has profoundly nourished my understanding of story.

Progressive Lenses

In mid-March, I was informed my first pair of prescription, progressive glasses were ready for pickup. At checkout, the clerk handed me an instruction guide for my new lenses. I internally scoffed—who needs instructions for how to use a pair of glasses?

Turns out I did.

Progressive lenses simultaneously provide a clear view of cars while driving, screens 8-12 feet across a room and the pages of a book resting in a lap. And yes, it takes time to learn to use them.

For the first several days, until my eyes adjusted on their own, I had to be intentional about which part of the lens I looked through depending on the distance of the object I wanted to see. Countless times I almost tripped walking down stairs because I looked through the lower section intended for reading, not walking.

It was an adjustment, but now I am enjoying time in my hammock, easily shifting my gaze between the clouds above, an adorable puppy walking by and the book I am reading. It’s glorious!

In his collection of prose entitled Consolations, David Whyte writes:

Maturity is…the ability, despite our grief and losses, to courageously inhabit the past the present and the future all at once. The wisdom that comes from maturity is recognized through a disciplined refusal to choose between or isolate three powerful dynamics that form human identity: what has happened, what is happening now and what is about to occur.

Last week, residents in Northern India posted pictures of the Himalayan Mountains with a new sense of awe. With improved air quality from the shutting down of factories, the highest peaks in the world became visible in a way they hadn’t seen in thirty years.

As the U.S. debates about when and how to emerge from this time of sheltering and quarantine, I’m asking myself two questions:

What are the “Himalayan” realities in my life I can now see?

How can I carry these with me in a way that straddles the past, present and future in a more mature way?

COVID-19 has not been the great equalizer it felt like in late March when my privileged, buffered life experienced it as merely an extended spring break.

This past month has profoundly exposed the cost of racial inequity in our country, the crucial role of women in our workforce and the tragic plight of underpaid essential workers upon which our lives depend. Mercy, healing and peace to those sacred souls whose lives encompass all three categories.

What insights about your life loom large on your horizon? What clarity do you have about your past, present and future from the sense of suspended time we were all given? How are you being called to live differently as we all begin the long, incremental process of choosing our new normal?

To Hell and Back

Harrowing of Hell. Fresco, by Fra Angelico, c. 1430s

A poem for Holy Saturday

(click on poet’s name to hear it read out loud)

Go to Hell

by Pádraig Ó Tuama

He is called to hell, this Man

He is called to glory

He knows well those twisted ways and those who’ve lost their story.

He is called to clay, this Man

He is called to yearning

He has heard of hidden streams that heal those tired of burning.

He’s searching out those raised in hell

He wants to know the things they know

He believes in dreamland where the ragged people go.

He is called to quiet now

He is called to silence

To squat down on the breaking ground with those who’ve swallowed violence.

He is called to anguished thoughts

He is called to flowers

To find in hell’s own lonely fury that which no flame devours.

I saw Him on the midway path

I saw He carried two things only

On his trip to hell, this Man

He is called to story.