August in Memphis can make anyone a little crazy. But it’s also beautiful -a sacred time when music goes long into the night chasing after breezes, when sweat pours from bodies and carries away all that separates us, when it’s too damn hot to do anything other than just be, exist. There is something equalizing about this shared immersion in the power of the planet to make us stop. Not move so fast. Take our time and our breath and slow ourselves down.
For me in my life it has been important to have this changing and shifting comprehension of time. It has freed me both simply to be in an experience, and to juggle, compress, and expand time as needed. As I primarily work in the climate justice world, and that is a world made up almost completely of immediate tasks that all requires long time spans, the graciousness of unfolding, in order to be successful and sustainable.
Grace is always good. Creating space for a pause is a healthy thing for a system to do. I believe more dissertations would be completed, for example, if the time constraints were removed. More art would be made if basic living needs were met first -it’s not about paint or clay. Counter-intuitive perhaps but nonetheless true.
We can examine the patterns of systems, the factors they touch, and the internal momentum every system requires to exist -and this is manageable to do if we isolate a single system and focus in on it. I’d been thinking of commonly encountered systems like transportation or urban growth patterns, and recalled how deeply these affect each other, and about the other systems that each itself affects.
I don’t know how much fear of that grief drives climate inaction -it’s a really messy and complicated topic. But honestly, I think many people don’t get more involved or more deeply active because they have no idea what’s happening around them. I don’t mean a general apathy or disengagement. I mean they simply do not get word, don’t know a group is cleaning up that creek, or have no idea that all you need for composting is to sign up. The planet needs a town crier staff.
One of my most profound learnings as a youth minister was the realization -the revelation really- that my ministry was with the parents of the youth as well as the youth themselves. I needed relationships with the whole family system -or at least more of it than I had previously understood- in order to function well.
It is the small connections that anchor us not only to each other, but to our own lives and selves. I’m a fan of the four-way stop as a traffic intervention because it forces interaction between drivers. But all the small exchanges matter. Nodding to the stranger we pass on the street, or the neighbor. Taking the extra minute for the next question. It’s more than giving up a parking place.
Restorative justice is hard, intimidating. We are used to a retributive model, wherein crimes are punished, criminals become marked as separate, and punishment is harsh. We have dallied in this country with some rehabilitative justice models, and those are of course more effective than the retributive, but less politically popular, rarely fully funded, and still missing the mark.
Without a vision of shared life, without something generative to move towards, we turn inwards. Our units of concern become smaller and smaller. A city, a neighborhood. A single church group, a social club. A gaggle of high school friends, college alums. Like-minded companions online. Your biological family.
as I consider the Incarnation of the Divine this year, I’m struck not by that infant but by his parents, a couple on a journey -not one they’d planned nor would’ve chosen, the trip to Bethlehem for the Census, but also their broader journey. An unplanned child. Visions of justice proclaimed by Mary. The flight to a foreign land for their safety, perceived by the dreamer Joseph. The parents of Jesus of Nazareth were on their own journey of life, one full of danger and protection, vision and purpose.
my mom started getting up at five am, to give her extra time in the day for her. Only for her. She developed a ritual of prayer, scripture reading, journaling, and body movement that she did alone and in silence each morning until her death. When truly alone in the house, she added song to her routine.
I believe that worthwhile actions are those that unfold, evolve, and emerge. Very rarely, but sometimes, these include special events with an intended purpose such as a march or rally around a cause, a theme, an anniversary in time. I even gladly participate in these kinds of actions when called to them by those I follow, such as Indigenous voices, youth and children, or on-the-ground collaborative partners.
Among many of my professional and social groups, and certainly ‘at home’ in Memphis, I am one of those people who will say the unsaid thing. A lifetime of ministry has taught me the pastoral side of holding my tongue, not to avoid trouble but to respect a confidence. But when I was younger, I would often speak the unsaid things to shock or disrupt. I’ve learned that this agitation should be reserved as a strategy, and not used as a standard operating procedure, and in fact must be so in order to be effective.
Now, I am not alone in this, as frankly this sort of activity was encouraged throughout my childhood education by many of the teachers shared for a dozen years by about 25 of my friends from Memphis. I have become quite close with several of these folks over the decades, and something we all share is a willingness to say the unsaid things.
My mother always thought it was extraordinary that I attended two schools from 1st grade through my high school graduation, that it must have formed me in some significant way. Even my kindergarten was just across the street and down some from my elementary school, and many of us moved together from one to the other.
Not everyone from the 6th grade stayed together, but we only went to 5 or 6 places, and the cohort that showed up to 7th grade together remained friends at least through those rocky middle years. My high school class was one of the last to attend both Junior High and Senior High on the same physical campus, and I am absolutely sure this is why school tours are always a popular class reunion activity for us. We were there a long time. A long time.
One of these people with whom I was always in school recently asked me if I thought there was something special in the water at our elementary school that made us all think we could change the world. It was a serious question.
Which again brought up the question of what kind of effect these relationships have had on me, and the common lived life among us. Has it affected my sense of self when I’ve realized much of what formed me is also shared? Yes, I think so but in a very solid and grounded way. It does not feed doubt or cause me to question any thought as unique. In fact, it’s helped me feel not quite so alone as I’ve wrestled with whatever injustice or committed myself to whichever fight.
Because until perhaps the last 7-10 years, I *was* the only person saying many of the things I regularly preached and taught. I’ve been talking about white privilege with my fellow white people since I first heard the term in the 1990s. I have been advocating for environmental justice and Creation Care since I was a child. I have been mocked, reprimanded, and punished for demanding higher standards in regards to keeping children and youth safe from predators. I was raised to believe that protest is the highest form of patriotism and faithfulness, and I have spoken out in various ways all my life. Often alone.
Of course other people were doing the same kinds of things over similar issues in other places, and I am good at finding allies in unusual spaces. All of these movements have only grown over the last decade, rolling slowly into cultural norms. But there was something particular that I enjoyed about being different, voicing an alternative view, speaking the unsaid thing.
It set me apart, and gave me an identity as on outsider even when I represented the establishment. And as a white American, I will always at some level represent the establishment. Agitating in that space *is* important, but it’s also the safest possible place within which to act. There is a kind of power and protection in the maverick archetype, the troublemaker persona. And there can be real effects to the ripples caused, but not always for the disruptor, especially a privileged one.
I have to let that piece of my identity go, because wrapped insidiously within it are several ways in which I cede my life to fear and scarcity. When I assume I must be the one to say the unsaid thing, I remove the possibility that role is another’s. When I walk into a space assuming I will be the only one with certain concerns, I remove the need to search for allies and accomplices. When I assume I will need to say the unsaid thing, I do not listen well enough to hear when it *is* said by another in a different way.
But most importantly, I have to stand separate from this as a part of how I think of myself, my sense of identity and worth. It. Is. Not. About. Me. My identity is grounded within my own heart and soul, within my relationship with God, and my worth cannot be parsed to data points, even if those be in the social or religious realms.
I will continue to say the unsaid things, because politeness is not a Gospel value and sometimes, adherence to love and justice requires these things be spoken out loud. While I may say all the unsaid things, I must challenge myself to also DO the undone things, and act outside of the paradigm in which we find ourselves. And I will continue to both lean on and seek out others who also say the unsaid things.
