It’s becoming increasingly accepted these days that “everything is connected.” It’s now known that the roots of trees, for example, allow them to “talk” to one another, and to send nutrients to members of their community that have been attacked by pests or weakened by disease.
This comes to mind not only in this time of global pandemic, but now all the more in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. His killing – and those of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others – both defies and demands words. Horrifying. Gruesome. Sickening. Evil. None of them suffice, yet so much needs to be said. As we’ve all been reminded, silence becomes acquiescence becomes complicity. And of course, beyond the call for words is the demand for action. Meaningful, substantive, lasting change. Hard, sustained, crucial work, work that needs to be rooted in the deepest core of our lives.
The roots of George Floyd’s murder are deep, widespread, and intertwined. Racial justice, economic justice, food justice, climate justice: it’s all connected. We’re all connected, interdependent. Deep down, the roots of our shared humanity cry out for us to care for those among us who are threatened and who suffer. The global reach of the response to what was done to George Floyd on a street in Minneapolis underlines how intertwined we are. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously and rightly said that a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
These times of tremendous upheaval emphasize the importance and necessity of attention both to the deep interior roots and the broad outward reach of our individual and collective work in the world. What are the roots of my own white privilege? What do I need to un-learn about my whiteness? Who do I need to be and to become in these times? How am I complicit? What am I not seeing, not asking, not doing that I NEED to see, ask, do? On behalf of what kind of Story do I want to live my life? It’s all connected. We’re all connected.
Go deep. Reach out. Work for change. Live into the connections that make us truly human, truly alive.
Peace and Justice,
Chris