We are mere weeks into the school year in America and already the country is reeling from yet another mass shooting. Yesterday a gunman opened fire at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, during a Mass celebrating the start of the year, killing 2 children and injuring 17 others.
When I got wind of this tragedy, late yesterday afternoon, I almost scrolled on by the news story – tempted, for an instant, to not immerse myself in yet more grief, to not burn, again, with an anger that has become all too familiar. Instead, I sat with it. I’ve been trying to do that a lot lately – to be fully in the present moment no matter what is going on – to meet the moment, as poet Adrienne Rich once wrote, “As it is – not as we wish it. As it is – not as we work for it to be.”
This is a practice that requires constant attention, as there is so much in the world to run from. And in a way, running and its counterpart numbing can be ways to survive the horrors that persist, but it must be acknowledged that there is a fine line between the preservation of the self and the comfort of willful ignorance. Privilege is willful ignorance. It is the ability to look away and to forget. It is the entitlement to fleeting thoughts and quiet prayers, and then moving on with your day. It is the ability to tune it all out. I will not pretend that I am not guilty of this myself. How can anyone hold all the pain and give sacred attention to everything that deserves a lifetime of contemplation? We simply can not, for if we did it is likely we would never move again.
I would also argue that there is a fine line between paralyzing attention and no attention at all, and as a result would pose this thought: power feeds off of the energy we expend attempting to figure this all out. Power is sated by both the sensibility and apathy of its populace. In a nutshell, we need to be engaged enough to participate in power’s systems, and at the same time numb enough to not push too hard against the status quo.
It’s a shocking realization. A slap in the face to our sense of self and the agency we believe we have as individuals. We are the masters of our minds and no one can tell us what to think. Right? I don’t think so and at the same time, I can’t be one hundred percent sure. I don’t want to speak for you, but I know that a large part of the work in my life has been (and still is) to break free from the identities prevailing culture has forced upon me and the stories it has relentlessly rammed down my throat. It is as a result of this work that I so deeply know the fear and shame that can eat away at you when you try to push back against the tide – the way you can be so ruthlessly ripped apart for daring to rock the boat.
I have empathy for this – for myself and for others.
And yet…
What I fear more than all of this
is the theft of my soul.
In his book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – a collection of exquisite and thought-provoking reflections and critiques on Palestine, power, and politics – Omar El Akkad asks us to confront this in ourselves by writing:
“No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.” (88)
I invite you to sit with that. I am.
Daily I ask myself questions like:
- What does it mean to participate in systems that actively harm others and is something you feel like you can’t escape?
- When you buy this thing, what company, values, and politics are you supporting?
- Why do you want to not think about this terrible thing that has happened?
- What are you avoiding saying, doing, being for fear of being judged and called out by culture?
It’s a perfectly imperfect system and one that I actively and routinely flail at every single day. And yet, I keep trying. I keep asking the questions and listening for the deepest, most wise, unfearing, and empathetic part of myself to answer. And it has only been through this relentless and persistent asking of these questions – the living of them really – that this voice inside of me has started to be heard.
There is something deeply wrong with the ways in which we are living – the grotesque events that unfold before our eyes – the perversion of our most sacred moments and spaces – AND this is the only reality we have. You can’t change a system, or a culture, or even yourself overnight – and even if you could there would be fallout you couldn’t account for.
I don’t know. There is so much I don’t know.
But I do know that children being murdered anywhere is beyond the pale.
I know that.
There is no equation, no justification – there are no words, no euphemisms that could make right that reality. And every time we try we are selling our souls down the river to the people in power who care only about keeping that power and nothing for our plight.
Every day I drop my daughter off at school I have a series of thoughts – sometimes fleeting, sometimes not – is this the last time I will see her alive? My child, my heart – is this it? It is suffocating and even writing this I choke on the fear as my tears fall. Close on its heels is another thought, I wonder if today is the day that I will be killed while doing my job – while teaching in a public school in America – will I be gunned down and will my family have to continue on without me? Do they know what they need to do if I’m not there? Have I left everything in order? And then another thought – what if Brian is taken from us, he is just as vulnerable as me – as her. How could we get by if he was gone?
Everyday I have these thoughts and we aren’t living in an active war zone – something that I have not directly experienced and yet am a part of nonetheless.
What happens to one, happens to us all.
How did we get here? It feels like we want to argue this point a lot, but does that even matter now?
The truth is we are here and I can’t for the life of me understand why we won’t change it and at the same time have no idea how to even begin such a monumental, herculean task.
But I do know how to try. I know how to put one foot in front of the other. I know how to soften when I want to turn hard. I know how to be present when all I want to do is close myself off. I know how gross and ugly it feels when I do and say something that goes against my values, and I know how to say I’m sorry and atone when I make mistakes and get things wrong.
I know how to show up in the world imperfectly.
I know how to show up with a broken heart.
And maybe that is all we are meant to do. Maybe through that we could lead ourselves and others to peace.
It is through actions like these that I hold onto hope.
It is through the looking and the feeling that I am trying to hold onto my soul.