In this moment, I call upon the experiences, the mentors, the visionaries and the organizers. I call upon myself, a person who has had a rich and vibrant inner life for as long as I have known breath and being, me as leader, as catalyst, as voice both quiet and loud. I call upon all of my resources and perspectives, all of my insight and creativity, all of my love of life and humanity, my sense of common purpose and common belief and common love for family, friends, community, those both like us, and not like us. I call upon my deep and abiding compassion and my curious and creative mind and heart, my gut and my soul. I call upon all of these in this moment to join with my intention to hold light and hold purpose and belief, to hold all that is woven into my very being.
In this moment, I suspend disbelief. I cannot waste precious effort trying to parse a situation that is not to be understood and characterized in the mind.
In this moment, I see many, many people who have risen up to ask for more—more kindness, more compassion, to be heard and to listen, to be free from fear, to be able to access poetry and dance and all forms of artistic expression in solitude and in community.
In this moment, I see people who believe this is their due, that they don’t need to heal themselves of this belief, that they deserve. I don’t know where to go with a thought that sounds like a condemnation or a contempt I do not feel. I feel a commonality and I feel a desire to express that commonality, to keep alive the things that feel human, that feel like the dreams of those whose bones lie as dust below ground once hallowed, and now trodden upon by those who would seek to see, and those who would seek to have seen, those who come in a moment of quiet and introspection, and those whose raucous sense of victory and amazement is heard in their voices raised in companionship.
In this moment, each time I think to write of my fear and grief, it is with a thought for all those whose fear and grief is a part of their every day, their every moment, their every smile at their children, their every open-eyed stare at the world around them.
In this moment, I feel nothing more than a strong desire to get to work, to share tools that I have to support human dignity and self exploration. To explore the sense of I that is in every way connected with you and they and us.
In this moment, my heart is bursting, not with grief, but with a resounding yes to this call, to this desire to make more of what we have been given, more truth and more joy, more creative expression, and more love for ourselves and for others.
In this moment, I hear that familiar call, that strong message, that the voices of the collective, as expressed through our politics, cannot be ignored, cannot be belittled or minimized. That this politics, this way of engaging, is important and that we must make of it what we can, that we bring our light to it, that we carry our commitment in small and quiet ways each day, that we are loud when we are called to be, that we stand firm when we see and hear and sense things that we will not tolerate.
In this moment. I have no space for bitterness or rancor. I have grief and I have fire.
By: Pamela Hathaway
pamelahathaway.com
Holy Lament member
