There’s this thing that happens to advocates when the world around us burns with injustice and fury and we shift into what we know, the holding-fighting, fierce-eyed, tender-hearted caring that pours out compassion and links lives with survivors, shedding trails of sweetness as it goes. It’s a professional skillset and personal practice — a vocation, even? — that girds our own hearts with the structure of listening skills, crisis response, and open-ended questions. We wrap ourselves in the safety of our modalities while we float steadily alongside others, occasionally sharing an oar when someone is stuck.
It is an act of ministry when we exhale-blow out-breathe hard into darkness, trusting in the moment when the deep inhale comes to re-inflate our lungs and faith.
~ inhale ~
Several sweet people in my friends circle have disabilities that make it hard to sustain the consistent and ongoing level of fight-advocate-resist that seems the only logical response to the news cycle. Fear and prejudice seep red-black into the fabric of an already stained history, layer upon layer of oppressive harm and other-way-looking building up and muddying paths until the slog becomes near impassable, each step dragging into the next. How can we keep up, especially those of us whose health depends on the deep in-breath?
I recently read a post comparing activism to a wind ensemble holding an unnaturally long note that the group can only sustain through the staggered breathing of each member. While the long note continues each musician can duck out for a quick breath, trusting that the other musicians will hold the note until they return.
So goes social justice organizing. Continue reading “The Deep Exhale by Chris Ash”
Seventy-two hours out of every week, I carry a hotline phone. While calls come in waves and some shifts are silent, my everyday and professional lives are peppered with reminders that evil doesn’t just pierce reality through acts of power, control, and violence – it seeps through in discrediting voices and disbelieving questions. It rolls into us off the well-meaning tongues of community members who’d rather protect the status quo than hold people accountable. It wraps its tendrils around us as we walk through each system we are forced to navigate – systems that are not set up to protect our vulnerable hearts and human dignity. Evil powers the backlash wave that tries to knock down every survivor who speaks out about gender, sexual, or intimate partner violence, and it also is in the fear we swallow when we choke down our own stories, press them down deeper, grasping to avoid yet another assault on our integrity, intelligence, and truth.
Yesterday, Time Magazine announced that its “Person of the Year” for 2017 would be 
Feminism and Religion 