Cracked Glass Still Has A View

 I am an Empath.

The world feels heavy to me at times when I look out at the faces of people or just sense the weight of all that is happening around us in these un-United States.

Those of us with a deep spiritual sense can be exhausted by it.

I spent Saturday driving down to New York for a meeting of other ministers-in-the-process, and while driving, looking at the beautiful trees on the Merritt Parkway, just had to have one of my car-talks-with-God.

Our world has been a bit turned over.

It is very dystopian.

So, in my talks, rants, actually, because God and I have this thirty-five-year-relationship where I can just talk to my Parent and say that is on my mind. I ask a lot of why questions. You know, the way our toddlers did when they were trying to understand the world. Especially if they were told, "No." The response of, "Why?" was not always throwing a temper tantrum, but genuinely wanting to gain knowledge and process.

We talked.

I prayed in my understanding and in my spirit.  

While I had a firm grip on the steering wheel, I was also waving  and gesturing because I do talk with my hands.

"Help me see what I don't see." was an often repeated phrase.

"What is it the collective us is not understanding with all this evil still happening?"

"How much longer?!?!"

Then, I turned my rants into some more laments and pleas.

"God please protect the innocent."

"Open the eyes of our hearts."

"Show us how to be community."

I want so desperately for all this heaviness to end, for the under certainty to be over, for the people who have betrayed humanity to be punished for it. Who doesn't? 

Then, I'm reminded of what African American/Black American women were trying to get the country to see for decades. 

I read Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry's book, Sister Citizen back in 2013 and heard her speak to my Public Theology and Racial Justice Institute Cohort back in 2017. 

Remember all that Stacey Abrams was trying to do and she is the daughter of United Methodist preachers, she was well into the principles we hold of justice and righteousness, compassion and service. 

The list of women who tried to sound the alarm was and is long.

Yet, they refused to listen.

And our hearts were shattered.

What in the world can we do now, God? was and is my prayer.

Some of us, me, sine 2007, have agitated, organized, activated, spoke, wrote, taught, preached.

I remember my husband, when he was a Provost at an HBCU, said to me once, "your writing is very strong." In some ways, I think he was worried of it offending some of the wannabe bourgeoisie in that town who were oversized fish in a very tiny pond.  

But I kept doing what I was doing and centered it on my lane - literature, education, children, voting. 

When someone challenged me that I was "trying to preach," I went to seminary so that I could know deeper what the prior twenty-five years had been teaching me. 

It has been a long, long, long time.

Being born in 1964, we were supposed to have it figured out, to be the ones of hope and promise.

The problem is that racism, sexism, and hate did not die, it was repackaged, handed a mic, got a podcast, debated college students, forced a narrow reading of the Pauline epistles, and completely forgot about the releasing-of-the-captives work of that brown skinned Palestinian Jew they claim to follow.

We are almost to the point of no return.

But I believe, strongly that there are at least 220 million people in this country who believe in humanity. Who know that human rights are imperative for all and that basic things like clean water, food, a good (unindoctrinated) education, rights of one's body, choice, freedom, justice, and safety from being snatched off the street because they are sun kissed, all important for everyone. They are not afraid of people simply for being born different than them. They are not afraid of smart people or thinking people or people who read books or people who take pictures or people who paint or people who dance or people who draw.

There is still time.

So what I did while feeling the weight of it all was what I always do when I need to cast it off, I go to the water.

There is a place called Long Beach where one can park and walk along the shore. 

It was a bit chilly, so I didn't walk, but I parked and watched the waning of the day and the sun glistening over the water, watched the sun set. Rolled my windows down and felt the breeze.

Then it hit me as I glanced through my hairline crack on my windshield that I still need to have repaired, even if the vision is broken, a bit shattered, it is still there, one can still see the horizon. The possible still exists, may have to squint a bit to see it, the prism may created other patterns, but it is still there.

And that is what I believe about us.

The collective us.

We may be a bit shattered, but we are not broken, we are still functioning, and we are still possible.

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Waiting on a better day.