I am deeply dismayed at the number of people I know trying to justify murder. Aghast, even. Countless comments with some justification to make sense of the immediate death and trampling of human life. It’s enough to make me want to crawl back into bed daily, or at least to question my friendships, scrutinize and wonder what has happened, or why some would choose to tighten their grip on what is clearly wrong.
Yet Dr. King tells us now in a voice from the past to move forward: ““If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but by all means, keep moving.” Dr. King spoke this to inspire youth in 1967, and it speaks to us today, of course. Regardless of who or what stands in the way of the justice that comes from the Creator alone, something he acknowledged in his speeches and efforts to inspire. We are God’s hands and feet.
Here’s the thing for me: right now so few are willing to look inside themselves that some outside justification becomes necessary to quell the doubt within that perhaps, just maybe, you are wrong. That there could be another way. There could be a way that no one has thought of yet, or wants to consider.
Letting your time take up your time is where this begins. In true awareness or being you are present in the ordinary and the extraordinary, and these days, we’re in a heady mix of the two: some quarantining, some rushing out into the still disease-infected fray, some fighting the good fight against injustice. All of it of a piece, melding together in the form of a mighty revelation. This revelation only takes root if we take our time to let it.
Today a mentor brought to my attention the words of Dogen, a 13th century Buddhist Zen Master: “To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.” This idea tracks for me, as someone always interested in the myriad ways humans have conceived of the self and of the Creator. We all bring this to our ways of believing, no matter what it is we believe, so long as this faith brings us face to face with God.
This begins a more global kind of change, when we meet ourselves, and shift toward perhaps our truer self. Only in this can we move forward. And until everyone is willing to look at themselves, we cannot become intentional about what matters most.