Through the storm

“I couldn’t believe what i was seeing… this storm was actually pulling the house toward the sky…

“…Aunt Seneva told us to clasp hands… Then she had us walk as a group toward the corner of the room that was rising… 

“And so it went, back and forth, fifteen children walking with the wind, holding that trembling house down with the weight of our small bodies.

“More than half a century has passed since that day, and it has struck me more than once over those many years that our society is not unlike the children in that house, rocked again and again by the winds of one storm or another, the walls around us seeming at times as if they might fly apart…

“But we knew another storm would come, and we would have to do it all over again.

“And we did.

“And we still do, all of us. You and I.”

Congressman John Lewis from the prologue of his memoir, Walking with the Wind.

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I’ve been searching for words to share to express the outrage and anguish I’ve felt over the events of these last few weeks.

This outrage in our country has been intensifying over the last four years, though it started long before. 400 years and more ago.

A good share of my grief is watching that upward movement on the arc of justice I thought was happening take a deep downward plunge. I’ve been overcome by guilt for leaving this mess of a country to my children and family.

And then today,  a beacon arrived for the darkness. In a BFR workshop called “Keys to navigating change post pandemic”, presenter Sue Harvey read the above story from the prologue of  civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis’s memoir. The passage above is a shortened version of the story.

Jon reminded me that we had the Congressman autograph a copy to our sons who were just about to turn 13 at the time we saw him speak.

Congressman Lewis’s metaphor of holding down the house through many storms expressed what I was searching for.  We have a lot of work to do to end racism and create an equitable society. Let’s all keep walking with the wind.

In peace and justice,