This past week, I traveled to the Mendocino coast with good friends. Much like the trend amongst elementary school students whose parents are concerned for their education as we enter the fall, the seven of us formed a socially-distant pod to meet our need for community, laughter, and play.
We traveled (two parents, two little boys, and three single women) west from our respective bubbles and sanitized and anointed our Air BNB overlooking the sea until our heart’s content. Then we settled in to play.
We basked in the presence of enormous Sequoias and Redwoods and wiggled our toes in the surf. Some of us ventured out on kayaks and paddle boards. We cooked for one another and ate together, and shared moments of laughter and honesty about the immense challenge and uncertainty we palpably sense in the world and our country.
The Mendocino coast of northern California is rugged coastline…not sparkling under the sun of San Diego or pristine like the beaches of L.A. No, this surf churns up against the cliffs, and rolls back out to sea again. It beckons you to let go of things, to leave some things behind with it.
There were some things we were invited to confront, to leave, out on those cliffs.
While we enjoyed a much welcome reprieve from our apartments and homes, the unrest in our nation continued to churn. Just east of where we were, forest fires continued to burn, leaving an already suffocating environment choked with smoke and ash. COVID- 19 continued to rage, and the emotional turmoil it is so good at stirring up continued to reveal police brutality against Black people, this time a father turning towards his car as his three children sat in the backseat. Meanwhile, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a young white man raged into a crowd of people peacefully protesting this centuries-long genocide and shot and killed two people, injuring a third.
The difference between these two scenarios?
The father, who happened to be African American, would never do anything to endanger the lives of his three children, yet was shot seven times in the back, effectively paralyzing him. What will he tell his young kids about their bodies being safe in this nation, when they have witnessed firsthand the trauma of racism, which does not allow safety to anyone who is not white?
The Caucasian man who entered a peaceful protest of U.S. citizens exercising their First Amendment right to peacefully protest this instance of brutality, amongst thousands of other instances? He could make it so far down the street and into the crowd that he would not be apprehended until lives were taken, and he could laughingly say, “I just killed someone.”
To not name the disparity here would be insane. And the “leadership” of this nation is operating under a narcissistic, divisive maniac who doesn’t work to unite these states across the differences which could make us “great”, but rather stokes the fire of individuality and white privilege so much that this nation is now being brought to its knees.
Back West, we drove through the coastal Redwoods headed toward Seattle, where I am quarantining with a friend until it's safe enough to return to my folks. In southern Oregon, after In and Out Burgers and a good night’s rest, I woke up and needed to process. I wept, as friends comforted me, and the impact of collective trauma washed through my psyche and body yet again. Its waves have become familiar.
This is not how this world was meant to be. We feel this reality in the earth around us, which groans; as forests turn to ash in the wake of drought and global warming. We see this as fathers are shot seven times with their toddler-age children in the car. As leadership continues to operate within insanity, spewing division, favoring only the few, not the many. As violent crimes ensure as a result. As people refuse to wear their masks and we get locked out of nations as a result.
“It’s like we are in a pressure cooker,” one friend said. I believe her words to be true. We are, all of us, feeling the social and emotional and economic pressure of this time, and those frustrations are exposing the true colors of people….as they dare to paint over “Black Lives Matter” signs and decide that some people are worth killing because their skin is brown and others are allowed to kill if they feel like it because their skin is white. Mark my words: America has some reckoning to do. The time for change is now. Ready or not.
Some trees have to fall before there can be change.
All I can count on during this time is faith, and family. In my case, family includes friends. Friends who take calculated risks and sacrifice for one another; friends who laugh and encourage one another to play; friends who sit and witness one another’s grief. Friends who don’t leave one another on the winding, unpredictable, dangerous roads of life.
This is the kind of imperfect, genuine kinship this group of friends tries to cultivate. In the face of hate, we will unite. We will grow. We will ask questions. We will sit down. We will choose joy. We will learn to rest. We will take calculated risks. And we will encourage one another to keep believing, even as we count the cost. This is the way we do friendship, coronavirus or not.
United.
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