News Trend We Shall Overcome|Actual

I am tired tonight.

On top of

Covid and

quarantine and

work from home and

fear of the future and

furloughs and

daughters very far from home and

all the usual chaos of the world

we now have the agony of more black people dying at the hands of the police. From what I can tell, the whole nation is horrified by the new waves of violence, and social media is feverish with calls to action.

And to be one hundred percent clear, I'm for that.

Idanquot;m for people paying attention to what's happening to our black brothers and sisters.

I'm for equal rights.

I'm for an end to systemic racism.

I'm for peace and brotherhood and compassion and love among all people.

But I am not for the

impatience

lack of education

guilt and shame

and negativity that I hear and see, coming from all directions.

These things make me tired. And sad.

Because there is so much we need to talk about and so little space for a real conversation.

Let me try to begin.

* * * * *

America's persoalan with racism is not new.

Things did not begin to go wrong

when George Floyd's neck went under that police officer's knee.

When Amy Cooper ominously threatened to call the cops on Christian Cooper

when Breonna Taylor was gunned down in her own apartment.

When Ahmaud Arbury was shot and killed by a father and son while out for a run.

No, I'm sorry but these racially-motivated outrages go back through the centuries, all the way to the very beginning of America. The first black slaves came to the colonies in 1619. That's a year before the Mayflower pulled in.

Those of us who were around for the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and 60s can testify to the ongoing narrative of racial injustice and police brutality. In those days, black people were killed not just by police but at the hands of angry white citizens: consider the 1955 case of a 14 year old black boy named Emmett Till who was accused of wolf-whistling at a white woman in a Mississippi grocery store who was found dead, disfigured, and dumped in the bottom of the Tallahatchie River.In 1964, three civil rights workers in Mississippi sent to register black voters ended up dead and their bodies dumped in a partially completed dam. While looking for them, authorities turned up a number of anonymous bodies, victims of past lynchings and murders. Apparently, the KKK was involved.

We were also outraged by police attacking otherwise peaceful protest movements, like Martin Luther King Jr's 1965 Selma to Montgomery march. Police attacked the unarmed protesters with billy clubs and tear gas; one of the organizers, Amelia Boynton, was beaten unconscious and the event was tagged Bloody Sunday.

I'm not sharing these stories to give you nightmares but to make an important point.

Racism may be new on some people's radar, especially Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Zers who were not around for the highly charged Civil Rights Era, but it's important to keep a realistic perspective:

Racism has been a fact of American life since the beginning. The racist events of 2020 are horrific in their own right, but must be considered in the context of the past decades and centuries; the latest in a long, miserable line of dominoes to fall.

Though the current reality is unacceptable and we still have much work to do, it's important to respect the hard work and sacrifices that many black and white Americans have made in the past to advance the cause of racial equality. We are fortunate to stand on their shoulders.

* * * * *

I'm entirely supportive of our new national conversation on racism. I think it's penting to moving forward, and I love that folks from all corners of life are speaking up. But as listeners, we have a responsibility to test those words, to hold the speakers accountable to history and common sense, to think about rather than simply feel our response.

Case in point.

I love Trevor Noah. I didn't follow him during his stand-up days, but since he took over at The Daily Show, I often watch his videos. I enjoy his smooth manner and sly sense of humor, and respect his intellect and point of view.

Ditto for his recent piece, a passionate and eloquent commentary about our current situation. He says a lot of beautiful, thoughtful, interesting things and I love his heart. But when Noah mentioned that people in power pushed back against Martin Luther King Jr. Telling him that his was the "wrong way" to protest, I was shocked. I'd never heard that idea before.

So I looked into some facts.

Other than a few nut jobs at the FBI, a minority of die-hard racists, and black leaders like Malcom X who preferred violent protest, MLK was widely respected and much loved in his day as a nonviolent protester and a man of integrity. He won the Nobel Peace Prize, for heaven's sake, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Medal of Honor. A holiday to his honor was established in 1971, three years after his death, and enacted as a federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets have been renamed in his gaji; here in my own state, the county that includes the city of Seattle was renamed for him; and his memorial on the National Mall in Washington DC was dedicated in 2011.

That's a lot of love for a black Southern preacher. I found no evidence that MLK was ever disparaged or told that his way was the "wrong waydanquot; to protest. Sorry, Noah, you got that one wrong.

And my point here is not to shame Noah but simply to say, we must all take responsibility for paying attention to the facts and not just the emotional volume of our commentary.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. I take responsibility for my own education and hope that you do too.

* * * * *

As a kid, I often spent a long time trying to fall asleep at night. Thanks to what I now know as Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, it was quite normal to me to toss and turn for an hour or so after my mom tucked me in, which left me lots of time to ponder the nature of the universe and other such mysteries. It was probably in third grade, when we first got to use actual social studies textbooks with photos of kids from all around the world, sitting in their Polynesian huts or Mongolian yurts or tiny Eastern European apartments, that I began to reflect on my good fortune.

One could debate the merits of my conclusions, but this is where my seven-year-old late-night thought train took me: I am a white American girl, living in the best state in the country. (Detroit was booming in those days.) My parents went to college and someday I will too. We have a nice house, nice clothes, a cool car ('67 Barracuda) and plenty of food. I am smart, strong and healthy. I have literally the best of everything in life and I couldn't be any luckier.

And with that thought came the flip side of the coin. Virtually every other child in the world had, in one way or another, less than me. I felt not guilt or shame because I knew I had done nothing to earn all those wonderful things. I was simply born into them. And the kids who had less than me had done nothing to deserve their fate either. That's just the world to which they were were born.

But I knew, from that moment forward, that my purpose in life was to share my advantages with those who had less. I had no idea what that would look like, but I just knew that in this uneven distribution of advantage, my life's work would be to try to even the score.

While I am not asking for a medal, I'd say that I've kept true to that purpose. With my life, I've tried to embrace differences, to give to those who have less, and to love whoever God puts in my path, blacks, whites, and every color in between.

So imagine my surprise to learn recently that as a white person, I am blind to my own white privilege. I'm told that white people like me are so inherently racist that we can't even see our own racism, and as an old, washed up, morally corrupted Boomer, that's especially true. You know how those Karens are.

Well, I don't think that's a fair conclusion. And I don't think it's true. But I have learned that the more I try to defend myself, to explain myself, the more people pinch their lips together and firmly shake their head, "no." Apparently, the more I say I'm not a racist, the more true it is that I am one.

It's frustrating to be judged by a stereotype, to be unheard, to have people discount my own experience without really understanding who I am.

* * * * *

So if you've been on Instagram lately, you've seen that it's crammed full of posts explaining to white people how to improve our allyship and become anti-racist.

Donate money to black causes

Follow black influencers

Frequent and promote black businesses

Vote for anti-racist candidates

Watch programs and read books about white privilege and racism

Watch programs and read books about black culture

Support black protest movements

Post appropriate memes.

Speak out against racism.

And so on.

I think all those actions are wonderful. And I think that when we do those things, we will help to mend together the broken places that still need repairing between blacks and whites.

But I also think that it's important to be kind. To be gracious. To recognize the guilt and shame we heap upon each other with these lists of responsibilities.

To do any one of those things is a true act of love.

To judge yourself for not doing enough of them is too much.

And I hope the white Americans who want so badly to help their black brothers and sisters will be kind to themselves and to each other, and realize that every single step we take together - no matter how small - leads us that much closer to the promised land.

* * * * *

I am still tired.

But I know I'm not the only one.

The weight of these issues,

of our cares for the black babies tucked into their cribs fast asleep, who haven't learned yet about the world they've been born into,

of our fears for the next black man or woman who stands on the wrong side of a police officer's gun (or knee),

of our agony for the mother whose black teenage son is out on the sidewalks after dark, not realizing the danger he's in,

they hang heavy around our necks.

Certainly they hang heaviest around the necks of our black brothers and sisters, but they cause pain and heartache to white people too.

I will never know exactly how it feels to be black.

And no black person will ever know exactly how it feels to be white.

But I don't think that's our goal.

Our goal is not to come to perfect understanding.

Our goal is to build a place where we can live

in peace and justice,

in kindness and respect,

in true brotherhood.

Our goal is to overcome the evil that has torn us apart.

Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.

* * * * *

We Shall Overcome

Performed by Pete Seeger

An anthem of the civil rights movement.

We shall overcome.

We'll walk hand in hand

We shall live in peace

We are not afraid.

The whole wide world around.

We shall overcome.

News Trend Lightness|Actual

"Simplify, then add lightness." -Colin Chapman

My bedroom basks in sunshine while the bathroom sits in shadows. You'd never know from this photo that the walls are the exact same color.

It's been six or seven years since I changed.

Long a proponent of bold color and lots of action in my decor, my aesthetic abruptly switched to a starkly minimal streak. Suddenly I craved neutrals all day, simple black and white accents, and lots of big empty space on my walls.

To be honest, this timeline matches up with the decline of my mother's health. Her battle with Lewy Body Dementia took a toll on my state of mind as well as hers, and when she became seriously ill, I found that a calm, visually quiet home brought peace to my troubled soul.

So I began to live, quite contentedly, with pale, neutral, empty spaces.

If you look closely, you can see the last remaining 1980s pink and blue morning glories in the tile around my bathtub. My brain refuses to acknowledge them, but there they are in all their glory.

This was especially true in my bedroom and bathroom. I needed Zen-level calm in the place where I wound down at night for restful sleep, and geared myself up in the morning to face another day. So I stripped both rooms down to bare essentials and light beige walls, and just let everything be for years on end.

A year and a half ago, I dreamed of four paintings on the then-completely blank wall of my bedroom. Inspired by my vision, I went out on a limb and brought this kecil gallery to life. Though this felt like a huge step forward, these pieces were just what I needed to begin stepping out from my empty-wall phase, and hang exactly in the same spot to this day.

Many times over the past year, those paintings have caught my eye, and I am grateful that I made what felt like the very bold step to add them.

I'll admit that the grey background against the beige wall is hardly a cutting edge decor statement. But the low contrast combination is exactly what feels pleasing to my brain, and that is good enough for me.

Last week, they inspired me further.

Okay, I tell myself, enough with the big empty wall above the bathtub. It's time to admit that that space looks neglected and sad. I begin to mentally sort through my art stash to see if anything on hand could suit my purposes.

My family room in 2012. Pretty much everything has changed since then.

I'm glad the flower lives on.

With a jolt of surprise and a rush of certainty, I remember the big flower painting that used to hang in my family room. Somewhere around three in the morning - which is probably like ten p.M. To normal people - I dash out to the garage, pull it from storage, and hustle it upstairs to see if the proportions would work.

Yes. Perfection.

The bold colors of the original art still feel overwhelming to me but not to worry. Since I created the painting in the first place, I can easily rework it in different colors.

And that's what I do. A Saturday afternoon on the patio surrounded by a half dozen tubes of acrylic paint turns the bright red flower to pale pink, and dials the background back from blue to gray.

Now this is the scene that greets me when I walk into my bathroom, and it feels not chaotic or overwhelming but cheerful.

I hang the reinvented painting in place before dinner, and that night - again around three in the morning - as I bring in a trio of plants for their monthly watering session, I take in the scene and realize they are the perfect finishing touch.

I realize that my bathroom - and my bedroom too, for that matter - is still subdued and a far cry from the old days of orange polka dots and rainbow rugs.

But times have changed me, for better or for worse, and this still-neutral room now set off by a big bold flower expresses exactly who I am today.

The flower adds the touch of lightness that I am finally ready to embrace.

News Trend Spa Day|Actual

It's not bragging to say I was born with a green thumb.

The undeniable fact of the matter is that plant-tending is in my blood. Both sides of my family tree are jam-packed with successful farmers and gardeners galore.

My great-grandfather, Jacob Belz, worked his farm to great financial success. Not only did he put food on the table and shoes on the feet of his ten children, he also provided them with pianos, harps, violins, and all the lessons needed for his fleet of little maestros.

My paternal grandmother, Cecelia, was the kind of lady who tossed her carrot trimmings out into the corner of her city backyard and came back a month later to harvest a fresh crop. Every inch of her tiny plot was crammed full of enthusiastic growth. I particularly remember her impressive stretch of hens and chicks along the front sidewalk.

And Clara, my mother's mother, worked not only a twenty by fifty foot plot of vegetables but endless borders of perennials: black-eyed Susans, chrysanthemums, and peonies. My mother told me about the delphinium and rose spectacles that my grandmother had produced in her younger days - towering spectacles of blue and bowers of pink and white, all blooming against the odds of the scorching Michigan summer heat.

So it is that I come to my passion for houseplants with all the genetic odds stacked in my favor, but here's the thing:

No one - not even the Instagram fashionistas with the jungly living rooms and gorgeous green specimens from here to next week - has perfect houseplants.

No one.

Here is some happy news - over the winter, my Chinese money plants gave birth to a handful of pips  - babies that grow from mom's roots and can be clipped to become independent plants. This one is still a bit young to leave its mother but three others graduated to their own pots.

Oh sure, every plant looks real nice when you bring it home from the nursery, after living its young life in ideal growing conditions and pampered by professionals for profit. But once that pretty bit of tumbuhan comes home and settles in for a while, things can and do go wrong. In fact, I've observed that for the first six to nine months at home, my plants all go through a phase of adapting to their new micro-climate - a very few thrive from the get-go, most experience a considerable hiccup and sorting out period, and there's always a handful that just struggle and die.

Even the most experienced and intuitive gardener must accept these imperfections as rules of the game, and do whatever they can to help their houseplants fight for survival.

And so it was that yesterday, my two younger daughters - whose thumbs are every bit as naturally green as mine - and I decided it was time to treat our plants to a spa day.

This is a prime pip, He makes me smile.

After the long and ridiculously dark Seattle winter, many of our plants had suffered some setbacks but we had just the remedies they needed.

A quick session with the pruning shears took care of browned leaves and dried out stems.

Cinnamon sprinkled on the soil cuts back on mold issues and also those pesky little flies that live on perpetually damp soil.

Fertilizer does much to lift the spring spirits of the houseplant so we offered ours an appropriate dose.

Now living independently in a bright blue pot, my biggest pip was kind of like your thirty-something son who still lives in the basement - it was high time for him to move out and get his own place. In the pot below him, a struggling sprig of prayer plant is getting one more chance to shape up and thrive.

In order to suit the plants' space needs and our aesthetic whims, we enjoyed a session of moving this plant into that pot, playing a bit of round robin using up all our extra potting soil and our inventory of extra pots.

We inspected the vulnerable ivies and jade trees for aphids. Ugh. Found another plant infested with those little white monsters and as much as we hate to do it, dumped that poor victim right into the compost. From some maladies there are no happy endings.

And horror of horrors, my third-born's anthurium was infested with worms. Worms! Tiny little deep red things, that not only crawled through the soil but wrapped themselves around the roots with more tenacity than my garden hose could overcome.

But not to worry, we rinsed all the soil off the roots, jammed the whole plant into a big cup of water and drowned the little suckers. Problem solved.

This is the plant with worms. I have no words.

By the end of their spa afternoon, our newly restored plants were singing in the sunshine, and we humans were well chuffed with our satisfied customers.

All of our plants are now in prime condition.

The minute the stay-at-home orders lift, we'll be ready and raring to welcome some new plants into our tender, loving care.

News Trend Now|Actual

"Now is the only time we have." -Richard Carlson

One rainy afternoon last spring, I found myself in a garden full of blooming allium.

Perfect spheres of tiny purple flowers, swaying gently on tall, rigid stems and looking like something straight out of Dr. Seuss.

Over the years - and decades - I've seen other allium now and then and thought how delightfully whimsical they are and how fantastic it would be to have some one day.

One day.

I never put a time stamp on that wish. Just a vague thought pushed to the middle background of my mind that eventually I'd get around to those allium.

I figured I had plenty of time.

Well. Something in my way of thinking has changed.

Because last spring, when I drew in my breath and smiled at those wonky purple flowers, a pair of words came into my mind.

Next year.

Yes. I told myself, no more "one day" thinking. There's no more time to waste. By next spring, I told myself, I will have my own allium blooming happily in my very own garden, and that's that.

And so I do.

I still have plenty of time in my life to dream more dreams and make them come true. But now I'm completely focused on the follow through.

Instead of saying, "One day," my mantra these days is "Now."

News Trend Remembering The 58,318|Actual

Memorial Day is considered the official start of summer, and usually kicks off a series of camping trips, barbecues, and family gatherings that roll on till September. And despite the notoriously wet weather that normally greets us on this end-of-May holiday, I'm usually down with the slip-n-slide, burgers on the grill mindset.

Sure, we all know that Memorial Day is officially meant for remembering those dear souls who have passed before us, especially those who gave their lives in service to our country. We hang our flags and visit the cemeteries and maybe tell a few stories about our fallen heroes. These are important acts too.

But this year feels very different to me. Because I'm in the middle of watching the Ken Burns documentary series on the Vietnam War, and it is rocking my world. As a little girl just beginning to figure out life during those war years, I found it very difficult to piece together the tidbits of information I slowly accumulated about this terrible conflict on the other side of the world that was threatening to tear apart the fabric of my simple life. Like most other girls my age, I sent away for a stainless steel POW bracelet and wore it on my arm till it fell off one day while I was swimming and I saw many a protest on the familiar campus at nearby University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where my eyes just barely could peek out at the bottom of the car window as we drove past.

Now I understand why. Even as a seasoned adult, I'm just beginning to understand what a truly complicated, frustrating, one-of-a-kind rat trap that war turned out to be. I have a certain amount of compassion and understanding for all the political players and military honchos who just did not understand what they were up against. I can easily wrap my head around the thinking of the voices of protest who demanded that we, as a country, make love not war, though I can see now that in their intense frustration, protesters sometimes went too far in their violence and aggressive postures.

And while I feel frustration and anger for the motivations of the North Vietnamese who determined to convert their country to communism at any cost, my heart breaks over and over again for the people of Vietnam who simply tried to live their lives in the midst of a literal war zone. Since I've been lucky enough to visit that country three times while my third-born daughter was living and teaching English there, I feel a personal connection to the gentle people and the now-familiar places that feature so prominently in the story of the war, and suffered such profound loss.

But as the 17-hour series unfolds, one message comes through loud and clear to me: the vast majority of the young men - boys, really - who put their boots on the ground in Vietnam and tried to do the job they were sent to do are heroes. When I hear the full story, I realize that many of the atrocities they reportedly committed - that haunted my nightmares as a child - are much more complicated and nuanced than simply American soldiers gone rogue. There is ample evidence that most of the U.S. Soldiers did what they could to make the best out of an absolutely awful situation, and they gave their lives with great courage and selflessness.

And so on this Memorial Day, I lift up the lives of the 58,318 American soldiers who died in the terrible mess of the Vietnam War, and thank them with all my heart for their service.

News Trend Everyday People|Actual

"I am no better, and neither are you

We are the same whatever we do."

-Sly and the Family Stone

The history of the human race is written with countless struggles of persecuted people against their oppressors. Race, along with gender and religion, has been a classic dividing line and for millennia, judging people according to the color of their skin was considered simply to be the way the world worked.

Though change has burbled up in different places at different times, here in the United States, a nation founded on the idea of freedom, we have struggled mightily with the concept of race.

In the mid-1800s, abolitionists raised their voices to demand change in the nation's attitudes toward slavery.

The American Civil War was fought in the 1860s at great cost of human life to bring that system of degradation and dehumanization to and end.

During the 1960s, a new wave of civil rights swept over the country, attempting to wipe away the ugly vestiges of slavery that still lingered in the form of Jim Crow laws, segregation, suppressed voting rights, and ugly discrimination.

I remember those days.

The calm, measured tones of Martin Luther King Jr. And his beautiful leadership of nonviolent protest.

The dignity of artists of the day - Sidney Poitier, Maya Angelou, Jimi Hendrix, Jacob Lawrence, Berry Gordy Jr. - who showed us the rich treasures of black contributions to our culture

And I remember the violence of race riots and street wars that swept the country, including my own Detroit, as black tempers boiled over in frustrations at the slow progress Americans made in recognizing and respecting our black brothers and sisters.

I never understood those terms, black and white. Aren't we all just different shades of brown?

I'm very thankful that my mother raised me to value people of all colors. When I was four or five, I remember telling her that I didn't understand how people could think skin color mattered, because it's just the outside layer of our bodies. If everyone is the same on the inside, how could their color make any difference?

"Yes. You're right," she told me. "We're all the same."

And I've always been grateful for that.

Amidst the terrible chaos of the sixties, I often thought, Surely America is finally learning her lesson. By the time I'm grown up, we will all live in love.

And I must point out that things did get better. As much as we still find ourselves today walking the edge of the sharp blade of racism, I can cite one simple example of just how far we have come: Until 1967, interracial marriage was literally against the law. And for as long as two decades after that, even though I lived near one major college campus and attended another, and then worked in the heart of a major city, I did not know a since interracial couple nor did I see them anywhere in the world. Nowadays, mixed race couples show up routinely in everyday life and barely even register in our awareness. In some ways, we have learned to live together.

But sadly, maddeningly, horrifically, racial violence continues. And that is unacceptable.

Why? I ask myself, over and over, with each new name added to the list of dead black men, needlessly killed at the hands of whites.

Why can't we learn this simple lesson to judge our brothers and sisters not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character?

I daresay no one knows why it's taking us so long.

Yes, we need to improve our social systems to prevent the outrageous acts of police violence against black citizens, to correct imbalanced sentencing practices, to call out our leaders - especially our president - who shamelessly expose their racist attitudes.

We need to vote carefully, use our power as citizens to speak out, and hold our institutions accountable to building a fair and equitable society for people of all colors.

But I am convinced that the truest, deepest answer to our problem is profoundly simple.

In our day-to-day interactions, we with the palest skin have a special responsibility to treat all our brothers and sisters with

Compassion.

Empathy.

Acceptance.

Equality

Respect.

Love.

We are all everyday people, and it's high time that as a nation, we started acting like it.

News Trend Right Now|Actual

See my original post here.

These past few days, I've been riding the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter wave on social media.

Acknowledging our black brothers' and sisters' reality.

Advocating for love and compassion.

Actively speaking my truth.

Encouraging others to speak theirs.

As a part of that well-intended surge of positive energy, this morning, I posted the image shown above - "Silence is not an option." - with my own caption:

Say what's on your mind. Say what's on your heart. Speak your truth. Quote beautiful quotes. Repost, retweet, repeat. Because now is an important time for our great national conversation on race, brotherhood, and peace among the people to move forward and we need to hear each voice. We need to hear your voice. So please. Speak up.

I didn't think it was a bad post. Reading it back even now, I can see my good intentions and positive vibes.

But in my very next scroll, I came acrossanother post, headed up by the now-familiar solid black square and these words, posted by Jen Gotch, an Instagram influencer, business leader, and passionate advocate and author on mental health, especially her own life-long struggles with depression and bi-polar disorder.

I imagine for many it is clear that I wholeheartedly do not feel equipped in any way to navigate what is happening. Normally, when I feel overwhelmed and confused, I retreat. I think, I read, I listen and I hope to learn. I hope to gain certainty, so that I can participate with confidence and conviction. So that I can participate without inadvertently hurting others with my words or my ignorance. So I took some time over the past few days to do just that and quickly realized that the learning I would need to accomplish to get to a comfort level that would make me feel prepared to participate in any way would take more than a weekend, more than a month, it would take the rest of my life and even then it wouldn?T be enough. I was also prioritizing my need to not feel publicly shamed or embarrassed if I got any of it wrong. What I think now is that the act of retreating to gain a comfort level on a subject such as this is in and of itself a symptom of my privilege. I am so sorry if my absence on this issue hurt you or caused you to wonder for even a split second whether or not I cared. In an effort to get it right, I feel that got it wrong. So I am working to become a better ally and friend and I am prepared to participate with the best intentions no matter my level of discomfort. When I get it wrong again, because I know I inadvertently will (I might have even done so here), I will do so knowing that I got it wrong trying, which I realize now is more important than not trying at all.

I read the whole caption in once big gulp, and then I quickly flipped through the comments.

In the blink of an eye, my mindset shifted.

Here's a woman who puts herself out into public space, who painstakingly details her daily pain and anguish - as well as her road maps for recovery - for others to learn from, who advocates for the hurting and broken people of this world every day of her life.

But when she candidly reveals that she needs a bit of time to process the overwhelming syok that all of us have felt in these last few days of police brutality, public protests, and racial tension, when she apologizes for taking that time to listen, to learn - to think, for goodness sake - probably half of her commenters chided her for her privilege, her lack of sensitivity to her black readers' reality, her apparent decision to waste her platform by not immediately taking a more articulate stand.

What in the name of love are we doing to one another?

With my brain engulfed in flames of passion, I fired off a comment of my own:

Jen, anyone who knows you knows your heart of compassion, of thoughtfulness, of love. Take the time you need to work through this issue in your own head and heart, and when you're ready to weigh in, I look forward to hearing what you have to say,.

In the meantime, look, I get it, people. In this time of great passion and desire to deepen connection with and show much-deserved respect to our black brothers and sisters, we want immediate action. Some of us are ready to jump in to that conversation fast, and feel a deep frustration with those who need to take more time to listen, to learn, to consider what to say. I get how to some, that may feel like betrayal. Like cowardice. Like racism. But I ask that you also consider this: more than ever we must recognize and take responsibility for the power of our words and use them carefully. And if we decide to judge and shame those who want more time to listen and learn before they speak, well, then we may have just missed the point of this moment altogether.

And while my sudden burst of tiny typing mostly burned off the original rush of frustration, I'm still a bit upset with myself.

These days - on top of countless other days just like them, stretching back over the entirety of my life and then centuries back through the history of our nation and the human race - are painful and difficult for everyone. Of course, the victims of this abuse and torment are our black brothers and sisters, and their anguish comes first. But the rest of us are witnesses to their terror, and our ever-expanding awareness of systemic racism and the social evils that these episodes reveal cause real pain and grief for all decent human beings.

Grief takes time. Just because someone isn't ready to speak out today doesn't mean they will remain silent forever. And in any case, it's not my job, nor is it anyone else's job, to push someone to speak before they are ready.

Looking at it with fresh eyes, my morning post now strikes me as rude and disrespectful. I'm sorry for using my need for urgency to put pressure and implicit judgment on others.

So please, people, let me encourage all of us as I remind myself:

Let's remember what this moment and this movement are all about.

Let's offer our compassion and support to our black brothers and sisters.

Let's respect their journey and recognize their pain.

Let's remember that until all are free, none of us are free.

Let's give to all people the space to listen, to learn, to grow.

Let's give each and every one of us unending streams of mercy and grace.

Let's love one another right now.

* * * * *

Get Together by the Youngbloods

Composed by Chet Power

Love is but a song we sing

Fear's the way we die

You can make the mountains ring

Or make the angels cry

Though the bird is on the wing

And you may not know why

Come on, people now

Smile on your brother

Everybody get together

Try to love one another right now.

Some may come and some may go

He will surely pass

When the one that left us here

Returns for us at last

We are but a moment's sunlight

Fading in the grass

Come on, people now

Smile on your brother

Everybody get together

Try to love one another right now.

If you hear the song I sing

You will understand - listen

You hold the key to love and frear

All in your trembling hand

Just one key unlocks them both

It's there at your command.

Come on, people now

Smile on your brother

Everybody get together

Try to love one another right now.