What Matters

This week, on Social Media, I have joined the world in blacking out. Muting our constant chatter.  Listening to the dark. For these are dark times, and there is much we need to hear about what really matters. 

In that darkness, I have heard a jumble of voices - anxious, outraged, confused, passionate, heartbroken.  But as I scroll through one empty black screen after another after another, the voices crystallized into one cry:  we must all stand together or we will fall apart.  

More than 90% of the artisans with whom we work at Ibu are women of color.  Every day, in every way, my life's work is about finding, with them, a way through the poverty and injustice that has censured them so that all may thrive. Black lives matter to me.  Brown lives matter to me. This is where my heart lives.

It may be too much to say right now as violence still disrupts this moment, but I do see in it a glimmer. It is possible that we could all stand in this darkness together, wanting more.  Wanting to build something better than we have built. Wanting to work harder, together, to build a place on earth worthy of all of us.  Willing to stay in this moment long enough, and even longer, until our collective story is rewritten with the stroke of justice for all.

Today, many of us are kneeling down before what matters to us. We are holding in the stillness all that we cannot ignore:  our dark history, our harsh mistakes, our basic human cry for decency and justice, our heartaches and chaos and violence and fear.  We are in the crucible.

And for now, for right now, that is exactly where I need to be. Not moving. Standing in the pain. 

SHW