You remember in The Last Battle, when everyone was streaming into the little hut that was really the entrance to the next world? Remember how the one group of dwarfs couldn’t/wouldn’t see the reality they had entered? They had trained themselves to see only what they wanted to see, to find only answers that would answer the particular questions they asked. They couldn’t see outside their own perspectives when they were outside the shack, and so when they entered, they could not let themselves see the glory of the new world they were encountering.
I wonder if the American White Evangelical Movement has been setting itself up, dwarf-like, to only see things through its tiny little lenses? If you find yourself unable to accept that perhaps this leader you have been touting as God’s messenger may have harmed people, that he may actually be the racist, misogynistic bigot that people have been claiming, that he may be paying lip-service to your religion so that he can get your vote, then you may have fallen into the same pit as Lewis’s dwarfs. If you defend and minimize and sealion your way through conversations about racism, beware: You may find that you have blinded yourself so completely that you can no longer open your Eyes.
And you CAN change, right now! If you follow the path of the Jesus the Wandering Teacher, your path is the path of redemption and transformation. Open your eyes! And open your eyes again. And allow your inner self to be transformed. It might be very difficult. It might be terrifying. It might hurt like nothing you have ever experienced before. But that is the Way of the Christ, Friends. The snake may experience fear and pain and difficulty when she sheds her skin, but shed she must. And you must, too, in order to grow.
Gratitude List:
1. Grades are Done
2. Today I can nap whenever I want
3. The way the morning sun streams through the branches of the sycamore tree
4. All the many ways we can participate in the Resistance. We don’t all have to do it in the same way, but we all need to do something.
5. Summer
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly–in Beauty!
“The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.”
― Arundhati Roy
“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” —Dorothy Day
“You are the only one of you that will ever exist. So, what’s the kindness that only you can bring into the world?” —Jarod K. Anderson, the Cryptonaturalist
“I don’t have any rules, because I’d only be breaking them.” —Iris Apfel
“If you’re afraid to write it, it’s a good sign.
I suppose you know you’re writing the truth when you’re terrified.”
―Yrsa Daley-Ward
“A good book is never finished….it goes on whispering to you from the wall.” ―Virginia Woolf
“The poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.” ―Gustavo Gutierrez
Mockingbird Chronicles 