On the Deep Waters

An Invitation

I wrote to a friend yesterday— “After reading your beautiful letter and your gentle sitting in silence for hours with your friend in mourning, it’s hard to respond.

God invites us to deep waters... Just remember silence fills the broken places, broods over the waves… Listen to the silence and be present; learn. Let the grace to question begin again. Accept the cloud of unknowing, the hem of the Garment. Let Divine confidence in you, be your confidence. Trust Holy Spirit, and know hope. You will be surprised.”

I sense rising waves of anger and mourning over what is becoming of the American experiment. I too mourn—and seek to resist. Some mornings I just pray.

There are different ways to resist tyranny and inequity—according to the gifts given us—with fierce love and soul force.

We don’t have to be Gandhi and do the Salt March (or Salt Satyagraha) walking 240 miles to the sea.

Or Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King and lead a beloved community in the face of brutal violence marching 54 miles (after twice attacked) from Selma to Montgomery

We can just stand up and be ourselves— with the poor and hurting—rising together in a parable of truth-love, “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.”

Resistance is a many-splendored thing.

My first Black friend in fifth grade, Brian Lassiter (who with his family commuted each Sunday to Dr. Gardner Taylor’s church in Brooklyn), said it’s more like being called each in our own way to be David/Davida, with our little rock and slingshot.

Some of us may be organizers, mechanics, farmers, musicians, carpenters, artists, waiters, writers, teachers, students, pastors, social workers—even retired Quakers in sandals.

We do what we can.

And Goliath will fall.

Some of us may be sisters, brothers, parents—or mothers-in-law.

Several years ago a young Black parishioner in Elizabeth, Alysha, challenged me to be more visible through writing on social media. Shortly thereafter Alysha died at 30 of a sudden heart attack. She was a rare, beautiful soul.

With Karen’s help, I began to go public as a form of social witness.

Last week I posted this text and photograph.

“Michelle Obama asked her mom why she was holding Barack’s hand on election night.

Her mother replied softly, ‘His father left when he was 2. He lost his mother to cancer. He was moments away from becoming leader of the free world with no parents. So I took his hand.’”

God was acting through Marian Robinson.

She was a clear conduit.

So was Alysha.

So are you.

God’s grace does the rest.