Marching on…

My world has been – shall we say – worth noticing lately.

Not me, so much, as the things I’ve been learning. It’s had a lot to do with the notion of limiting beliefs. Or, rather, non-limiting beliefs.

I used to believe that I was camera-phobic. I wanted to hide photos with me in them. This week, I’ve spent big chunks of several days in partnership with a camera making demo videos for one of my art workshops.

And I don’t hate the videos! (A bit more practice would be okay, too.)

I went to an online demo for something called Podia. I have more to learn but it is, according to a wise friend of mine, going to help me get those videos delivered to people along with helpful things like materials lists and background info. I really, really want to share this journey so I’ve decided to believe I can.

And I’ve decided not to let my dreams be limited by so many of the things happening in the world around me. I’ve decided that the call of the late Congressman John Lewis to get into good trouble means me, too.

Good trouble, if you boil it down, means basically letting go of our own limiting beliefs and refusing to be belittled by the limiting beliefs of others.

I spent a while last night watching John Lewis… celebrating a hero. I’ve already noticed that good trouble can be a bit lonely, depending on where we’re used to hanging out, so I went, virtually, to hang out with a whole lot of folks who get it.

More and more of us, declining to be limited by our beliefs or our gender or our skin color or our age or our struggles.

I was 7 years old in 1965. In all honesty, there were two things I “knew” about Lyndon B. Johnson. He picked his beagles up by the ears and my parents were emphatically opposed to him.

I assumed, in the way of most children, that he must be a bad man. At the very least, he was more complex than I’d been led to believe. That he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a huge act of laying down limiting beliefs.

Sadly, while it changed the law, it has clearly not changed the hearts of all Americans. Including many of those in power at this moment.

I’m not sure who the speaker was who said, “John Lewis chose to make the last public appearance of his life at Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D. C.” during the TV memorial last night. I was too busy writing it down.

I do know that I’m grateful for that very emphatic statement just outside this White House.

I also know that the way forward is not simple. There was a political ad on TV last night that scared me. Sadly, the people I consider to be “the other guys” in our political journey have way too much money to pay for really powerful messages. Messages that all-too-effectively play on the fears of voters struggling with the very limitations those paying for the ads would continue to impose on them.

That’s one of the things “the other guys” have in common with many of the ones I think should know better. Playing on human fears and blaming those fears on “them” works way too well, often in the wrong direction.

Or, as my Qigong guru, Chunyi Lyn, would say, “That which we resist, persists.”

It’s time to change the conversation. Time to be actively for respect and equality. For an economy that works for all of us. For accessible healthcare and good schools. For the rule of law. For a color blind system of real justice. For humanity.

Here’s why it’s hard. I, who deeply believe all those things I just listed and who have more facility with language than many, spent over an hour trying to write the paragraph just above this one. Every choice of this word or that is filled with danger. The danger of offending. Of being judged. Of wanting to be understood. The danger of not being enough.

But I am enough. Enough to speak out. And so are you.

And just in case you’re reading these words in another nation, the same things are still important. The details and the news may be different, but the things which really matter, matter everywhere and for everyone.

Which, when you get right down to it, is really the point of good trouble.

So be it. Amen. Amen. Selah.

ps… I’m not much of an astronomer, but the image is called, North Star. It’s a bit of my first Legend painting.