I’d been sitting up in bed,
knitting. I half-listened to a lecture on Early Christianities and half-dozed, snuggled
in my flannel nightgown on this cool June night. Marty and Monty cats slept curled
by my feet. Then—was that a noise downstairs? Maybe someone at the door?
But
wait, that sound was more like glass breaking than a knock on the door. What
the . . . ? I put my knitting aside, slid my feet around the sleeping cats (undisturbed
by the noise), and stepped into the hallway.
At
the end of the hall, the window framed blazing orange flames, taller than my
Victorian house. It didn’t register at first.
Then,
“Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.” I looked back at the bed, my mind racing: leave
knitting, grab cell phone; no way I can round up all 4 cats—the girls are
afraid of the boys, so I couldn’t get them all together—how would I carry 4
cats anyway?—so they have to fend for themselves; the fire—must be the
garage—must be entirely engulfed—just get out now and call 911.
Down
the stairs and out the front door I flew, flannel nightie swirling. I heard
LeRoy next door already talking to 911.
He
called down to me: “Turn on the hose.”
The
word “hose” didn’t process.
“On
the side of the house, the side of the house,” LeRoy shouted.
I
thought my mind was working clearly: I had even grabbed the landline handset on
the way through the kitchen in case I couldn’t get a cell phone signal. But I
couldn’t figure out how to unwind the garden hose or turn on the spigot.
I
don’t remember what happened right after that or how long it was before the
neighbor kid Ellie showed up. The fire was still confined to the detached
garage, so I ran back in to grab essentials: wallet, keys, medicines, laptop. Luckily,
I kept the wallet and keys in my pants pockets and had tossed the day’s clothes
in a convenient pile, so I ended up with those too.
Next
thing I remember, I’m sitting next to Ellie on the curb across the street, her
arm around my shoulders. I remember the comfort of her presence most clearly. All
around us, lights flashed atop emergency vehicles—fire trucks, rescue squad,
police cars. My yard swarmed with volunteer firefighters in full gear.
Neighbors milled around, watching.
I
don’t remember where I stayed that night.
The
next day, I surveyed the damage. The wood siding was burned off the side of the
house, along with part of the new roof; upstairs ceilings, coated with black soot;
windows destroyed; attic, partially burned. Water and chemicals soaked floors
and the oak staircase. Everything in the house was smoke damaged—walls,
ceilings, carpet, furniture, clothes, food.
Outside,
the sap in the big red maple had boiled and burst through the bark all the way
up the trunk. Lilacs, raspberries, hostas, roses: all gone.
The garage
and everything in it: reduced to charred metal skeletons and soot—grill, bike,
lawn tools, camping gear, and my Sebring convertible Sabrina.
The
fire happened one week before I was scheduled to fly to Salt Lake City for UU
General Assembly. I had a week to find a place for my 4 cats and me to live; a
week to decide what clothes and furniture and household items I needed for the
next few months.
I bought a
new car on the way to the airport.
It
was all a lot to take in. Later, my neighbor Patti told me I was incoherent that
night. How could that be? In my own head, my thinking was crystal clear. Then
again, as I tell this story, I’m surprised by the gaps in my memory. How did I
get to the curb across the street? When did all the emergency vehicles arrive? Where
did I sleep that night?
Trauma
messes with your head. While trauma can feel impossible to handle in the heat
of the moment, we have evolved to get through emergencies. My internal clarity
and external incoherence both arose from adrenaline shooting through my body.
That allowed my brain to concentrate solely on immediate survival. Although the
adrenaline rush faded by the next morning, I’m still dealing with the aftermath
of the fire seven years later.
Adrenaline
and helpful neighbors can see us through the immediate emergency. Long-term recovery,
however, is another matter. Trauma sticks with us, often beneath the surface,
only to sneak up on us later. Resilience— literally “the ability to bounce back”—is
what gets us through the long recovery and sneak trauma attacks. Think of a
balloon animal: after it’s twisted into the shape of a poodle, it can untwist
back into its original form.
Of course,
when people experience major twists in life, we don’t return to our previous
form so easily—or so completely. It can be slow and difficult, especially in
cases of severe trauma. The good news: you can cultivate spiritual practices that
facilitate your natural resilience.
In fact,
you’re engaging in a resilience practice right now. You’re here this morning to
worship together in community. To wor-ship
is to contemplate what is of worth
to you and how you will shape your
life to reflect those values. In community, we support and encourage each other
in this search—the 4th UU principle. The more you practice living
into your values—and the more you support and encourage each other in this
practice—the more you strengthen your resilience. That’s one.
Two, your
compassion for others makes you more resilient yourself. It’s easy to show
compassion to people you love. My friend Alicia, when I’m being too hard on
myself, often asks me, “What would you say to your daughter if she were in this
situation?” Alicia encourages me to apply the same compassion to myself. The
more we practice compassion for others, the more we can draw on that practice
to comfort ourselves.
Three,
contemplate with gratitude all the good and beauty in your life. Remember those
people who have listened to you, comforted you, helped you through hard times. My
neighbor’s compassion on the night of the fire, her silent presence and calm
arm around my shoulders, comforted me more than anything else that evening. For
Ellie, for her presence, for the compassion she gave me, I am thankful. Feeling
and expressing gratitude—for compassion shown to you or for the all the people
who worked to grow, harvest, pack, ship, sell, and prepare your meals; for the
sound of a child’s laughter or a cat’s purr; for the warmth of the sun or a
cool breeze—gratitude as a spiritual practice can strengthen your resilience.[i]
Despite sudden change, despite trauma, despite heart-wrenching loss, we are amazingly
resilient.
Right now
we as a nation face the traumatic aftermath of Michael Brown’s death in
Ferguson, Missouri, almost two years ago. Whatever your personal views, consider
this: police officers vow to protect the lives of citizens and
the peace of a community. In exchange, we communally invest officers
with the power and the means to do so. The police represent our communal values.
They act in our names.
Our
current national trauma cuts especially deep and remains particularly
intransigent because we all bear the unbearable 400-year cultural legacy of
slavery:
·
The attitudes that allowed some people to own other
people for profit;
·
the values that built our national economy on the
backs of slaves;
·
the worldview that invented the concept of “race”
to divide people into oppressors and oppressed—
these still influence who we are
as a people, as a nation, today.
Whatever
the personal views of the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown—and of all
the other officers who have killed all the other black men since then—he is a
product of 400 years of racial hatred.[ii]
So are the
military veterans who shot and killed police officers in Dallas and Baton
Rouge.
We all
are.
Yes, we
have made progress. Fifty years ago, the Civil Rights movement helped end legal
discrimination based on race. Recently, the Black Lives Matter movement has
risen to challenge all of us to honor our legal and moral commitments to equal
justice. Peaceful resistance to traumatic systems is a form of resilience.
Those of
us who enjoy the privilege of living in white bodies and white communities feel
only a fraction of the recent communal trauma. We have the responsibility to
learn all we can and to develop compassionate understanding for people who
suffer as a result of the broken system we have inherited.
Senator
Tim Scott—one of only two African-American senators and the only black
Republican in the senate—spoke recently about his experiences in Washington, DC:
He
described several encounters with police[. Once] he was stopped because the
officer suspected his car was stolen. .
. . [The same thing] happened to his brother, a command sergeant major in the
U.S. Army. And he told the story of a [congressional] staffer who was
"pulled over so many times . . . for absolutely no reason other than
driving a nice car."[iii]
Over the past year, Senator Scott
has been stopped 7 times. How many times have you been pulled over by
law enforcement this year?
I’ve been
stopped 7 times—in 40 years of driving.
Those of
us who have not directly experienced the implicit distrust or explicit hatred
that fuels official treatment of black people and a public discourse of vitriol
and fear—we too suffer from this national trauma. To recover, we must first and
foremost listen to and believe stories of people who have had that direct
experience.
Lori Lakin
Hutcherson founded the internet site @GoodBlackNews
in response to persistent negative portrayals of African Americans in
mainstream news sources. A white friend of hers posted that he treats all
people with respect and so he felt unfairly painted with the brush of
institutional racism. Hutcherson replied:
. . . people
you know and care for . . . are excluded from the privilege you have to not be
judged, questioned, or assaulted . . . because of your race. [emphasis
added]
. . .
what is being asked of you is to acknowledge that white
privilege does exist, and not only to treat people . . . “with
respect . . .,” but also to stand up for fair treatment and justice, to not let
“jokes” or “off-color” comments . . . slide by without challenge, and . . . to put yourself in someone else’s shoes . . ..[iv]
If
thinking about the depth and breadth of this problem makes you feel tired,
angry, traumatized, remember that we are here now to support and encourage each
other to live our values, such as our UU Principles: the inherent worth and
dignity of every person; justice, equity and compassion in human relations; the
goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice.[v]
Living your values promotes resilience.
It is not
enough, though, to bounce back to where we were before the trauma of the past two years. Beyond resilience, we
must work toward a more compassionate world. The Japanese art of Kintsugi highlights brokenness in
pottery by repairing cracks with gold to recall the unseen brokenness we all
carry within us and remind us to create new beauty as we mend what was broken.
After
the fire 7 years ago, repairs to the house took 6 months; the new garage went
up the following summer. A new raspberry bush sprang up a few years ago all on
its own. The red maple’s trunk stands half-naked, the exposed gash limned with
thickly scarred bark that protects the damaged trunk with a beautiful reminder
of natural resilience.
I
tossed damaged household items and gave away things I found I could live
without, including the bed frame my parents bought for me when I was 8 years
old. The headboard was made from white wood, cut into swirls highlighted with
gold. As I dropped it off at the resale store, I overheard a man say, “I need a
big kid bed for my little girl. Do you have anything like that?”
It’s
not that I rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the fire, but trauma and
struggle to recover did produce personal growth. It reinforced the value of people
over things: I was able to let go of stuff accumulated over 50 years. I
experienced the compassion and care of neighbors, friends, and family, for
which I am truly grateful.
We
stand now at a traumatic turning point in our nation’s history. Michelle Obama
reminded us this week:
. . . the
story of this country . . . [is] the story of generations of people who felt
the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who
kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today, I
wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my
daughters—two beautiful, intelligent, black young women—playing with their dogs
on the White House lawn. . . .[vi]
Fifty
years ago, Americans called on their resilience and compassion to repair some
of the brokenness bequeathed to us by slavery and racism. We can never erase
that legacy, nor should we try. But civil rights and social justice now fill in
some of the broken places, gold repairs that provide shining evidence of our
collective resilience and ability to change the world with our love.
[i] Works
consulted re: resilience include:
American Psychological Association. “The Road to
Resilience. Factors
in Resilience.” http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience.aspx
Konnikove, Maria. “How People Learn to Become Resilient.” The New
Yorker. 11 Feb 2016. Accessed 23 June 2016. http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-secret-formula-for-resilience
Sehgal, Parul. “The Profound Emptiness of ‘Resilience.’” New York
Times Magazine.
1 Dec 2015; accessed 23 June 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/magazine/the-profound-emptiness-of-resilience.html?_r=0
[ii] Works
consulted re: 2014-2016 black men killed by police:
Craven, Julia. “Here’s How Many Black People Have Been
Killed by Police this Year: Too Many.” Huffington
Post. 7 July 2016. Accessed 9 July 2016. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-people-killed-by-police-america_us_577da633e4b0c590f7e7fb17
The Guardian.
“The Counted.” http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database
[iii] Scott,
Sen. Tim. “WATCH: Black GOP Senator Says He's Been Stopped By Police 7 Times In
A Year.” Politics. National Public Radio.
14 July 2016. Accessed 16 July 2016. http://www.npr.org/2016/07/14/485995136/watch-black-gop-senator-says-hes-been-stopped-7-times-by-police-in-a-year
[iv] Hutcherson,
Lori Lakin. “What I Said When My White Friend Asked for My Black Opinion on White
Privilege.” OnBeing. July 23, 2016. Accessed 25 July, 2016. www.onbeing.org
[v] Unitarian
Universalist Association. “Principles.” http://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles
[vi] Michelle
Obama. “Michelle Obama at DNC: 'I wake
up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.'” The Daily Dot. 25 July 2016. Accessed 28
July 2016. http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/michelle-obama-speech-democratic-convention-dnc-2016-full-text-video/
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