Meeting this moment has been difficult for me. I wake in the morning, drink my coffee and read, and find it hard to breathe…
Truly, deep in the pit of my stomach, my core, my center, I just can’t hold what is happening to our country in one hand, with the common sense and decency which I know to be true in the people that I love in my communities; my communities of all kinds, spread out across this country, with varying political and spiritual ideologies. It just doesn’t make sense.
On Summer Solstice a few days ago, I recalled listening to a woman on the radio who put into words what I was feeling. More importantly, she made sense of the senselessness for me. Her name is Valerie Kaur. Her book is “See No Stranger.” I highly recommend it.
Publisher’s description: How do we love in a time of rage? How do we fix a broken world while not breaking ourselves? Valarie Kaur—renowned Sikh activist, filmmaker, and civil rights lawyer—describes revolutionary love as the call of our time, a radical, joyful practice that extends in three directions: to others, to our opponents, and to ourselves. It enjoins us to see no stranger but instead look at others and say: You are part of me I do not yet know. Starting from that place of wonder, the world begins to change: It is a practice that can transform a relationship, a community, a culture, even a nation.
She says, “This book is for anyone who has felt breathless. Your breathlessness is a sign of your bravery. It means you are awake to what is happening right now. The world is in transition.”
An excerpt that spoke to me,
“What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?
What if our America is not dead but a country still waiting to be born? What if the story of America is one long labor?
What if all the mothers who came before us, who survived genocide and occupation, slavery and Jim Crow, racism and xenophobia and Islamophobia, political oppression and sexual assault, are standing behind us now, whispering in our ear: You are brave.
What if this is our Great Contraction before we birth a new future?
Remember the wisdom of the midwife: ‘Breathe,’ she says. Then: ‘Push.’”
When she wrote this book, she spoke of our country being in this space of transition; the space of breathing to temper the contractions. She spoke that the time to push would be coming. I believe that time is now.
“Time to push. Time to fight – for those we love – Muslim father, Sikh son, trans daughter, indigenous brother, immigrant sister, white worker, the poor and forgotten, and the ones who cast their vote out of resentment and fear.
Let us make an oath to fight for the soul of America – ‘The land that never has been yet- And yet must be’ (Langston Hughes)- with Revolutionary Love and relentless optimism.”-Valerie Kaur
Reading her words helped me take a deep breath, and focus.
In the Margins 
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