How Are We Sustained
- Details
- Created on Sunday, 22 January 2012 15:44
- Written by Elaine Beth Peresluha
"The law of God, of mind, is ceaseless action, presence and infinite protection. This day is merely a step in infinite progress. It is unfoldment, not time. It brings no belief of delay in success, no disappointment. It adds no fear, no age, no deterioration, no decay, no sin, no materiality, no belief in matter. It only adds wisdom, power, dominion, law, and the presence of well done.
My treatment now establishes the law of this day, and obliterates the supposition or belief in any other law. Principle governs me and mine this day.
This day is unfoldment in which every detail and incident is but an illustration of divine presence, power and wisdom."
A few years ago, I went to see the movie Bobby, with my daughter Cate and her husband Trevor. My eyes started filling up with tears at the opening scene- actual footage of the protests against the Viet Nam War. Footage of young tie dyed, head banded youth- black arm bands, long hair, and fringed everything- I remembered- I remembered the dream, what it was like to believe- to hope.
Five more minutes into the film I was crying- when the actual footage of Senator Kennedy in Africa was shown- and his walk through the Black communities in Los Angeles- and his speech announcing the death of M.L. King- I was sobbing- the harsh hiccupping can’t talk sorts of sobbing- and I did not stop until we climbed back into the car. Cate and Trevor, not crying obviously embarrassed as only young adults with their parents can be, just looked at me.
I am a vintage baby boomer- 11 years old when John F. Kennedy was killed, 16 when ML King was killed and two months later, Bobby.
On June 6, 1968 something shifted in me, and until I sat in that movie theater, I had no idea how much my life was shaped by these events. I had no idea how afraid I had become, how cynical, how closed and disempowered. I had no idea how much hope had died.
Three years ago, I rode a train form North Carolina to Washington DC to see Barack Obama inaugurated. I was one of three white people on that train- the silence on that train was stunning. Quiet power- silent respect- I felt what it feels like when reality exceeds the expectations of the dream. Were any of you there? The movement of the throngs- elbow to elbow crushed in the flow of people. One did not change direction- or manage one’s body- we were the body- moving through subways down streets to arrive. I was way down the mall- and had maneuvered my self so I could actually see, very distantly, Obama taking the oath- and also view one of the huge screens they had up to project the inauguration. For hours I stood completely bundled with the throng, talking with, getting to know the faces within a breathing space of my own. Maddy, an older woman, shorter than me, had come from TN with her daughter, much taller than me. There was the electrical worker and his wife, her sister and their three kids- who were down somewhere around my knees. It was cold but all our bodies kept us warm. I listened to their stories. I heard lives within The Dream, the patient walk. The keepin’ on keepin’ on of a people, crushed for generations. The ancestors were there on the mall, wisps of memory rustling between the bodies that had carried them there. The way we were angled, this woman could not see the screen or Obama, and as we got closer to the time in the ceremony, I realized it was way more important for her to see this event than it was for me- so I started inching my body around and she started inching her body around and we moved maybe- 6 inches in 45 minutes- but when Obama was sworn in- Maddy saw him- I didn’t- couldn’t not the screen or the podium- but I saw Maddy- I saw the tears in her eyes- the tears in all of our eyes. The tears of 45 years of waiting, acting, hoping, sometimes not believing, had found their completion.
Before Barack Obama could be inaugurated as the first Black president of this United States of America, before 300,000 people had to march on Washington DC, before Martin Luther King Jr could climb to a mountaintop, before John Lewis could cross the Selma bridge, a guerilla band of great teachers, parents, hearts and hands had to patiently, plod, persistently move, inch by inch, though a civil war, through the turn of century, the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s preparing the ground for a moment they had no idea would arrive- could not even imagine.
We cannot understand Arab Spring or the movement of the Taliban to a negotiating table, or the power of the Occupy moment without understanding the labor movement, the rise and fall of Rome or Nazi Germany. We do not stand here alone.
(From Joan Borysenko "On Wings of Light")
Once upon a time
Love erupted with a mighty roar.
A ball of living breathing light
Exploded into a universe Of fire and ice,
suns and moons, plants and animals, You and me.
Since that first moment love has known itself and expanded itself
through us.
Our joys and sorrows, hopes and fears,
Our dissolution in nights soft womb
and recreation in the mornings song
are reflections of the divine love
that plays its infinite melodies on the tender strings of our hearts.
The notes of anguish, exultation and anger
delight, pain and grace unite in a
sacred harmony when we remember that behind all appearances
beyond the illusion of separateness- We Are One.
Hope is not sustained by the prophets- or the words that they speak. Hope is sustained- and finds its completion in the actions we take in response to the call of the prophet. Hope is sustained by our choice to find life and joy in the struggle. We must continually stand with all that embodies our hope- our faith- we must grow our own courage- sustain our own voices and in the world’s people and the power of change.
Every action we take, every choice we make, the food we eat, the vote we make, the car we drive, the neighbor we greet, brings the world closer to perfection- or not. We are the unfolding- continuing since that eruption of love’s first light.
i thank you god
for most this amazing day
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and for a blue true dream of a sky
and for everything
which is natural
which is infinite
which is yes
i who have died
am alive again today
and this is the sun’s birthday
this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings
and of the gay
great happening illimitable earth
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted
from the no of all nothing human merely being
doubt unimaginable you
now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened