Hope at a Crash Scene

The world is held together, really it is, held together, 

by the love and the passion 

of a very few people. - James Baldwin

Last Friday night, we walked to Fisheye - our neighborhood farm - to buy greens. When we got back to our place, there was a huge car crash at the intersection of Grand River and Rosa Parks, right around the corner from us. A silver Dodge Charger with a blue racing stripe raged around the corner and floored it down our street. It had a huge dent on the side and there was pot smoke coming out of the inside of the car. It was a hit-and-run. Another car came around the corner too. They were following him. 

 

We ran out to the car in the middle of the street, at the intersection of Grand River and Rosa Parks. The air bags had already deflated and the driver said his back was hurting. He seemed far more concerned about his car. A few young Black men pulled up to the intersection right next to us. They asked what happened. We told them a silver Dodge Charger did this damage and fled the scene. They asked which way. We pointed and they peeled off to hunt them down. 

A couple minutes later, two young Black women rolled up. They were all dressed up for something fun and important. One of them had a on a crown and a badge notifying the world that it was her birthday. They were the ones who chased the silver Dodge Charger down the street. They got the license plate number. But they were far more concerned about the driver in the totaled car in the middle of the intersection of Grand River and Rosa Parks. 

This is what Monica Lewis-Patrick calls “beloved Detroit.” It is a soul sense of community, of collaboration, of collective liberation at the scene of a crash, in the middle of the intersection of Racism and Capitalism. This belovedness and belongingness is rooted in the deep Black soil of struggle and celebration, in the words of Fannie Lou Hamer bearing witness back in the sixties and seventies: No one is free until everyone is free. 

In these days of inflationary pressures and predicted insurrections, of democratic dysfunction and mass disinformation, we yearn for hope – and we find it hiding in the cracks and corners of empire, in what Dr. King called “the other America,” in those who are mumbling in the dark. These voices - muffled by the invisible hand of the market, the greasy palm of corporate billionaires and the iron fist of the prison industrial complex - testify to a network of mutuality, an intimate interconnected soul web that conjures magic and miracle in what most might call "mundane" events.

Over the past few months, we found hope in ordinary citizens showing up to the water department and city councils to bear witness to the corporate bullshit. 

We found hope while officiating the wedding of dear friends Jeannette and Lola, exchanging vows and kisses in California’s Central Valley with fifty of their closest people. 

We found hope in texts and phone calls and zoom calls and lectio divina sessions and happy hours where kindreds found the courage to open up and share vulnerably about battles with depression, shame, resentment and exhaustion. 

We found hope on the road, at a little Mexican joint called Los Betos, just north of Boise on I-84. 

We found hope in the open-heartedness and honesty of our nephews while swimming at Nawny's pool. 

We found hope in the precious curiosity of our niece Haylen Grace who just turned one! And the precocious creativity of her older brother, who insists on play sleepovers in trees and that pizza without pineapple is a serious offense. 

We found hope talking shit with Black grandmothers at the food pantry and at the neighborhood BBQ. 

We found hope in belly laughter with friends on Friday pizza oven nights, sharing sips and shimmers in backyards and around fires, play dates and tie dye and truth or dare sessions with pre-adolescent friends, and catching up with old friends over meals, on the dance floor, and while floating the river.

We found hope in our friends' hospitable provision of a place to recover when Lindsay caught COVID on the road.

We found hope in learning new stuff about our ancestors – and the ancestors of others. 

We found hope in learning the uniqueness and beauty shimmering through birth charts - our own and others.

We found hope in shows like Reservation Dogs and Hasan Minhaj’s new Netflix special – and in writings from Chani Nicholas, Derecka Purnell, Robin DG Kelley, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Toni Morrison, Grace Lee Boggs and Anand Giridharadas.  

We found hope at the confluence of rivers, under the shade of Ponderosa Pines, and on the shore watching salmon swim upstream.  

We live in a hit-and-run culture. The crashes we will experience in the days and years ahead will multiply exponentially. Relational crashes. Financial crashes. Health crashes. Political crashes. Climate crashes. Those to blame will drive away and try to hide. Our hope will come from those with the capacity to pivot, to change course, to chase after those who are actually causing the damage, to tell the truth, and then to tend drivers and passengers caught in the wreckage. 

In this spirit, we are organizing a few zoom circles to study Resmaa Menakem’s new book The Quaking of America. Menakem is a somatic therapist who has written extensively about the ways that unmetabolized trauma impacts how we wrestle with race in American society, both individually and collectively. In Quaking, he tends to our trauma in the context of the rising fascism that is crashing down upon us. January 6 was just a start. How will we prepare, spiritually and emotionally, for what is coming next? How will we digest the results and response to the midterm election in two weeks? If you are interested in joining a group that meets a few times during Advent (November 27 – Dec 18), let us know. If you order the book and just want to talk about it, let us know!