More or Less?

The world seems to have an awful lot of trouble

staying out of trouble these days. When I was a kid, I

learned this thing called "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board".

It was a party game of sorts, a holdover, probably, from ancient

magic passed down through children's hands and children's

eyes. And we would all gather around one child and chant

"light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff

as a board," and each lifting with just two fingers, one on

each hand, we would lift their body up into the air, and it

would seem weightless. Weightless. Of course, it's

weightless. If you take a small child, and then you lift them on

the fingertips of ten or twelve children all squished shoulder

by shoulder next to their body. It was never clear to me how

much work the child being lifted had to do to stay stiff. I don't

remember if I ever got my chance in the center of the circle or

not. And if I did, how much work I put into not collapsing. But

it was like magic.

Recently, there were several more mass shootings. Several

more, as though it was several more strawberries that I found

at the farmers market, or several more pieces of trash

that I had to pick up off the street. But this was several

more mass shootings with dead bodies, many racially motivated

killings. And history comes back around to repeat itself and

comes back around, and comes back around, and comes back

around. And it has at this point, come back around so many

times, and I have been so disappointed by people that I

believed could and should know better and do better. That this

time I just looked at the news and said "yeah." That's all I've

got. That's the only word I have left. Yeah. Yeah, that's

happening. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Every day. Yeah. Yeah.

Several yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. I start to

sound like one of those, those creatures from the Muppets,

those aliens that moved around the house going "uh huh, uh huh,

yep. Uh huh." Yep. Uh huh.

And people are sick of me saying, "Yeah." They look at me

when I say "yeah," and they act like I should have something

else to say. But you know what? I am fresh out of words. Because

at this point, this is not an accident. This is not

happenstance, this is a choice. This is a choice that we are

collectively making, to keep killing people for who they are,

for going to the grocery store, for trying to breathe. This is

our collective choice. And it pains me so much that I want to

rip into the body of which I am a part and rip myself out.

Because I cannot bear that I might be part of the heart that

beats or the hands that hold the gun. This is our choice. This is

our collective choice. And we must collectively choose

differently. Because, "yeah," is not any kind of answer. It's not

any kind of response. It's not any anything but it is what is

real right now. Yep. Yep. That's how we act. Yes. That's how I

expect us to act. No, it's not the best we could do. But it is

the best we are doing. Because it is what we are doing. And we

are here. And it seems impossible. It seems

insurmountable. It seems as heavy as tons and tons of bricks

dumped from tons and tons of distructions and bombings of

brown and black bodies that didn't matter. Didn't matter

enough to save, didn't matter enough to protect. But, but just

imagine, just imagine. All of us. All of us gathered around

that pile of bricks. That pile of bricks on a stretcher, that

pile of bricks on a board. Imagine all of us gathered

around the bricks, shoulder to shoulder as tightly as we can

fit in, and then squeeze one more in and one more in because

so many people want to be part of the lifting, and then we

stick our fingers underneath those bricks and maybe we even

use two fingers each because this is a heavy load and then we

start to chant "light as a feather, stiff as a board, light

as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather stiff as a

board." Can we lift these bricks up? Off the people they are

crushing? Is that worth more or less?

Is that worth more? Or less?

Than a cup of coffee at Starbucks?

Or you being able to shut the door to your own heart?