Graced Encounters

Recently, I read Dr. Christopher Pramuk’s book Hope Sings, So Beautiful: Graced Encounters Across the Color Line, in which he invites people of good will to stand courageously in the breach between what is and what is possible, daring us to imagine a world of cross-racial friendship, justice and solidarity. "In the breach": not an easy place to stand in difficult, overwhelming situations; we want to avoid danger and so often choose to stand outside the breach, hoping  someone who is wiser, less frightened, more level-headed than we, might take the stand; surely there are those more experienced and knowledgeable about what to do better than we in a world so broken and complex! It is natural to feel pressured from within our own convictions or pressured from without to do what we feel incapable of doing! The result? We stand looking on helplessly and/or let the more powerful and fearless do what we feel we could never do! WRONG!

Common Ground Garden Production Manager
Kate Ritger with some garden members.

Read what one of our CSB seniors, Sydney McDevitt, offers in a recent issue of The Record (11/26). The title alone gives us a clue to her passionate message: "We need tiny, consistent acts of decency to uplift those around us." She writes, in part: "It would be easy in this world we now live in to throw up our hands, say there is nothing we can do and simply get on with our lives. However, this is a position of privilege we cannot afford to take...It is of the highest hubris for white people to tell people of color they will be fine, Christians to tell Muslims their lives will go on, cisgender people to tell members of the trans community their world will not change..."

Despite this, it is hard to keep going. Continues Sydney: “How do we continue? The answer is simple: do the tiny, decent things. We do not have to join in every march or get mad at every ignorant thing...What we need to do is take care of each other...It is dire we show compassion for each other. Lift up the people around you who feel discouraged. Make sure your own friends and family are doing okay. Do the act of kindness that is going to change the day of the stranger you pass by. Then when you’re ready, jump back into the marches, the calling, the discourse...Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., told us: 'If you can’t fly, then run; if you can’t run, then walk; if you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.'"

Thank you, Sydney!

Thank you, Dr. Christopher Pramuk!

Thank you, cherished reader!

Renee Domeier, OSB