I'm here today to muse about disruption.
I don't know what I was thinking my 50th year would be like but I certainly didn't envision a pandemic and an uprising.
But here I am.
Here we are.
CoVid sent my work life into chaos but I kept working and going into work daily. In quietened streets that held an eeriness that was hard to shake. We shuttered some facilities and the others were much quieter than usual. We made hard decisions and we had hard conversations.
For those early CoVid weeks there was never not a pit in my stomach. I had nightmares I was going to get CoVid. And worse nightmares where I might give it to someone. I woke up many nights gripped with anxiety.
Separated from friends and family - even scared of one another - everyone trying to stay safe physically but exacting an emotional toll we have yet to calculate or understand.
Disrupted from each other. From Community.
Days became weeks and weeks months and the news close to home gave us hope. My chest felt less constricted and my mind less frantic.
And just as CoVid fatigue was setting in... the fatigue of operating an organisation in such times as these with never ending protocols and shifting expectations ... the fatigue of line-ups and shortages - the fatigue of not easily being with family and friends... bone-weary fatigue of not being able to see the future, to plan, to know when does the "new normal" begin?
When to stop feeling disrupted?
George Floyd.
"I can't breathe"
A crisis on top of a crisis.
Perhaps the rawness of how I was already feeling, perhaps my shock at the complacency I had allowed myself to believe in... I found my myself doubly disrupted.
These feelings of rage and impotence are not new to me. But I had let them become dulled and distant. I have felt the weight of my whiteness almost all my life. I have been aware of my white privilege almost all my life. And for years it activated me and now I found myself 50 and in Canada and unacceptably comfortable with the status quo.
It would be so easy to point south of the 49th and say "thank goodness that's not us" (and I am) but that is a fallacy. Canada has much to answer for. And I, a Canadian citizen and voter, have to be part of the process. I need to be reactivated to sit in the discomfort I feel in being white and to figure out how I am going to be ally with Black Lives Matter in a way that is authentic and sustained and acceptable.
This week I listened to black women a lot - I centered my social media feeds on their voices and stories and listened and I learned. My heart was "cracked wide open" at their stories, eloquence, rigor and wisdom.
My thinking and my heart were once again disrupted.
My faith, grown dull and disconnected, was disrupted.
I hate disruption. I am a creature of routine and stability and equilibrium.
But so far my life has taught me that the periods of greatest growth have always been when I am disrupted. When I am forced to think and act, when I need to learn from others, when I need to de-centre myself and re-centre others ... when I need to STOP dong some things and START doing other things.
Will I embrace this CoVid / BLM disruption - HELL YES.
I am not going to preach here and give lists and resources - I'll do my work and you, if you choose to be part of the disruption of white supremacy and systemic racism, will do yours.
“Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them. Add up God’s Law and Prophets and this is what you get."
Matthew 7:12 The Message
