Winter Solstice Writing

Today is the winter solstice which means it is the shortest day of the year. The longest, darkest night of the winter. Here we are. Sigh. As I write at my desk, overlooking the quiet street below, it is already dark. This happens I guess due to seasons and axis tilt and other things I don't really know about, but the point of it all is that we are in the dark of the dark! And there is only light from here. Hallelujah!

It's been a rough winter for the U.S as a country and as collective communities---between police violence against people of color, more and more gun violence and mass shootings and profiling and demonizing of Muslims and refugees, my heart has been darkened. This is to say nothing of the violence, pain and suffering happening in the greater world including Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Paris, Lebanon and more. Always more. It can be overwhelming.

And the loud, angry voices heard in the dark aren't helping---voices of intolerance, voices of hate, voices of fear.  It's easy to be afraid in the dark.

Now certainly there is value in darkness: contemplation, silence, reflection and renewal can be found in periods of darkness. This dark day can be a special day, but it is the light we look to. The dawn after the night, after the storm. We always seek light. And yes, sometimes it takes courage to seek light from darkness. But tomorrow will begin to give us more light, little by little. It's a start. So now is the time for courage, for our voices to demand more light, in more ways than one.

May the increasing length of our days bring us increased generosity and tolerance towards our fellow humans. May the sustained light remind us of our responsibility to others and of the value of compromise and kindness. May this season of lights bring us deeper, action-driven empathy towards those suffering. May it keep our hearts open to each other, even just a moment longer.

May we remember it could be any of us in that dark in a heartbeat. Our roots are the same.

Muslim in America

I have been thinking a lot about little Ahmed from Texas. A 14 year old boy feeling the effects of a country and state and school filled with fear and bigotry. He just wanted to show an incredibly cool clock he built and instead he gets humiliated, cuffed and arrested because, let's be honest, he was Muslim. A young Muslim boy---the recipient of all the hate and religious intolerance this country is experiencing, dimming our alleged beacon of light. The worst part is by arresting him like that and parading him cuffed in front of his schoolmates, they were only perpetuating the fear, the narrative that: "Islam is bad! Ahmed is bad! Be afraid of him and others like him! Clearly, he's a terrorist! All Muslims are terrorists!!"

But then something happened. (Did his school Irving MacArthur High School in Texas apologize? No. Actually the opposite, although an apology would have been the proper response and could have created a learning moment.) But people stepped up. It's like what I was talking about in a previous blog about the refugee crisis. In this case it was a really important person: the President of the United States. Holy cow, you guys. President Obama tweeted this:

How amazing. I was so proud of our president for stepping into this and tweeting a HUGE show of respect and support for Ahmed. if only all of our leaders would step up in ways like this and be role models instead of "must-get-re-elected-fear-mongering-crazy-people". What a game changer that must have been for Ahmed. Follow that by hundreds of thousands of tweets supporting him: #istandwithahmed and special invitations from Facebook, Twitter and MIT. What a day!

And now, maybe just maybe, a little sting of this day is off for Ahmed. Maybe, just maybe he realizes he is okay, smart and yes, even valued in this society even if he has brown skin and a Muslim faith. Maybe, just maybe, he will accept that he is not a criminal or a terrorist as he said he felt and has been called---but just a kid, like every other kid in his school, a good kid in a crazy world. Maybe now he knows that although many of us are fearful and bigoted, not all of us are. It takes just one to step up, to change the tides, to take that heartbreaking look of fear off his face. It could be any of us in a different situation.

We have opportunities every day to be more of who we say we are, who we want to be, who we claim to be as a people. We are a nation of immigrants who seem to have forgotten that fact. We are a nation founded on religious freedom, yet seem to now think that only applies to Christianity. We claim the "land of the free and home of the brave" but have become the "land of the intolerant and home of the fearful."

Shame on the teachers and administrators at Irving MacArthur and the local police. Shame on them for perpetuating hate and stereotypes, for teaching their students fear and bigotry, for reacting from their lowest selves. Shame on them for perpetuating the Muslim-as-terrorist narrative, as Bitter Gertrude blogged. And shame on the current political voices encouraging, even embracing that fear, bigotry and yes, the narrative. Shame on them. We have a responsibility to not let these voices go unchecked, to not let bigotry and xenophobia reign, to see that acceptance, goodness and generosity become the loudest voices in the room.

But thankfully good is coming out of this. I can only hope more will, that our true colors will fight to shine through. And I hope Ahmed's life brightens in ways he can't imagine because of this shameful event. Maybe ours too.

#istandwithahmedandmuslims #weareallthesame #manufacturedfeardamages #nicejobpotus #hashtagheaven #I'vebeenbloggingalot #you'reabeacon