It is important for all folks to stop asking Will it affect me?' or How will it affect me? as a way of gaging how or if we will stand with and alongside others as we take our place in the ever-present task of making the world/neighborhood/city/country a better place for all. Rather, it would do us well to consider how we will be a part of a life that works and stands and lives for all. That demands that we avail ourselves to those who are not us. It means we do not shy away from people with whom we have no similarity or connection - even those we fear and despise.
I have been reading some bits of history (rare for me) and listening to podcasts that focus around the character of some of the folks in our country who stood within the circles of the great ones. It is so interesting to hear that they could be buttholes like any of us. Some had their biases. Some lived within lives of privilege. Some were self-consumed and unable to empathize with those unlike them. But then, they were moved to see that which was other than the life they had and wanted - and they saw the worth of those others - the value of their lives as part of the whole of us. They had the ability to live with a vision in which the concept of One Nation - indivisible - was a vision into which they knew they had to move their lives. There could not be an us and a them if we were to be this people who some folks called blessed. It is important to note that differences may exist and they must exist if we are to continue to grow and be transformed - blessed.
Now, for me, being blessed is not magical term. It is not a greeting or a send off. It is a character. So for me, blessed is not a religious term. It is a term full of vision. It is the shape of what is possible when people of character actualized the fullness of a humanity that leans into the well-being of all - and those people of character also understand the importance of all. A blessed community or a blessed country or a blessed family is one in which walls and borders and well-drawn lines are dropped so as to allow the blessed to side with those folks who may be unknown - strangers - outsiders. A community of character is made up of a community of characters - odd balls - who will become available to others without making their every move and decision on the basis of how their actions will benefit them first. We are blessed - we are characters - when there are needs and we step in to fill them - without a payback. We are blessed - we are characters - who see how others unlike us are still a part of a greater us. We are blessed - we are characters - who step into and expect to step through our fears no matter how those fears are made to sound and look as though they are a real threat. We are blessed - we are characters - who let go of the need to defeat the other but wonder about the ways we can be a reconciling power with them.
I wonder what it would be like to live in the middle of a community of characters. As All Saints Day approaches, I was thinking of Bishop Oscar Romero. Had he not become a real character and simply stood by and with the powers of the day, he would have never seen the majority of people in El Salvador who were poor - who would become his teachers - who would inspire his day-to-day actions and enrich him with a vision for life rather than coins put in the coffer of the cathedral. Characters cannot be erased - though some folks find it necessary to try and do just that. Characters - the blessed - persistently open doors and reach across lines and risk touching and standing alongside the likes of them and those - and then, quite miraculously, their character changes - it is transformed - they expand how they characterized themselves. They now become a part of a universal character - a blessed mess of folk - who no longer go to war with that which they fear but are able to give their lives for the well-being of those they fear so that a new creation will begin to be exposed right in the middle of all the stuff we may consider the shit-of-the-day.
How will we become the characters that disrupt the flow of the day? How will we bless the day by being people who walk within the vision of life that humbles itself and therefore opens us up to be those strange characters who welcome the world of other characters we have yet to experience? So, look for characters - look for the odd-balls who seem to be willing to give life to others without any reward - look for lost souls who may be the ones who surprise us by helping us build and shape and give life to us. Ah, blessed are you.
TRRR
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