Tag Archives: Audre Lorde

Your silence will not protect you

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Multiple bluish white flowers with green leaves in a bunch on the grass.

I am living in the strangest of paradoxes. A hateful dictator has taken over our country, but today my life looks about the same as yesterday. I wake up in the morning, the sun is shining through my windows, and the birds are singing. I see these bright spring flowers on my walk. And yet, US-made bombs are being targeted on children in Gaza, they are dying in flames or slowly starving because food aid has been locked out by the Israeli government. International students (here in the U.S. on legitimate visas) are being kidnapped and jailed by ICE and threatened with deportation for having spoken up against this genocide in Gaza.

And I can’t stop thinking about Kilmar Abrego Garcia being detained by “administrative error” and sent to the one country his immigration status said he could not be sent to (El Salvador), because of danger from gangs; and now he is trapped in a hellish prison there because the president will not bring him back. This regime is renditioning hundreds of people without trial to this “prison” in El Salvador–and really, without trial it is not a “prison” but an extra-judicial concentration camp. All the people the president sent there should be brought back to the U.S. If some of them are gangsters and criminals, they should face trials–everyone has human rights, or no one does. But the president jokes instead about sending “homegrowns” to El Salvador next.

So since I’ve spoken up publicly about genocide in Gaza, and about immigrants being deprived of human rights, does that mean that they will come for me one day? Maybe it does. But I can’t live my deepest ethics without bridging the gap between the bright sunshine of today’s ordinary morning and the nightmare that is going on all around us, just at a little distance from my house at the moment. Every day I read about more atrocities taking place, and I try to do the little that I can do: to bear witness, to speak up about them, to share my outrage, to protest the injustice. The temptation is to get quiet, to try to hide under the radar. But I do believe, as lesbian poet warrior Audre Lorde said, “Your silence will not protect you.”

The more of us who resist, the more chance we have to reverse this nightmare.

Despair

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Almost every day I walk down to Capisic Brook, and most days, all through the winter, I saw a pair of ducks who lived in the water there. I saw them today too. My whole body felt heavy as I walked this morning, and I almost turned back before I reached the brook. I feel such a crushing sense of sadness and despair. I feel for the people who are suffering and dying in a genocide in Gaza. I feel for the foreign students and others who have been detained without warning or due process. I feel for the thousands hurt by the dismantling of government programs that feed people, and in conjunct with that, support farmers. And so much more. So much more is being broken and destroyed by the regime in Washington.

To be an activist has been an empowering thread throughout my life. I followed the advice of Audre Lorde: “Use what power you have to work for what you believe in.” When I feel powerless, I still search around for some small work I might do for what I believe in. And yet, the destruction continues.

As I cast about for some hope to cling to, some antidote to this despair, I find myself remembering the life of Jesus. He lived in a time and place under oppression by an empire that cared little for his life and the lives of any of the people around him. He had no power to change that evil regime, (or if he did, he did not use it–that was one of the temptations he rejected, as described in the gospels). Somehow, he lived his entire prophetic life in the shadow of this evil empire, and taught and healed nonetheless, usually with the most marginalized and the outsiders.

I get especially angry by the people who promote “Christian nationalism.” Jesus preached the opposite of nationalism. He often contrasted the divine “kingdom” with earthly kingdoms. Perhaps there is no story with more clarity about this than the story of the final judgment at the end of the world. According to the book of Matthew, (chapter 25) the divine king said to those judged as righteous: 35 “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘…when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? 38 And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? 39 And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ 40 And He will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’”

The divine is with the least of these. And what this means to me is that the divine is in the torture prison in El Salvador with the gay Venezuelan barber. The divine is under the rubble with the emergency medical workers in Gaza. The divine is with the HIV patients in Africa who longer have medicine. The divine is lined up at the food bank. The divine is waiting with the woman miscarrying in Texas unable to receive medical help. The divine is with the sick person feeling isolated at home.

And maybe sometimes that is me, too, feeling the isolation and powerlessness of chronic illness, maybe the divine is here with me in my despair for the world.