The challenge – and importance – of showing up

It has been a struggle to find something uplifting to share in this blog. Although it is resurrection season, the news has been filled with excruciating stories of death and selfishness: the insurrection at the capital; 6 mass shootings since January;  3 million deaths world-wide from covid; the crisis at our southern border. But especially poignant and raw has been the agonizing murders of our black and brown siblings at the hands of law enforcement officers and other violent perpetrators. 
 
How long will we tolerate these injustices? The sin of racism is imbedded deeply in our systems and institutions. But it can be uprooted with persistent and communal decisions and actions. Our Corporate Stance for Anti-Racism challenges us to show up and speak up in the presence of racism whenever it shows up where we are. 
 
In this excerpt from the poem, “Here It Is!,” in her book, Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart, Alice Walker urges this further transformation:
 
Try to think bigger than you ever have 
or had courage enough to do: 
that blackness is not where whiteness 
wanders off to die: but that it is 
like the dark matter 
between stars and galaxies in 
the Universe 
that ultimately 
holds it all 
together.
 
Where are you being called to show up and speak up?
 
Erica Jordan, OP
Kenosha, WI