At six AM today in 92128, a mourning dove was cooing on a roof peak across from my house. As we are deafened by the people on both sides of the barricades this incongruous and melancholy tune seemed particularly apt. Soon, this lone, sad voice was joined by the music of scrub jays, finches and California towhees… an absolute symphony.
We are living now in a world of pain and we will do almost anything for the pain to stop. Some will simply suppress the sounds and images that are so uncomfortable. They will not see or hear in the hope that the pain will dissipate if one refuses to feel it. Others will go to absurd lengths to find relief. Fear and anger will make it easy to pick up a brick and frustration and hate will help them throw it. Others will fire tear gas canisters, scream slogans and measure their effectiveness by the magnitude of the destruction they have created. Cops need rioters as much as rioters need cops.
Looking for relief from the agonies of bereavement, injustice and learned animosity is curiously, understandable. The state of pain is a geography we all want to traverse as soon as possible. Hope comes to this horrible landscape when we see action that is neither homicidal or suicidal, but human. The protester hugging a cop, a white man taking a knee at a spot where a grave injustice was the cause of a black man’s death and those who are simply present, abiding in the pain in search of the greater good. These small things ease our pain somewhat, they give us hope.
Odd, how such small things are so important to our future and our need for what is right. They give hope. I want to embrace the small things that give us hope. I do not deny the vastness of our collective pain, in fact, small things are as valid as the largest actions. Acts of real protest are often small… like a black woman telling a white teenager to stop tagging buildings or a cop taking a knee to show her values. These acts may seem peripheral to the conflict at hand but they are stunning statements of value.
So I listen to the mourning doves and their sad song but I know that other voices will soon join in a chorus that is really beautiful. This song is timeless and we will enjoy a dawn chorus as soon as it is quiet enough to hear it.
Let us all listen intently…the song will begin soon.
Olio Folio 