What is it that burns deep within us that demands dignity? What is in us that needs a place to belong? What in us dies when rendered invisible? Studies have shown that babies in orphanages who were provided with food and warmth still died because they were not given attention. They died because they were made virtually invisible by their caregivers.
Today hundreds of thousands of Americans (as well as people everywhere on the planet) are dying of invisibility. There are people living with such ugly and severe injustice, pain, and hardship that most of us can’t help but look away.
Who is not looking away but walking with them?
Today, URI in San Francisco hosted leaders in the Red Flame for Freedom Movement (Audri Scott Williams and Sekou Kambui). SF is the 9th city on their 18 city US tour dedicated to listening to stories that break open frightful truths in US society: sex trafficking, labor trafficking, mass incarceration, and children in poverty. We did not talk statistics, although the numbers are staggering. We heard stories from their journey and from their heart. Sekou, a political prisoner in the Alabama Prison system for 47 years, shared personal gems of wisdom and resilience spanning his life time. Audri understood that just showing up where people are not “seen”, walking in their neighborhoods, simply listening to their scarring stories of injustice and poverty, touches people deeply and sows the seeds of healing.
Today at URI, we declared that love is an action word. We reminded each other that prayers in response to pain, while appreciated and important, also must be the “shoes we put on to do the work needed.”
We asked why is it so difficult to rally more interest for the Red Flame Movement? Today, we were reminded that the sights and stories of injustice and abuse hit as deeply in us as do the sights and stories of people extending human dignity and compassion to another. We are moved to tears by stories of human greatness and we run far away from stories of entrenched pain and injustice.
But when we actually turn to face people that we want to make invisible (as well as parts of ourselves too ugly and scary to look at) we are cracked open. Deep within us there is resilience in the darkest places. In hopeless corners of jails, prisoners find ability to give another dignity and value. In our dark places of fear and hurt, we find it in ourselves to come from love and love even more than we thought we ever could.
Please take a few minutes to read about the Red Flame Movement and consider participating in a way that lights your fire.
