Reflections on Accountability in Everyday Ramblings

“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

I read in a snippet yesterday that President Obama had this statement emblazoned on a rug in his office. It is a quote of course from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For those of us in the world, and it is by far the majority of the world, grateful for the transition of power yesterday in the United States, this statement brings faith and hope in a time full of an underlying menace.

This is a statement that has brought faith and hope to Black people here since it was uttered with grace and certainty back in 1968.

We have so much to learn from their fortitude, during all the years they have been here, where for no fault of their own, justice has been a phantom, an elusive light burning in a place they are not allowed to inhabit.

There has been so much injustice, so much fear, so much hard work and yet resilient they have survived, fully capable of joy and celebration in spite of the heavy burdens they have been required to take on.

Here, where us White folk’s indignity hovering thick and palpable in our hearts and minds that someone like the man that flew, hopefully out of our lives forever, yesterday has not been held to account for a breath-taking amount of corruption, (much of it mind boggling petty) after being voted into office by less than half of the country.

I try to imagine what a Black woman my age, who has without a doubt suffered indignities, and fear and had no choice but to be strong for the children in her family would think of my indignation that there has been, so far absolutely no accountability.

Welcome to the club.

Roll up you sleeves and get to work, like all those incredible women in Georgia got to work and brought us a more even Senate that has been corrupt based on its very structure since its inception. The work that will bring us eventually a black woman governor.

Talking to a very happy Mrs. Sherlock yesterday and crediting Black women for so much of what is good in our world right now she said that American Black women have always faced the world as themselves. It was never, my husband is a doctor, or a judge, or a Mayor. It is I am…

I am the sum total of my ancestors, my family, and my hard-won accomplishments. Fierce and brave and smart and subject to all the foibles we all are, but with astonishingly fewer resources and external support.

It was thrilling to see so many strong Black voices at the inauguration, young and bright and old and weathered and somewhere in the middle is our new Vice President. Voices of color. These people know in their bones just how long that arc of justice is.

Maybe longer than in our lifetimes.

As Stephen Batchelor said in a recent talk…

“Faith provides the courage and the motivation to address life’s challenges fearlessly. While imagination liberates us from fixed views and opinions and enables new possibilities to present themselves as responses to those challenges”.

I hope I can do the work that I am called to do, guided in spirit and in practice by faith and imagination and the hard wrought spirit of the women of color who have put their lives, and their children’s lives, on the line for a fairer and more equitable and safer world for us all.

Oh, and accountability would be a good thing too.

Last updated January 21, 2021