Facebook Publication Date: 8/31/2022 23:08

I want to talk about us.

How and why we are here.

The reasonable expectations of what we can expect of and from each other in this shared space.

Who we are to each other and to the world.

And, conversely, and sometimes even more importantly, who we have chosen not to be.

But before we talk about this community that we have co-created, I want to talk about a community of sorts which is both case study and cautionary tale.

This…group of people who are not about–or rather, not explicitly about, racial justice or applied relational ethics. You have seen them move in the Takeout Window, and now, even in the Cafe. One or more of them may have even slid into your direct messages. We will get to them later. There is only so much effort and energy–and power–that I want to give them. But they’re here. And they aren’t going away.

And we as a community, led by our shared ethos and convictions will indeed decide just how much power and primacy we will afford them in our orchard. We as a community will decide if they will poison trees. We as a community will decide if we will allow our trees to be poisoned, and our mission and solidarity derailed.

But first before we delve into that swamp, I want to talk about two communities outside LoR in which I am honored to take part. They are communities that, to a casual observer, might seem frivolous indeed–but they are doing great work, and we would all do well to imitate their best practices.

The first is a group of people who just plain love Aldi. Yep. Aldi. And we just plain love each other

Every time I visit that group, I not only learn of specials and deals, but I also enter into a place that is as it could be for every other place.

Everyone is affirming. Everyone shares recipes. Everyone oohs and aahs over the perfect candle or rain boot or tablecloth. There are about 20k of us, and it has consistently been a safe space to become community. One woman even wrote a cookbook based on her shares, and it sold out. We support each other there. There is, right now, a network of Aldi shoppers who buy up formula (not all of it, because it’s important for locals to have what they need) and send it to those who are in want. Kind of like what we did with the Chromebooks.

Occasionally, there are people who come in with snark and sarcasm. They are (mostly) kindly shouted down. The community is protective of itself. Rightly so.

Here is what I love about this Aldi group. We give out flowers randomly. We always have extra quarters for the carts. We sometimes swipe our cards for the people behind us. We get an extra box of cookies and sneak it into the bag of the person next to us. A clerk admires the scarf from what we lovingly call the ‘Aisle of Shame’; we go back and get her one too. The Aldi folks are Best Case. And I am proud to be part of it. My praxis is strengthened every time I am there, and so is my joy. I am eager to go there. I am eager to participate.

Each time I am there, in no small part due to their influence, I am closer to the woman I say I want to be. As it should be.

Another ‘frivolous’ community that I am a part of is a group of women who style themselves and each other. You want an extended tutorial about kind candor, ya ain’t gonna do better than these women. Yellow with pink? Stunning! White trainers with a blue suit? Why not? The right blush for a sallow cheek? Hundreds of kind (and prescient) suggestions. Tons of complements for the cancer patient who finally found a wig she liked for her daughter’s wedding. The best way to style someone who uses a wheelchair. Trouble making your mascara curl? We got you!

Yes, it’s fun. But it’s more than fun. Seeing over a thousand likes for the cancer patient is good for the soul. Someone with delicate respect urging a shirtwaist over a dropped waist for an apple body, keeping her dignity and sense of style intact is a work of art.

Two weeks ago, on my birthday, I did my first stand alone post. I got almost a thousand responses. You heard me. A thousand, and every day I get a few more. The Trinny girls were the first place, after I confided to the LoR Delinquents here, that I went to after that crack about my wigs. I needed to be in a safe place and be embraced. Trinny Girls for the win.

They don’t need a worksheet on winning strategies. They live them.

Aldi aisles and a gaggle of middle aged women with kind souls and nipped waists and chunky heels.

Both spaces exude the fragrance of Hesed heart.
______________

I found both of those spaces about a year and a half ago–about the time of the debacle with Holly, and these have been the places I have gone to when I have felt my worst and needed a cheer up as I have faced those metaphorical assassins who are interlopers into our shared orchard and living room–the Daniels; the Catherines; now, most recently, the Jennas and the Karins. There are more; and they won’t be deterred–they are as dedicated to their life’s work as I am to mine.

It is up to you, all of you, individually and collectively, to determine their ultimate efficacy.

I have talked about this before. About how I have been unable to understand those who use their time and talents to destroy, rather than to build.

I have talked about a group of people whose sole aim is to smear; whose choices are to harm. Sometimes I find it ruefully amusing; that they have decided to lock and load on a pudgy bald middle aged suburban lady who flaps her jaws about Hesed hearts, about seeing the marginalized eye to eye, about effective and durable praxis, and about the applied relational ethics that make that durability and reliability possible.

They would deride what I just said as cultish.

I, and I hope you, disagree.

Sometimes, well meaning people will send me screenshots of what they are doing over there at Lace off Base (LoB–fitting, as they do indeed lob metaphorical bombs that leave very real wounds). I see them knock my wigs, and glasses, and lipsticks, see them laugh at and mock the very real, and very terrifying, incident four years ago at a Macy’s cosmetic counter, where I almost had guns drawn on me because I dared ask why samples for brown women were kept behind the counter (because we steal), see them swear to themselves and each other that they too, stand for and with Black and brown people–with myself, cult leader that I am, the lone exception to an otherwise sacrosanct rule. (That’s a conversation btw–any carveout from a conviction lends a fatal blow to said professed conviction–but that’s for another day). They talk about getting more organized.

And more than anything else, they influence and reinforce each other. They are indeed teaching each other how to be. They are defining their values and praxis every day–and influencing all who visit them. And, in some ways, they have indeed been effective. Contempt begetting contempt. Napalm begetting napalm. Invective begetting invective. The antithesis of Aldi Mavens and the Trinny Girls.

And they break through the online wall. Most of the screenshots I have received come from those who had been approached by them via private messaging. Now, to be sure, I get the screenshots of those who were immune to their charms. I will never know who succumbed. And yes, that breaks my heart.

The following breaks my heart too.

A few days, maybe a week ago, a feud came into our metaphorical living room. Someone in LoB was hurt by what someone else said. I presume she was blocked, so she came to say her piece about how she was harmed in the one place she felt she had a forum–here at LoR. She said, and I believed, how terrible she felt about having violence visited upon her.

Perhaps improbably (but not if you know me), I felt deeply for her, even with her (actually predictable; certainly obligatory) swipes at me. These folks in that group know how to cut. Believe me, I know.

She was giving Jenna, and the rest of the group, her bona fides. She had proven herself worthy and game, and now she was harmed. She felt it unfair. And actually, it kinda was. She thought it cruel. It absolutely was.

She swallowed the Flavor-Aid as drunkenly as the good folks at LoB accuse you all of doing. She thought her reward would be inclusion and connection. She made a Faustian bargain–rank hatred for the promise of belonging. In that, she was doomed to failure.

As I read and re-read the comment, I found myself petitioning the universe on the comment writer’s behalf for, if not reconciliation or restoration (her being blocked from a group that runs on animus much like Buicks run on unleaded is a back door gift), but I did hope that her heart ight be salved.

It was harder to hold on to that stance once I saw the final lines that locked and loaded and aimed point blank for my wigs, and, viciously, my identity as a Black woman. Everyone in LoB knows of my alopecia; I make no secret of it. And yes, dear writer–and dear reader–my head is indeed Black. And scarred. Proudly so. Ya, it stung.

But it also got me thinking. About the nature of community and belonging. About…not karma exactly…but more of caveat emptor–buyer beware.

Let’s be candid. LoB is not a community. Considering what it’s based upon–tearing down; destruction–and where its sensibilities lie, it can’t be.

I mean, there *are* synonyms: clique; ring; faction; gang. If we were being generous, it’s an association of the most conditional and provisional sort.

Here is one thing I know for sure–people banding together to visit harm and violence will eventually turn on each other and cannibalize themselves. One cannot be waist deep in bile and not have some of it sink into the skin.

But.

But–and I am very glad to be making this pivot because I was feeling more than a bit sullied in considering the choices of those in LoB–if hate, and losing strategies, and destruction can be internalized and metastasized into the marrow, so can love be.

I bet the farm on that every day.

Let’s come back to the day when I am wearing a Trinny-approved shirtdress and lippie and pursuing the aisles of Aldi. Let’s think about the quarter I give to a shopper who forgot his. Let’s rejoice as one woman compliments my belt and I go gaga over her bag as we both find body pillows in the Aisle of Shame. Let’s get misty as I find out my bill is already paid by the lady who is waving at me as she bags her groceries. Let’s pay it forward and get a bouquet of flowers for another shopper, because by the time I could properly thank her, she was long gone. Let’s give my cart to another shopper, so she won’t need a quarter.

Oh, I am changed. As is the woman who was slighted and shunned at LoB.

Experiences shape us. We are the company we keep. We influence, even as we ourselves are influenced.

My fervent hope is that no one here in this community we are co-creating will ever have to protest her treatment. I hope that every time you come here you are both influenced and set up to influence for the good.

Marrow deep, yes. But that can, as we have seen, that can cut both ways.

We can be calcium. Nourishing, strengthening calcium.

Or we can be Cancer.

It’s your choice. It’s my choice. It’s our choice. Every day. Every day.

Choose wisely.

And I hope you get the body pillow at Aldi. Caw-Caw!

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