This is so important I’m actually going to use it again as we get further on into relational ethics, but I thought it was important to place this here now.
So often, I hear in private messages and on the threads about people’s afflictions, and how that is an inhibitor to doing the work that they feel they should be doing or feel called to do.
In fact, since the Reset, and now with Onboarding, I am getting more than a few messages of people telling me what their limitations are, and wanting, expecting, feeling entitled to carveouts, exceptions, dispensations.
They really don’t get that I would be doing them absolutely no favors if I acquiesced.
I’ve written an entire post about all of this that you can find in the pinned posts under “leadership”.
But what I want to do tonight is be encouraging.
All of us have afflictions.
And I want to very quietly but insistently say this.
So do the black and brown people you say you want to stand with, who have to move and survive in a world that hates them with those same or even more debilitating afflictions firmly in place. Race is the country gravy that exacerbates, making the slog that much harder.
This is not to say deny your afflictions, or to push past them so hard to the point of ill-health.
This is an encouragement and an exhortation not to let either mental or physical or emotional challenges stop you from this work.
In that pinned post, I refer obliquely to some of my own afflictions and challenges that, if I allowed it to, would keep me from doing this work. This is not an exercise in one-upmanship, nor is it an exhortation to do it just because I do. It is, if you will allow it, this is very permission giving; to allow yourself to be more than you think you can be in this present moment.
This is actually a compliment if you think about it. I am betting the farm that you are capable of More Than You Think You Are.
Hear that. Breathe it in.
As I said in the post that you can find pinned, so often people feel that doing the work with intention and integrity will be detrimental to their health.
It’s actually quite the opposite.
Going outside yourself, learning how to serve, asking yourself questions about race that lead you to answer deeper questions about all other areas of your life is beneficial, not only to your Praxis, but to your own interior lives as well.
Being curious about what you can do instead of being stuck in what you can’t can be the Breakthrough with a break opening that you need.
Being creative about what you can do rather than fixating on what you can’t do can also be liberating, freeing, and move you closer to being the person you say you want to be.
Now here is a challenge within the encouragement.
A lot of times when people say can’t, what they really mean is won’t.
I encourage you to really stop and think about the ‘can’ts’ in your life.
All the things you say you are incapable of doing.
And then I invite you to really unpack each and every one of them.
Are they really ‘can’ts’ or are they ‘won’ts’?
I know that when I have done this exercise in my own life I have been struck by how many times I have said one word when I really meant the other.
Again it may have meant that I needed to be curious and creative about how to turn that won’t into a fully fleshed yes, but that doesn’t let me off the hook.
I encourage you to push past your norms and narratives, whatever they are be, and how they play out in your life–particularly here in this space with your community; as time spent, being it writing comments instead of reacts, be it financially engaging with our partners, and what the community itself, be it taking this work outside, to having The Bravery to speak up to co-workers spouses congregants and the like.
Even if you do all the unpacking in your can’ts are still authentic can’ts, the exercise in itself has value and validity.
So this weekend I’m going to go ahead and drop number 5 of the relational ethics series.
And all those who said that you cannot do it–and that’s most of you– I’m going to ask you to really unpack the can’t and start doing the work.
I’ve waited too long to drop this, and this series needs to move forward so that we can do deeper work together.
I encourage everyone of you that’s on this journey.
Journeys are not started with the word can’t they are started with the words will.
My intention for all of you going forward is that you find the capacity, the agency, and the will to see this through, and stop finding reasons why you can’t, but start to find reasons why you will indeed do this work with reliable resilience.
from Bruised, Not Broken: May 18, 2019