Seeking refuge when there is no comfort / George Floyd May 25, 2020

Refuge is not the same as comfort.

“A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping; Rachel, weeping for her children, refused to be comforted for her children, because they were no more.”

Jeremiah 31:15

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ref·uge

/ˈrefˌyo͞oj,ˈrefˌyo͞oZH/

Learn to pronounce

noun

1. a condition of being safe or sheltered from pursuit, danger, or trouble.

   "he was forced to take refuge in the French embassy"

   • something providing shelter.

     plural noun: refuges

     "the family came to be seen as a refuge from a harsh world"

     Similar:

     shelter

     protection

     safety

     security

     asylum

     sanctuary

     preservation

     safe keeping

     place of shelter

     place of safety

     haven

     safe haven

     sanctum

     safe house

     harbor

     port in a storm

     ark

     retreat

     bolthole

     foxhole

     hiding place

     hideaway

     hideout

     fastness

     querencia
   • an institution providing safe accommodations for women who have suffered violence from a spouse or partner.
2. 
   
3. *   Music, poetry, art, books, the natural world, community.
4. 
   

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I remember being a child and weeping with other children when we learned by way of a classroom loudspeaker that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Texas.

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We're not alone.  Never will be.  

It's been two years since George Floyd was murdered.  Just realized that.

Jacaranda / "Crying in the Wilderness: A Tribute to George Floyd in 8:46"

Jacaranda

(to watch tribute, click on link)

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Ben Caldwell:

Patrick Scott:

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Note:  It was while searching Google for information on Jacaranda trees that I found this tribute to George Floyd, co-conceived by Ben Caldwell and Patrick Scott.

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I slept and dreamt

that life was joy,

I awoke and saw

that life was duty.

I worked - and behold

duty was joy.

- Rabindranath Tagore, as quoted by Viktor Frankl in Yes to Life

Too many murders most foul

Honoring the life of George Floyd in the early morning of May 25, 2021.

"... In the time it took to upload a video, Chicago Avenue and East 38th Street one year ago today became the most recognizable, and infamous, street corner on the planet.

Now, closed to traffic for two blocks in all four directions and named George Floyd Square, the spot has become a place of consolation and prayer — if also a backdrop for selfies. For many, both those from the area and others traveling distances to get here, it’s a place for hope.

... For now, George Floyd Square is a place for solace amidst those ruins, if only in the calm between anguish and continued outrages."

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For some reason, this poem I wrote in 2006 came to mind.

Good Friday

For earthworms, spring and robins bring death.

For cautious robins, death does not exist.

For young human children, death is astonishing news

Years later, spring and robins arrive.

We are not surprised when the earthworms die,

not surprised when the robins run from us.

But death, now, is the absence of news,

abrupt and extraordinary in its silence.

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So much is not yet clear.

Turning Points

 

From Forward

"... Chauvin’s conviction may represent a turning point in holding police accountable for the deaths of so many Black people, which the prompt laying of charges against the officer who shot Wright suggests. That officer will face a trial. Evidence will be presented. A jury will deliberate. And perhaps, like in the Chauvin trial, a guilty verdict will be returned. But once again, this is hardly a foregone conclusion. Accountability in the extrajudicial killings of Black men never has never been guaranteed.

But even if she is found guilty, holding police accountable will never be synonymous with justice. Nothing short of addressing the material conditions of Black Americans that have led to these violent encounters can ever be.

And so as we breathe a collective sigh of relief over the Chauvin verdict, let us gird ourselves for the fight ahead against systemic racism in all of its dimensions."

Padraic O Tuama / "It is in the shelter of each other that people live" (an Irish saying) / "... for the rest of my life ..."

When this came up on my YouTube suggestions early this morning, I was reminded of Pádraig Ó Tuama's book that I learned about at Alive On All Channels.  It is a heartening book I hope to read again.

And then this arrived in my email:

I lived in divided Berlin in my 20s. And after the Wall in that city fell in 1989, I never imagined that there would be another event in my lifetime which would so clearly signify a Before and an After for the whole world. But the murder of George Floyd, in the context of the last year, was such a turning point and Minneapolis a new kind of ground zero. 

What happened here rippled out across this city and then across the world. What happened here was about our world. And what was world-changing is, in large part, what started to happen inside many of us. 

Ever after, when I use the word “we” or “us,” I understand in a whole new way that I do so in a White body. I will be walking and living and working with that understanding for the rest of my life. And — both/and — I hold that knowledge together with my clarity that when time becomes history, the generations for whom we are the ancestors will see an “us.” 

-- Krista Tippett