Not just me

Thank God for the women and men who did not say, "Amen."  For the people who did not sit in complacent silence as they were lulled gently to sleep.  Thank God for the change makers who stood not for themselves only, but for the perishing rights of the lives around them.

Too often we are tucked in with horror stories to flood our nightmares while the people we ought to trust teach us to pray for peace and unity.  They tell us the world is a place filled with hate and darkness and we must hope and wish for peace, love, and unity.  I say, yes there is darkness in the world, but we cannot wait and hope for it to be banished by others.  Nor can we hope to eliminate it by becoming the very incarnation of the evil we are taught to fear.  We must seek understanding.  We must choose to love and to stand out and we cannot do so out of purely selfish means.  Yes, we are selfish beings by nature, but we cannot be controlled by our flesh or the delicious venom of others.

Oppression begins sweet like a delicious apple but by the time we realize it has poisoned us, it is too far enmeshed into our system to just regurgitate easily.  We must work together.  We must fight with peace.  We must enter with our arms open to embrace our sisters and brothers instead of erasing their faces, allowing others to invent their personalities, and marching forward with clenched fists and sharpened swords.  We cannot let fear be our leader.  We cannot let ignorance be the blister that we ignore on our lips.  Neither can we speak alone without acknowledging criticism.

I will not lie down while swords spew from the mouths of men.  I will not turn in fear of embarrassment while my sisters and brothers cry themselves to sleep.  I cannot be still.  I must take action.  I am only one man but together we are enough.  I am not just me.  There is justice.  There is love.  There is mercy.  There is grace.  There is unity.  We have pieces of the multiverse's birth in our innermost cells.  We are one.