"The Call to Speak Out" by Janet Hill
Do you know the old adage of how to boil a frog? You put them in a pot of warm, comfortable water and slowly raise the heat. I think that is a good analogy for 2020. Recently I was in a brief conversation with a friend about how difficult it is to deal with the regular stresses that life brings our way during 2020 because we are already close to boiling point. We all, at least at times, feel like the frog in the pot of water and the temperature is slowly rising. My friend was saying that sometimes she has to stop and remind herself to look for the rainbow. Some days the tension becomes so great, that the only answer is to take that kind of pause and look for the rainbow.
However, some days the tension is so great we just give in and feel the gloom. The conversation reminded me of a scene from the movie “Selma.” Toward the end of the movie, after John Lewis has been beaten down on the bridge; after Jimmie Lee Jackson was murdered by police in Selma; James Reeb was beaten to death in the streets of Selma; and after President Johnson refuses to put forward the Voting Rights Act once again; Martin Luther King is discouraged to the point of giving up the march efforts.
In the movie, King meets John Lewis for a car ride. His purpose is to apologize for the personal pain Lewis has had by choosing to follow King in the Selma protests. King tells Lewis that the risk isn’t worth what’s to be gained. He says they have to move beyond marches to political power. He says, “We can’t go on like this. I can’t go on like this.” (Even the great feel the pain of discouragement in the simmering pot).
Lewis recounts to King his memories of the Montgomery bus boycott. He tells of watching a friend, Jesse, being scratched by a little girl while simultaneously Jesse is being beaten by her father. He describes how he was discouraged and feeling like he couldn’t go on either. But Lewis had to go to church. He had to hear King speak. Lewis recounts King telling the congregation, “we will triumph because there could be no other way.” King tells them, “we’ve come too far to turn back now.”
King’s own words were enough to help the tired prophet raise his head and see the rainbow. The movie goes on to show the successful march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to Montgomery, forcing Johnson to support the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Today, I read a meditation from Mirabai Starr that was posted on the Center for Action and Contemplation webpage. Starr’s premise is that God calls all of us to speak out. She says,
We are not all prophets. It may not be our job to challenge authority and expose corruption. We may not be the ones to penetrate the code of sacred scriptures and feed the spiritually hungry. It may be up to others to sound the clarion call of impending doom, calling on humanity to change its ways. Ours may be a modest awakening.
On those days when we are tempted to roll over in the warm water and let it consume us as the temperature rises to a boil, stop and listen for God’s call. It may be looking for the rainbow that day. It may be sharing our discouragement with a trusted confidant. It may be a “modest awakening” to do something small, something that seems to have no impact.
Speak out ... And when you do, when you recognize that inner voice as the voice of God and say what it has taught you, the sickness in your heart will melt away. The fatigue you have lived with for so long that you did not even notice how weary you were will lift. Your voice will ring out with such clarity and beauty that you will not be able to stop singing. To speak your truth, Hildegard (German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, and philosopher) teaches us, is to praise God.