Duplicity out. Decency in.

October 28, 2020January 6, 2022 / Dani / Leave a comment

I recently held my sobbing husband in my arms as he choked out these words, “I think he’s going to win.” It was the first time I’ve seen him so desperately somber, so utterly broken by this tyrannical climate in which we’ve been living…and dying.

My husband became a North American son on April 19, 2016. After taking the Oath of Allegiance, he held our newborn child in his arms and cried tears of joy, feeling that America had fully opened her arms and heart to him, while knowing he now bore the privilege, responsibility, and weight of United States citizenry.

Like others upon which citizenship was conferred that spring day, my husband was not a rapist or a murderer. He was not the bottom of the barrel of his native Brazil. On the contrary, he was like the millions who came before him–millions who believed the American Dream could be their dream. Millions who believed their time, talents, and enterprise could grow this nation and lead to their personal versions and visions of success.

Sadly, the joy that bookended that momentous day waned as Election Day grew near. And we, along with countless others, watched tearfully horrified as Donald Trump was announced the next President of The United States of America. Though, at that time, I could never have imagined the sinister depths to which he would sink or the brutal inhumanity he would both show and sow, I remembered Thomas Paine’s fateful words:

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls.”
The American Crisis. by the author of Common Sense Thomas Paine “These are the times that try men’s souls: the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country…”. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/2005694599/.

The last four years have been a struggle for so many. Inflammatory rhetoric and blatant abuses of power and privilege have punctuated our daily lives, while giving rise to the most hateful and baneful among us. All spectrums of relationship have been tried, tested, and, oftentimes, terminated, due to nonsensical belief in and adherence to the MAGA regime. People have taken to the streets in peaceful protest, only to be met with force instead of protection and apathy instead of empathy. Families have been separated at our border and children forced to live in barbaric conditions, incongruent with our moral and ethical principles as a country and people. Black and brown Americans have had life squeezed from their very lungs by those set apart to protect and serve. And while thousands died unnecessarily and alone (and continue to), the occupant of the Oval Office remains unmoved in heart or deed to be anything less than an apex offender of everything our democracy embraces and holds dear.

These are factious and heartrending times.

These are times that need to end.

My husband; and the countless who hope, pray, and work for a better life in America; deserve to once again feel the warming rays of civility, grace, and kindness on their skin. They deserve to believe that the choice to leave their country of origin in exchange for the promises of an adoptive one wasn’t a bait and switch scheme. That America, though temporarily cloaked in indifference at its highest levels, still remembers the latitudes and longitudes of its beating heart.

This election is so much bigger than politics.

This election is about personhood.

Whether your ancestors came to our shores freely or as enslaved persons held against their will, whether you were born in America or America was born in you, whether you lean red or blue or somewhere in between, we are all worthy of better.

This is not a call to arms or civil unrest, but, indeed, a call to communal awareness and civic responsibility. If we, as citizens of this great nation, do not hold it, and those entrusted to govern it, to a higher human and moral standard, tell me: who will?

At the 1976 Democratic National Convention, the keynote speaker, Representative Barbara Jordan, said this:

“A nation is formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good. A government is invigorated when each one of us is willing to participate in shaping the future of this nation. In this election year, we must define the “common good” and begin again to shape a common future. Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.”
Jordan, Barbara. (1976). [PDF].
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PDFFiles/Barbara%20Jordan%20-%201976%20DNC%20Address.pdf

The 2020 Presidential Election is six days away. Six. And if you’ve made it this far, I will have to tell you: my heart can’t take four more minutes, let alone four more years, of the pathological dishonesty, emotional absenteeism, ill will, and moral erosion that has both characterized and defined the current administration.

It is time to turn a deaf ear to the reckless ravings of an emotionally-bankrupt conman and turn our eyes and hearts toward hope.

No one person is going to save us, but we can certainly vote in decency and civility and, in that, perhaps save ourselves.

What do you breathe into others?

January 18, 2015February 3, 2015 / Dani / Leave a comment

Image via http://supportforspecialneeds.com/2014/01/01/11790/

“My next breath may very well be in your lungs. Store it wisely, because my life depends on it. ”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book Title is Invisible

At the gym this past weekend, a woman struck up a conversation with me. I believe she complimented my bag (nearly everyone does) and asked if I’m a quilter.“No, no”, I responded, too eager to tell her it was lovingly made by my mother-in-law and has been my exercise catchall since. She mentioned she didn’t realize Saturdays were so busy, that she only comes to swim, that she lives in Hampshire, that she’s a writer, a widow…And my heart vernacular translated her ease of detail to this: she is very, very lonely.

I told her my husband comes to swim too, but I come for the classes. And yes, Saturdays are always packed. Later in the conversation, I mentioned that he loves to go dancing, but that I’m more of a homebody, to which she replied, “Your husband likes to dance and you don’t go? That’s terrible. Shame on you!” I wasn’t prepared for her candor, but immediately reminded myself that perhaps her husband was like mine and perhaps she was like me. And now he’s gone and she’s left remembering no’s instead of yeses and dance floors that could have been explored by anxious feet and a sacrificial spirit.

By this time we were joined by another woman, excusing herself as she wiggled past me wrapped in the club’s small white towel, length-appropriate only for those aged 8 and under. I responded then, with both women’s backs toward me, “Well, I breathe into him in other ways, so I don’t feel too bad about the dancing.” “What was that,” miniscule-towel-woman asked, “you breathe into him? That’s a lovely thought.” “Well, I do,” I responded. “We all do.” And there it was: we. all. do.

I realize there is much out of my control, which is oftentimes why I refrain from watching the news, reading the paper and do a daily dodge of Yahoo News clips. Because here’s the thing: bullets, terror and hatred are out there. They’re in every country and every city on this great big, blue planet. And when we hear of them and see the faces of those hurt or killed by them, I believe something Divine is silenced within us…something that inherently whispers goodness and tells us we’re more.

I’ll remember that Divine voice then next time a terror plot is foiled or carried out, the next time someone is trafficked, the next time a life is senselessly taken, the next time skin color is a reason for profiling, the next time a child is abused for being “different”, the next time a newborn is dumped in a trashcan, and the next time one person’s trauma is put upon another through acts of violence or emotional indifference.

I’ll remember.

And then I’ll remind myself that while I may not be able to change the hearts of the man wielding a machete in Nigeria or the woman setting her newborn alight in New Jersey, I can choose how and what I breathe into others.

I can choose kindness and love, instead of malice and hatred.

I can choose grace and forgiveness, instead of frustration and hostility.

I can choose Fullness instead of fear and life instead of death.

And if I breathe goodness into you, and you breathe it into others, and so on and so forth, then perhaps we will be the paddles which shock emotional hearts into rhythm. And perhaps then that Divine voice, our Divine voice, will whisper once more.

Our circle might seem small and our impact even smaller, but if we don’t act for fear that our actions won’t be enough, we extinguish our flame before it has even met the breath of opposition.

Make the choice to act.

Breathe Truth, light, Fullness and love into those who cross your path.

Be changed.

And then do this…

ask that they might be, as well.

What a dying mother taught me about living

October 4, 2014October 5, 2014 / Dani / Leave a comment

You may have seen her in the news. And if you haven’t, you likely will.

Her name is Ashley Bridges. She’s 24. And she’s dying.

Ashley and two-month-old daughter, Paisley, in their California home. Image courtesy of CNN.

What caught my attention, other than the precious image of Ashley and Paisley, was the story’s title: “Mother’s Ultimate Sacrifice for Newborn”.

I thought of those words. I thought of the daily and hourly sacrifices mothers make. Then thought of the sacrifices mothers-in-heart make for babies that will often never be: round after round, poke after poke, loss after loss. And I had to know hers.

I watched a short news clip about Ashley: how last November she found out she was expecting, just 10 weeks before being diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a malignant bone cancer. How the doctors told her to terminate her pregnancy and start treatment. And how she’d immediately refused. Her response was complex in its simplicity:

“There’s no way I could kill a healthy baby because I’m sick.”

Ashley kept herself as healthy as possible. She made plans, tried to live normally, and shortly after reaching 8 months gestation was given another diagnosis: a terminal one. The cancer had spread. Delaying chemotherapy had robbed her of time. And hope. Her doctors suggested inducing labor, followed by aggressive chemotherapy, but warned it would gift her a year, if that.

So there she sits, as the camera zooms in: blue-eyed, lovely, and dying, with little Paisley nestled sweetly at her side. I watch, feeling guilty for my intrusion, and wonder:

Will she ever realize what a supreme sacrifice her mother made?
And more…
Will she ever understand how it’s possible to be loved that much?

As the extra chambers of my mother’s heart swell, I hear the answer. It taps at the door of my soul and solemnly whispers: Yes. She will understand. When she is a mother.

The truth is this: whether we believe it or not, whether we accept it or not, we are all terminal. Sure, we may not walk the same path as Ashley. And perhaps our hourglasses will have a few more turns than hers, but we all have an expiration date. Her doctors know hers, just as the Great Physician knows ours.

I don’t pretend to know cancer intimately. And I don’t pretend to have the answers. But maybe Ashley does. Maybe living in and loving through every second is hers. Maybe being here, heart-tethered to this space, this moment, and this unique “blessing” is hers.

Those answers don’t mean she hasn’t cried, cursed and cowered. I’m sure she has. But she is confronting her choice, her ultimate sacrifice, with a lion’s heart…a mother’s heart. And her answers are her own.

Her closing comment about Paisley is heartrending in its clarity: