Russellings of the Spirit

I’ll go ahead and admit it: most of the time, I really don’t like waking up.

When my alarm clock rings, it almost always intrudes on a nice, restful sleep. Sometimes its obnoxious sound comes crashing in to the middle of a wonderful, warm, fuzzy dream… leaving me to wonder if I ever did find that buried treasure, or fly to South America (under the power of my own arms, of course), or receive that Nobel Prize.

And if you have ever tried to do this, of course, you know that you can’t ever flip over, hit the “Snooze” or “Off” button on the alarm and keep on dreaming the same dream.

It is gone… like a puff of smoke.

I have also discovered that here lately there are a whole series of creaks and pops and sharp pains that arrive shortly after I begin stirring from my slumber.

And I wonder, “What that is all about? It certainly wasn’t always like that…”

In fact, you could say that waking up is just one gigantic – yet necessary – pain. It is with good reason it is sometimes referred to as “… a rude awakening.”

It is also what I sincerely hope is beginning to happen in this country right now.

In the light of the kind of week we have just endured… where we have seen new examples of over-reaction by police officers that have left black men dead and then the horrific slaughter of police officers by an angry, deranged vigilante… we can do little more than cry out in pain, anger, and confusion.

But do you think it is possible that these pains could also be the pains of a moment of long overdue awakening?

I want to be careful not to seem to be rushing to paint a smiley face onto a set of truly heartrending events. But I do want to ask whether we believe this tragic and unique moment could well have given us a rare opportunity.

Is it possible that this moment has given us an opportunity to REALLY listen… to REALLY take stock… to REALLY face up to and repent of the darkness that resides in each one of our hearts?

Is it possible that this moment in our country is similar to that moment when – after years and years of listening to your doctor blather on about how you need to exercise more, drink less, cut down on your red meat consumption, and all the other blah, blah, blah nonsense he talks about – the heart attack finally hits and you say, “OH! So THAT’S what she was talking about!”

Yes, I believe it is possible that this is indeed just such an awakening moment. But it can only actually BECOME that moment if we act on it… if we take actual steps in the direction of dropping assumptions based on ignorance and/or privilege… if we engage in conversations that seek to understand vs. conversations that seek to prove our point… if we reach out to hold the hand of a brother or sister we have previously shunned.

Some of us, I know, would really prefer to go back to sleep and pretend that alarm clock never rang. Some would love to retreat back into the comfortable recesses of the familiar and fuzzy world our exhausted brains have created for us.

But Slumberland is not where the work gets done. It is the place that lets us go on approximating reality without actually engaging it.

And so, even though it could be painful, sudden, and not exactly what we had in mind, the time is now to wake up, get busy, and do the hard work we were created to do.