Connectedness

While it might seem odd to say this, I believe there is Spiritual Connectedness in the Resistance we are seeing. The Resistance that began after Trump’s election with citizens proclaiming “not my president” and that really reached a climax with the well orchestrated Women’s March. I was really impacted by the Women’s March. I am very grateful for the friends who were willing to share their experiences with me in last week’s blog. The joy of their words jumped off the page as I read them. I could feel what they felt. It felt like a spiritual experience. It felt like Connectedness at its best.

Out of what may have started as a deep feeling of hopelessness, worry, pain, anger, disbelief and anxiety of Trump’s election is now evolving to a Spiritual Connectedness. We are talking to each other more. We are connecting either in person … at the mailbox with our neighbors, at the grocery store with someone we may not have talked to before … or on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram with friends who are sharing similar loss of eight years of brilliance of President Obama, with colleagues who say no way are we are going to be silent for four years while a man tries to take over our democracy using a white supremacy champion as a chief strategist.

When I introduced this blog in early January, one of the topics I wanted to explore was Connectedness / Spirituality. In an unexpected way, the past 10 days are revealing a new Spirituality through marching, through protesting, through recognizing how much more alike than different we are. I have a new hashtag, #Unitytrumpspolitics. The Women’s March, the protests to keep the Affordable Care Act, and the Muslim Ban protests are showing us this. Watching the person who took an oath to be President of the entire United States of America defy the Constitution has done more than nudge us to Connectedness, it has down right shoved us to Connectedness. We are so deep in this together now.

The onslaught of what looks like a dictatorship issuing executive orders that are not yet being greatly challenged by his party members in Congress, although they did so under the previous President, has created a fiefdom foundation that we are startled by. We are connected in a way that we might not have done otherwise. While my son did not expect that Trump would win, he said to me one thing he knew would happen as a result. He knew that I and people like me would not sit still for injustices if Trump were to follow through on what he campaigned about. My son was right.

So, as I walked the blocks of the Women’s March in Raleigh on January 21st and even as I went to the Moral Monday Rally in Raleigh by Rev. William Barber on January 30th, I felt like the Holy Spirit was all around me. No one can convince me that this isn’t the case, that we are not in the midst of a spiritual experience of Connectedness as much as it is a Movement.

It’s more than a Movement, it’s God’s Work to care how others are treated. It’s God’s Work to believe that Women’s Rights are Human Rights. It’s God’s Work to want Affordable Care for All. It’s God’s Work to protest for Equal Rights for All. It’s God’s Work to stand for Equal Pay for Equal Work. It’s God Work to accept refugees fleeing persecution. It’s God Work to say a woman has the right to talk with her doctor & family to make her health decisions. It’s God Work to want children in this country to have a Secretary of Education who actually cares about public education. It’s God’s Work to stand up for what is right. It’s God Work to speak for the voiceless.

Connectedness is you and me and everyone else saying if  they come for the Muslims in the morning, they will come back for me in the night so I will stand at the door for my Muslim sister at dawn so she is not taken.

Connectedness is saying slavery was an atrocity, Jim Crow was another version of it, voter suppression tries to continue it and we will not be quiet about it.

Connectedness is saying the Holocaust was about 6 million Jews being killed simply because of their religion so we will not sit by while a President tries to persecute Muslims just because of their religion.

Not this time.

We are connected in a virtual and spiritual way. I am having a spiritual experience while in this human form and connected to each of you on this journey. This I know.