A Dangerous Return

This morning’s Washington Post called 2020 “a year of loss.” We “lost legends, heroes, family and friends. If there was anything to gain, perhaps it was perspective.”

If we’ve gained a new perspective, we may see inequity more clearly, recognize White privilege and that Black Lives Matter. If we’re ready to confront Jim Crow and build Dr. King’s beloved community, it would be a new perspective indeed.

It will be hard to hold, this new perspective. I’m reminded by T.E. Lawrence that systems around us — Lawrence’s “old men” — will evoke a dangerous return to silence in the face of racism, injustice, and self-preservation.

We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves; yet when we achieved, and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. T.E. Lawrence

Let us make 2021 a year proving our new perspective. Let us, together, bring in that “new world” by denying the old systems their victory.

That would, indeed, yield a most happy new year!