It’s a Both/And kind of world

It’s a Both/And kind of world July 14, 2015

both and pic

There is a lot of either/or thinking in the common narrative today…and I think the world is a little more complex than that.

We celebrate the liberty of gay and lesbian Americans to marry – AND we continue to struggle for the rights of black, trans*, immigrants, and formerly incarcerated people to have truly just access to this country’s governmental institutions.  (We also continue to work to undo the ideology of patriarchy that has successfully used marriage as a tool of gender oppression for hundreds of years).

We show up at protests – AND we work to change policies and litigate to ensure the just and equitable enforcement of laws and policies that others struggled to create.

We meet in our identity caucuses to go deep together on our particular lived experiences in this society – AND we get to know our neighbors, all of them, and organize as multi-faith, multi-racial, multi-generational, multi-gendered people.

My friends, it is a both/and kind of world.  We are both called to action and to stillness, to the struggle and to peace.  If we must engage in binary thinking, let it be with the inclusive transformative power of the both/and – because we know the world from our individual experience and we are all in this together, we are all in this together.


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