Love’s Labor

 The Sixties may be long forgotten, but the memory of the Civil Rights Movement is still deeply ingrained in some of us. We are not done. Not by a longshot. Some of us still feel compelled to continue the struggle. Or is that to struggle? Either way, there’s a need to continue to fight the good fight.

For me, though, it’s not about racial or economic equality. It’s about giving voice to the voiceless. Literally voiceless individuals like our older daughter who would give us all an earful if she could speak but still cannot. Except for primal screaming and screeching, she remains largely silent. Not, mind you,unobservant. She takes in a lot. Just not able to tell the world what she is truly about. And likewise, so is the case with a number of her peers.

According to Kabbalistic tradition, only God can give a person the gift of speech which then renders someone fully human. My daughter is VERY human. Just that people talk around her or simply don’t talk to her at all. And yet she remains in the room. Very much present. I am determined that everyone in our universe recognizes her humanity. She is not some wheelchair-bound golem. She is a real live girl and sometimes a real live brat who wants, just like any other eleven year-old, her autonomy. With every fiber in her being, she fights like hell to get it. Sometimes to my detriment, but I always admire her fierceness and tenaciousness.

Piece by piece, it’s been difficult to put all this together. Mny things have yet to fall into place. A window closes. A door opens. Sometimes it’s not always appearant where things will lead. Or how. People seem to patch in and out of our lives. Some more temporary. Some more permanent. Some have a more direct impact. Others are more along the periphery. An edge piece, if you will, of a very crazy quilt that is being designed by someone other than me. I am not in charge. I am not entirely hapless, either, but it does often seem random. When one battles a bureaucracy, the way doesn’t always seem clear. I have yet to figure out how to best navigate in fog or swim through mud. I pick up tidbits along the way. There is no particular pattern to information gathering.

That is why this blog is so important to me. Not just so that I can figure things out, but so others, in their own isolation, fighting for their own causes, can create a spoke in a social justice hub. Spokes on a wheel or pieces of a quilt or parts of a mural. Deep down we all want the same thing and that is some kind of justice for those we hold dear or for some cause that fills us with a deep passion. My hope is that we all blend together in creating a better world for those we’ve been called upon to serve.