The financial settlement for the family of Breonna Taylor, $12 million in cash and promises of police reform, was announced this week. Time will tell whether the reforms become real. A clear-eyed look at past promises suggests that hope should be cautious at best.
It is the big cash payoff, however, that stopped me in my tracks. Not because of the size, but because of the absurdity of equating the loss of an innocent life with money. Let me be clear. I do not object in any way to the financial settlement. But the belief that money can heal such violation and such loss…
There have been so many losses. We are so far out of balance.
The brilliant author, Jesmyn Ward, introduced me to a new word this week. Respair. The word means the return of hope after a period of despair. It is from old English. There are no citations of its use since the 15th century. The English language decided that we could do without a word for that return from despair. The Enlightenment and the colonial enterprise demanded a more optimistic framing.
I am finding, however, that that is exactly what I need.
We certainly need new laws and new limits. We need new will and the stamina to sustain change. We need all of those things. But we also need a return to hope after this period when the chaos, the resistance to change, and the relentless violence, test our capacity for hope.
Respair. The term asks the question of how we recover from unimaginable loss.
I do not have a simple answer for that question. It is possible, though, that acknowledging the truth of that question may give us a place to begin, again, in love.
I share this poem, unapologetic for its length, as another resource:
When the Unimaginable Happened
by Anne Barker
When we heard the news, saw the wreckage, felt the
paralyzing blow…
our hearts broke open—spilled out—into our hands.
And there we were
watching our Love seep between our fingers,
watching our fragile Love pour out all over us,
watching our Love seem to slip away.
When the unimaginable happened,
the ache that we felt—
as if Love was being lost—
was the ache of Love’s despairing truth.
This is the Love that no one chooses,
the loss so out of order, so profound,
the Love we did not ever want to know.
And yet the source of this despair,
the reason our hearts cleave and flow,
is because they know fullness.
This is the Love of truth and beauty,
Love that spans the web of being,
uniting each of us within its timeless form.
When we heard the news,
our hearts broke open, spilled into our hands,
and there we stared at Love, lamenting—
“What am I to do with this?”
And with these raw and tender yearnings
we will—beat after precious beat—
seek wholeness once again.
It will take time to find balance,
to grieve, if we will make room.
Remember, friends, this is the right thing
This ache within our deepest beings.
Know that all these things are normal
to feel disrupted, empty, undone.
Our hearts broke open and the Love that is still true
draws us once again together, story by story, step by
step,
into places of tender knowing, remembering
to restore us, mend us, piece by broken piece.
This is the Love that runs between us,
sustaining force of restoration,
the Love that nourishes and feeds us,
binds us, each, to our collective core.
We grieve…and march…and weep…and sing
and through the pain—but not despite it—
Love will repair us, not the same, but stronger in
some places,
honoring memories like treasures,
living out our lives’ potential
in the warmth of one another
in the light of what, restored, we will become.
====
May the smoke clear soon and our hearts find reason to hope again.
Blessings,
Bill
NB: Jesmyn Ward used the term respair without defining it, as part of the title for an essay exposing — there is no other word for it — the depth and texture of her loss at the death of her partner, the father of her child and her soul mate. The essay is in the September issue of Vanity Fair, with a new painting of Breonna Taylor on the cover. TaNehisi Coates is the editor of this issue. I encourage you to buy or borrow this magazine and read it cover to cover.
The poem by Anne Barker is in a UUA Meditation Manual that I edited, entitled To Wake, to Rise.