The work remains the same

And will be here when you're ready

How are you doing, friends? Like many of you, I suspect, I am feeling grief-stricken, tender, and scared. It makes sense we feel this way.

In the midst of this rush of feeling, though, I’m also trying to remember that it’s always been this way. Why? Because our system has never been good at caring for the vulnerable. Those who are willing and able have always needed to step up and fill the gaps so those most at risk don’t fall through. Those willing to see have always needed to stand up, calling attention to injustice.

Do you know about the Sanctuary Movement? In the 1980s, hundreds of religious communities around the country, including mine, mobilized on behalf of undocumented immigrants from Central America who risked assassination or disappearance in their home countries if deported before they could receive asylum. Churches, synagogues, and mosques took immigrants in and protected them from authorities while they pursued legal status. Through public awareness campaigns they also successfully pushed for changes to federal immigration policy.

At the same time, my parents were offering our house as a way station for anyone who needed sanctuary. Folks with mental illness and chronic addiction received a place to stay and sometimes employment with my dad. Immigrants found nourishment and community at our table. It was not always an easy environment to grow up in, I’ll admit, but I knew it was necessary work.

If not us, then who?

Cut forward to 2017, the earliest days of the first Trump administration. Given his violent, anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, I was increasingly concerned about the potential targeting of undocumented immigrants. I wondered what I could do, what resources I could offer, and realized that what I had was a spare room. Just like my parents before me.

I put feelers out in my community. A friend who runs the local Big Brothers, Big Sisters program said he had a client that could use assistance. Soon after, a young, undocumented mother from the Dominican Republic and her 13-year-old son moved out of a domestic violence shelter and into my downstairs bedroom.

For the year and a half that we all lived together, I feared what would happen. Would someone realize she was undocumented and turn us all in? Would my ex-husband report me for illegally harboring her, thus risking our children? Still, I never once regretted my choice.

Offering her sanctuary was the right thing to do, and more importantly, my children were learning something important they might not have otherwise. The world is unevenly dangerous. In the face of that reality we have to take care of each other— share what we have, protect the vulnerable, and stand up for what we believe in, knowing there may be consequences.

So, yes, it’s always been this way. But also, we’re re-entering a particularly high stakes environment in the wake of this election. There will be targeting of vulnerable populations, fear-mongering, and intimidation. Inviting someone into your home might not be what you have to offer to meet this moment. But the only way survival is likely for all of us is if we each determine what our offer will be when the opportunity presents itself.

Everyone has something to offer. Every offer, person-to-person, matters.

We only get through this together. That has always been true. That has always been, and will always be, the work.

In honor of MLK Day 2022, I wrote about the point of this project because I felt the need to be clear. I’m not just in this for my own, or even your, personal development. I’m in this to change the world:

To be clear and transparent: this is not a self-help blog. I am not here to simply help you to develop yourself for your own satisfaction. I am not here to help you make your life more comfortable.

I am here to urge you to work towards your own integrity so that you may begin to use integrity as the filter for how you see your family, your community, and this country. I am here to move you towards what Dr. King calls in his speech, a “dangerous unselfishness”.

It was Dr. King’s unselfishness, his insistence upon focusing his words and his life on uplifting the plight of all oppressed people, on calling for this country to seek, finally, to fully integrate the promises of our founding documents into the daily lives of all of our citizens, on standing in solidarity with the victims of imperialism around the globe, that made him truly dangerous.

I want you to be dangerous, too.

When I encourage you to become more emotionally intelligent and less emotionally reactive, I am urging you to be dangerous.

When I implore you to find compassion for yourself and others in all of our messy imperfections, I am urging you to be dangerous.

When I challenge you to think deeply about what you believe in and whether or not those beliefs are expressed through your daily life, I am urging you to be dangerous.

When I write about standing up for what you know is right even if there are consequences you must bear, I am urging you to be dangerous.

It is not enough just to work towards your own wholeness, to strive for your own authenticity. We all have to work, in whatever ways suit our gifts, for our communities to have integrity, for our country to have integrity.

In a country with integrity, no one starves or has to sleep outside.

In a country with integrity, no one goes bankrupt because of medical bills.

In a country with integrity, over 2 million people aren’t foundering in jails and prisons.

In a country with integrity, women have full bodily autonomy protected by law.

In a country with integrity, trans people aren’t killed for daring to be themselves.

In a country with integrity, over 850,000 people don’t die of Covid-19 when vaccinations and masks are readily available.

In a country with integrity, more women aren’t killed due to domestic violence since 9/11 than all military personnel in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

In a country with integrity, the right to vote isn’t restricted to protect the powerful.

In a country with integrity, white supremacists aren’t allowed to be police officers or school officials, serve in local government or Congress, or make their way to the White House.

In a country with integrity, the government is not allowed to spend more every year on the military than it does on safety net programs and education combined.

Way back at the beginning of this project I told the story of standing in a museum at seven years old, seeing the scold’s bridles that authorities placed over the heads of Quaker women for daring to preach in public. I knew then that silencing people, especially women, is what the powerful do to protect their power.

What I have learned since then is that our society is insidious in the way it tempts us to put on our own scold’s bridle. To hold our own tongues in order to protect our tiny, tiny piece of the pie. To choose our own comfort over what we know is right.

So, I am standing here, on this virtual street corner every week to call you to take off your bridle. Unbend your back. Stand up and let your life speak truth to power. Be dangerous.

What else are we here for than that?

Take the time you need to grieve and take care of yourself, friends. Truly, it’s so important. You’ll need your strength in the days ahead. We’ll need your strength in the days ahead.

Much love to each and every one of you.

XO,

Asha