Fault Lines and Earthquakes

We were awakened this morning by a 4.2 earthquake centered about ten miles from our apartment.  No damage, just jangled nerves as we leapt out of bed and went to check our home seismograph more commonly known as the light fixture over the dining room table.  Swaying, it was, confirming that we were not dreaming.

“This, too?” I mumbled to myself.

This morning, I watched the funeral of John Lewis, beloved Civil Rights icon and congressman.  Speaker after speaker reminded us that democracy is a work in progress.  We who live in this country should always be striving to “form a more perfect union.”  The wording is clear:  we strive to form a more perfect union, meaning that perfection will never be achieved.  It is the eternal struggle of democracy to fight to be better, more inclusive, more just.  That is the nature of things.

Struggling to form a more perfect union means that like all Californians, we live with upheaval.  We tolerate the earthquakes because we live in this state, and earthquakes are a fact of life.  We live in this country, and therefore, equality, social justice, and equal representation under the law are achieved only at a cost.  We will never erase a hateful heart or one bent on violence and oppression.  We must be willing, as John Lewis was, to take the blows and wounds in the fight to fulfill the promise of the democratic, multi-cultural collage that is America.

The war for justice never ends.

However, the war is beautiful in its heroism.  The friction brings glory and truth and pain and suffering to the forefront.  Nature mirrors this.  The Grand Canyon represents a war between water and stone.  It has lasted for millennia.  What remains in that perpetual conflict is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.  It is the earth showing us that change is not always easy and never complete.  It simply is, always.

What is more explicit in this natural wonder is the power of a malleable substance—water—to wear away stone that seems impervious to all forces acting upon it.  Yet, here is water carving its way down the canyon and creating this beautiful cataclysm of time and substance.  We are the water; the injustice is the stone.  Water will drip and flow around the rock.  Water will diminish in the heat of the desert.  Water is soft and splashy and mutable—liquid, steam, ice.  But water prevails because it is patient and consistent.  Given time and tide, water will bore right through the rock.

So be like water.

We survive earthquakes but they are a part of our geology.  We are never done with them as we will never be a perfect society or a flawless world.  There will always be those who threaten to upend our rights, throw us into prison, bring down the club upon our skulls.  We go on.  We stand witness to the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and we fight for human rights and the end to racism, environmental destruction, oppression, discrimination, violence, and the rape and pillage of our world.

Today, we said goodbye to a righteous man.  We will not easily replace him as an advocate for “good trouble.”  In the same breath, we have been threatened by a man who would destroy our civilization, our culture, our tired and poor.  He is trying to stop anyone who dares to lift a “lamp beside the golden door” to sanctuary and opportunity, hallmarks of the American Dream.

We will fight on with words and bayonets.  We will strive to create a more perfect world. We will hold fast to the earth as it heaves and bucks.  And we will survive.  We will flourish.

We will miss you, John Lewis.  However, you did your part, and may angels sing you to your rest.  Now, the fight goes on, and it is up to us to carry the torch.