Vocation

Over the past week, I have sent a lot of my time listening—listening to concerns shared over social media; listening to the views, opinions, fears, and fragile hopes expressed in articles, op-eds, and blogs; listening to professors process right alongside me; listening to friends voice anxiety, outrage, terror, exhaustion; listening to people trying to find hope. I have listened to the names of Catherine Cortez Masto, Tammy Duckworth, Kamala Harris, Lisa Blunt Rochester, Stephanie Murphy, Ilhan Omar, Attica Scott, Kate Brown, and Pramila Jayapal repeated like a litany. I have also listened to the growing list of acts around the country that have attempted to discriminate, intimidate, and alienate. I have listened to the words of my fellow Marsh Associates as they voiced the things for which I couldn’t find words. And so, for my blog post this week, I would like to share some of the things I have heard from them through their own posts.

Nick: This week…felt like an explosion. But it didn’t really feel like an explosion at the same time. It felt like my perceptions of reality and identity caved inward and crumbled. It felt like an implosion.

Matt: Over the past 24 hours I have seen the entire mindset of a nation change. I have seen the markets crash. I have seen politicians, celebrities, and everyday people question what will happen next. I have seen people rejoice. I have seen people cry. I have seen people rationalize.

Denise: Today I am filled, not so much with a stinging pain as a deep deep aching. An aching in every fiber of my being and an uncertainty I can’t even begin to explain. As I walk through today, I feel unglued.

Devin: We didn’t do our job. I’m willing to live through this, I don’t have any other choice. But those brilliant and bright eyed children shouldn’t have to…they should grow up knowing that bigotry and racism is not American culture, and if it was, it no longer is. Sadly, I’m not confident that is our reality.

Ian: Hope is a complicated emotion. It can comfort as well as delude, blind as well as provide clarity. How do we discern a hope that brings us together and keeps us going from one that shelters us from facing difficult realities? How do we hold on to hope at all, when the world is changing and the future seems bleak? It may seem hollow to talk about hope right now, when the future feels so uncertain, so chaotic, so disrupted. And perhaps right now, for many it is. Sometimes the weight of a moment needs to be processed in its own time. But I believe that it is possible to look toward the future while acknowledging the messiness of the present.

Matt: Aggression is never defeated by aggression and anger only spawns more anger. We are in a world surrounded by other people. Just like you, they are people’s children, grandchildren, siblings, cousins, friends. Everyone’s life is in some way connected; whether it be the economy, war, or common beliefs. Bigotry and racism are not accepted. There is no exception to this. We are all living.

Devin: I sat for hours thinking, what do we do now? I realized we can’t lose hope. We have to keep going…It will be harder than we’ve ever known it to be, but we will get it done. I pray that we all stay strong, but more importantly that we stay hopeful.

Denise: Progress will be lost only if we stop marching, if we go silent. There is more work to be done here. Right now I’m hurting, but I know more certainly than I know anything today, that we cannot allow despair to stop us.

Nick: I can only hold fast and know that when things fall, the only direction often possible is forward and upward. Only broken things are capable of being fixed. I can tell myself that I can keep going, in spite of surprises, in spite of fragilities and in spite of implosions. And often in the randomness, in the fragilities, there are pockets of grace and hope.

Ian: Right now…I make my own resolution. I choose to affirm what I most strongly believe in: listening, compassion, and kindness.

In the midst of my listening, their words have buoyed me up. They have reminded me that we cannot face the world alone. Rather, we must listen to, support, and encourage one another because that is how we love one another—that is now we resist the forces of hatred and division and violence. As Martin Luther King, Jr said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” As we face a world that seems a little darker and a little more hateful, I pray that we are able to give ourselves over to love instead of hate, that we spread light instead of darkness, that we hold onto hope, that we continue to speak, and that we never stop listening.