We Owe Each Other | Reflections on Ferguson

My heart is wracked with grief as I consider all that has occurred in the last 24-hours. With Ferguson’s name on every lip, a great divide has forged its way into our hearts. Lines have been drawn, parties have been formed, and sides have been chosen. There is no “win” to be had. Every decision is stained, every potential outcome is lacking, and every source is slanted.

And yet I find this startling common ground: we want peace, and we have none.

Not only do we want situational peace – peace in Ferguson, peace in the streets, peaceful nights of rest – but we want systemic peace. We want a deep-seeded peace that sits with us in the middle of the waiting, an abiding confidence that justice will be done, and joy will be ours. We want to know that we will wake in the morning and the world will be just as we left it, and just as it should be.

But we wake, instead, to find confusion, fear, and all kinds of clamoring hate. We wake to see that the world is just as it was when we fell asleep in worry, and we do not sense that soon it will change. We have no peace – not one of us – and there is no safe haven for the trepidatious soul.

And from opposite sides of the situation, of the system, of the subject, we find that we are all swirling in a world without peace. And when the scene is broadened and we step away, we realize that our two sides are in the same unstable world. And we need peace. And we owe it to each other to fight for it.