We Are Each Other’s Business

Paul Robeson by Gwendolyn Brooks

That time

we all heard it,

cool and clear,

cutting across the hot grit of the day.

The major Voice.

The adult Voice

forgoing Rolling River,

forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge

and other symptoms of an old despond.

Warning, in music-words

devout and large,

that we are each other’s

harvest:

we are each other’s

business:

we are each other’s

magnitude and bond.

My Darlings,

Take three deep breaths. Take them all the way to your toes. Good job. Pull your shoulders away from your ears and roll your neck around in slow circles and breathe some more. Drink some water.

Here’s the deal: For good or ill, we rarely know what’s coming for us. The edge between life and death is always thinner than any of us would ever like to admit to ourselves. In these last months, that edge has been in our faces…on our faces (please wear a mask in public).

All the prognosticating is done. Today is decision day. And whether we know and understand the full weight of this decision late tonight or early tomorrow or in two weeks, we must know in our bones that our work on that day will be the same as it is every other day.

Our work is love, and we need all of us to be love. We have all we need, even when we are empty and dry and tired and over it and afraid and cranky and damn near all the way busted. Working with that heap of mess is no problem for God. Calling our chaos to order and moving across the face of our deep emptiness is God’s oldest pleasure, done with love and profound care.

I’d love to tell you that tomorrow will be like Easter in our hearts. But it’ll really be Holy Saturday, still. Like it has been for a long, long time. Jesus will be harrowing hell, proclaiming peace and preaching the gospel of love to people who are beyond our reach.

And when Jesus’ beloved come out of the houses of the dead, it will be our precious gift to welcome them to their places at the table. Jesus shuffles the deck of place cards and we have to relearn what it means to take turns and share—the last will be first and the first will be last. We know this. Lean into it.

We will need to dig deep and remember all the times Jesus has called our own hearts up from dead places and reminded us that love is relentless and is determined to win, to persist, and insist that death will never have the last word.

Waiting is hard. But like Saint Glennon says, “We can do hard things.” Be sweet to yourself today—drink some water, sing loud, watch a cat video or a fat baby video, eat a food, wash your face and hands, whatevs.

I don’t know how or when, but I know love wins every single time. I’ve watched my framily love bigger and harder than I knew was possible these last months. I have seen miracles of grace and goodness disguised as tanks of gas and Prime packages and FaceTimes in the middle of the day. I’ve seen you phone and text banking and encouraging others to make their love look like justice in public, out loud, in ways that make good trouble. That’s not for nothing. And no matter what happens tonight, we will have to keep doing this work or reconciling and confessing and reconstructing. Our shit is busted and it will take more time than any of us would like to fix. But this is what love does. This is what we are going to keep on doing together.

It’s going to be ok—I promise. Keep on. You are not alone, beloved. We’re on our way to back to each other. It’s gonna be okay.

Love you five-ever,

Rachie