brokenness

the jena story has always gnawed, and you have articulated something i could not--something about the line-drawing, the borderlines; and people just dig and deepen the creases in order to protect their placement. either the mayor thinks people are overreacting or he is being defensive, or maybe it is the same thing. and this knotted core--he is offended by an image (whether in relation to other images, he is still offended) and at the same time he is dismissive. where i lack hope is in the ability to see that there is something underlying the discomfort, this requires so much effort.

i am not sure why it is easier for me to speak about this than about genocide or such violence. perhaps it is because this first thing i have decided i can attempt to counter in my own small way at least, this i can make a gesture toward grasping on some level; but this other thing is beyond my measurements. it makes me feel so completely overcome--an intensity and a powerlessness-- but at the same time i know that this cannot be an excuse of any kind. so how do we address this? this is not a rhetorical question but one i would like an answer to. do we write about it as we have always written things down? how? and how do we choose, when there is so much.

(i suspect that part of the answer has something to do with what has been said about making words in a way that can also hold that fear of wrongdoing and holes…)

i’ve been thinking about brokenness. no concrete thoughts, only floating wispy things. only it seems to me that the closer i look, the more i see that culture is broken, politics is broken, religion, broken, too. how if we admitted our brokenness, we could redefine those lines or at least question them, dialogue. and what makes us suspicious of the brokenness of others?

some beginning thoughts...

j.