Sunday, May 31, 2020

Can painted rocks fix the planet?

Message from a kind stranger
London, ON
May 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram
Found this beside a path through the woods, a perfect little gesture hidden away amidst an imperfectly beautiful world filled with imperfectly beautiful people.

I have no answers for the rage that now envelops the planet. Or the entrenched racism that allows law enforcement to routinely target people of color while white supremacists with automatic weapons are allowed to storm the legislature with impunity.

But having no answers doesn't mean standing by in silence. Because, as a Jew, some of my most powerful early memories revolve around being singled out by racists. As a child, xenophobia took on many forms, and I learned all too well what human darkness looked and felt like. It wasn't, and isn't, overt. And the fact that anyone is forced to live in fear of being on its receiving end should enrage us all beyond measure.

Never again must apply to anyone systematically mistreated by institutionalized, generationally encouraged, whitewashed-by-tradition racism. They don't call it the old boys' club by accident.

So, no, I won't live in a vacuum and pretend their struggle doesn't affect me. It does. In fact, it affects us all, and we ignore the root causes to our great peril.

And while I have no answers, I'm reminded that someone in our community had the wherewithal to paint a rock and leave it behind for others to find. We'll start with tiny kindnesses like this one, and we'll work our way outward from there.

Because even the mightiest revolution starts with the smallest light.

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