I invite you to consider this over your coffee this day these potent words from Melody Charlie, 

“Human Indigenous lives that have been taken for generations , stolen, raped, murdered, without charges & for years without question. Especially given that it was illegal for “Indians’ to even access legal support. It was illegal for Indians to leave the reservation. It was illegal to hire ‘Indians’. It was pretty much illegal to be an Indian. Imagine being illegal on your own land in your own home.”

We must be more careful with our parades and our celebrations and our festivals that we are not sanctioning a dance on other people’s graves, that we’re not allowing ourselves to be seduced by free hotdogs and face-painting into ignoring great injustice, that we’re not permitting ourselves to believe a fiction that it’s either/or, us or them.

The great challenge we are called to navigate, I think, in these ever-stranger days, is to hold in our bodies the truth of all our truths, even the ones that seem to be in deep conflict with each other, and instead of being divided-and-conquered, or cancelling each other out, to keep orienting back towards relationship and understanding.

My wonderfully wise meditation teacher shared this month that we need to say hard things and do hard things, without hardening. Can we soften towards the fact that a fun parade and family-friendly celebration also feels like one more assault of someone’s humanity?

Can we soften towards each other even when it’s hard, even when the truth hurts and the words pierce our bubbles of “innocence”?