I'm just saying...I feel your pain

During my second year of seminary, I struggled. No, my struggle wasn’t academic. No, my struggle wasn’t spiritual. My struggle was practical. I struggled with, “Now that I am being exposed to all of this history and knowledge and understanding, what do I do with any of it and how does any of it help those God will call me to stand with and before.”

I had no clue what I was stepping into and I wanted clear guidance and answers for how to help those who would seek me for help.

In the six or seven years since graduating, I have found myself at a difficult intersection a handful of times. And right now, I find myself in that same place again. As a 41-year-old, same-gender-loving, Black man from the metro Atlanta area, I am of a generation who were taught that the best way to effect change is education and voting. I have all of this education. I have exercised my right to vote in just about every election since I turned 18. And yet, I am sitting here, in my home in Stone Mountain, in one of our cute chairs from some online furniture store, looking at the front windows of the home I purchased with my husband almost a year ago, and I am angry and sad and scared and disappointed and I have no answers and I am tired.

I am tired because I have pretty much done everything I was instructed to do — go to school, get an education (I have three degrees), get a good job, get a house, get married (even though I didn’t get married in the way they expected and to the gender, they intended), and do good in the world. But I don’t feel safe and I don’t feel free.

But I am also tired and sad and angry and disappointed and scared because last night in my city, in the city I was born and call home, I watched two very troubling scenarios take place and like Killer Mike, I didn’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here, at this moment in history, where another Black body has been vandalized and looted and damaged and lynched. I don’t want to be here while my city was vandalized and looted and damaged and lynched.

I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be angry because yet again, another Black body was doing what we were taught to do, be good and behave and respectful and mind your business and don’t give them any reason to harm you. And yet again, they followed those instructions and as a result, STILL lost their lives. And then what did some of us do? We turned around and chastised and fussed and yelled at our very own last night because they did not behave in the “Atlanta way!” What has the Atlanta way gotten any of us? How has it helped us when countless young Black boys and men and girls and women and children are working two or three jobs just to pay bills and eat? How has it helped us when our jails and prisons are packed with bodies that look like me? How has it changed anything when areas north of Atlanta are considered with saving and a priority, but those that are south or west are considered dispensable? And, and, and, at the same time, many of our leaders look like us, but spend more time telling us, once again, to be respectful and respectable, mind your manners, and behave.

Our young people are angry. They are hurting. They are tired. They are losing friends and family at the hands of the very people sworn to protect and serve, and they are following the rules in the way we told them, and yet, nothing has changed and they are still struggling and still scared and being tormented by the authority.

We have made them this way. We have failed them. We have failed ourselves. We have failed each other. And this country, which claims to be the home of the free and the land of the brave was never meant to be for us but designed to be against us. The very fabric of this country is rooted in destruction and control and power, and violence.

Violence is not the way? That’s all this world knows is violence. Violence is written into every seam of this society. Violence has always been the manner to which any change has occurred. Read the books. Read the Bible. There have always been war and pillage. Most religions spread after some form of war and grand massacre where the believers used violence to wipe out entire societies in the name of God. Slavery was rooted in violence. The Civil Rights Act was the result of violence. Yes, there were marches and organizing and demonstrations, but there was also change after Bloody Sunday. There was change after King was assassinated. Violence has always brought about change.

I am sad. I am disappointed. I am frustrated. I am tired.

I. Feel. Your. Pain.

And I understand that sometimes, sometimes, we don’t always have the “tools” available to us to be calculated and proper and respectful and strategic. Sometimes, sometimes, we are so angry and tired and frustrated that we want to break something. Last night, a group of people broke things. They broke things because they got tired. They broke things because we all have failed each other.

What do we do from here? I don’t know. I wish I had the answers. I wish I had some sort of solution. But what I do know is sometimes it takes breaking something in order for something else to happen. I also know that success and change and freedom does not come by one way of doing things. Change and success and freedom comes when a series of efforts, a series of actions, a series of strategies are put into place. Change takes multilayered, multi-faceted effort. Change takes diverse strategies and perspectives and attempts. We don’t need one leader. We need many leaders. And we need many voices. And we need many actions because we are many and diverse and different. It will be our differences that save us in the long run.

Our babies are tired. Our babies are fed up. Our babies want change and they want it now. And their desires, their wants, their demands may be unreasonable, but they are scared and tired and fed up. They are tired of mourning and the feeling of anxiety they are forced to deal with. And we have to do a better job of hearing them and working with them and finding ways to do what is necessary together, calculated, experimental, and flexible.

I didn’t want to see my city burning last night. But I also don’t want to be part of the chorus sitting on the sidelines like old man Joe, waving my fingers and yelling, “You know better!” They don’t want to be here either. But they are and they are trying to figure this thing out just like we are.

And some may read this and disagree with me. If so, so be it. But if you choose to focus more on telling me why I am wrong or unreasonable or that there has to be a better way or a different way or looting and tearing stuff down is counterproductive, then you will prove in your disagreement and response that you didn’t hear (or read) a word I said (or typed), which means you are no better than those who have chosen to perceive us as savages without taking the time to understand us and what we are feeling. You are being no better than the ones that have caused us generations of pain and frustration. You are no better than the status quo and are refusing to even try to relate, understand, or care.

Am I saying that what happened in Atlanta on Friday night and in other cities across the country, was right?! No. But I won’t sit here and chastise and berate and demean and abuse because that doesn’t help either and only causes more division.

We all must do a better job. We all just want to be heard and respected and free and seen and cherished and free.

I don’t want to be here. None of us do. But we are, so what do we do with where we are and with what we have? And how can we effect change in a way that is less finger waging and more coalition-based?

Any suggestions? Let’s get to work!