This meditation was written in early 2020 and is included in a compilation of readings, prayers and meditations entitled “Shelter in This Place: Meditations on 2020”.  It is available from the UUA Bookstore.

Giving Love the Last Word
By Tara K. Humphries

It is becoming so clear, isn’t it, that heartbreak and beauty are both true, sometimes even at the same time.

Last week, listening to the latest pandemic statistics on the news, I learned of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a twenty-five year old black man shot and killed by two white men when out running in Georgia in late February.  Heartbreaking doesn’t even begin to cover it.

That same morning, I met up with a close friend for a run. Sun shining, it was warm enough for shorts and T-shirts. We turned in and out of neighborhoods, hit the local park and river trail, impatiently waiting at innumerable crosswalks…all the while talking and laughing and breathing deeply, moving our bodies on a spring day out in the world. A celebration of friendship, of health and of life. What a gift.

Yet there remained a heaviness to that morning. She is Black.  And we are both twenty-five. I am aware each morning that we step into a world that sees us differently. I run with privilege I did not earn; she runs with fear she does not deserve. And I know I cannot protect her from people who look like me.

If you pay attention the world will break your heart.

But then there is the beauty. The sunshine and the birdsong, the green grass and the story sharing and the laughter.  Oh my God, the laughter. Sometimes I have to stop on those runs, laughing so hard I’m doubled over with my hands on my knees. “Laughter”, as author Anne Lamott says, “is carbonated holiness.” Those shared moments of movement and friendship out on a fresh morning in a dangerous world are not just beautiful – they are holy.

If heartbreak is where we stop, then perhaps we’re not paying attention at all.

The truth is that fear and bravery hold hands. The holy and the lifegiving exist alongside the terror and injustice of our world. Death and life are in a constant dance. We can do more than resist white supremacy; we can celebrate Black life.

And perhaps in listening, hearing and believing the stories and experiences of people who hold different identities than we do, we can allow our hearts to break so that we might feel them open. For it is with hearts that can hold the harsh reality of pain and racism and death and we might be moved to that deeper truth; that life, beauty and the transformative power of Love will, indeed, have the last word.

***

Rev. Tara K. Humphries is a minister in the Unitarian Universalist and UCC traditions, serving as Transitional Minister at Allen Avenue Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland, ME, for the 2022-23 church year. “I am called to the journey of working together in community to cultivate trust, faith, resiliency, and our capacity for collective transformation.”

Learn more about Rev. Tara at her website.