Justice

is complaining, complaining, complaining until our voices break. Until the mighty and bright and hopeful energy dies down, in either the pace of an eternal trickle or fiery burst.

But before all this, there was once a bend on the road. In fact, there always is as long as we are able to listen to that voice. We take the opportunity to transform because we are not satisfied with the misalignment. At the crossroads, we feel a pulse of the moment asking of us an urgency to make a decision as we grasp the interconnection of our presence and the presence of others, living and non-living.

Naturally, it begins with a personal purpose but then the need for change and change itself are casted into the wider fabric of the thing we sometimes call the Universe, hopefully as we persist. Justice can never be done alone. Success lies in asking for help, in checking up on each other because we find ourselves needing each other. This can be a time to finally own up to our vulnerabilities, the kind of justice the world needs each day. Inevitably, it is also a learning period of acknowledging others’ vulnerabilities before us. There is solace in being seen.

The act of justice is the denial of the inherited infairness of the world. We all know this is how it is but we must not accept. Once and for all we mustn’t. Rather we crack open the possibility of questioning of why and how. So we knock, knock, knock on the doors closed, hoping for a movement of the doorknob, for a whisper that somebody might answer our plea, for a welcome into the call for belonging. It is sometimes painful for doors can remain closed. It is sometimes frustrating for the process can endure even after our deaths. 

But the fight for what is deemed necessary can continue across generations and continents, among communities and amidst values and beliefs. We insist while hope holds. We hold our weapons until the very end. Is there ever really an end?

At some point in time, we let out a sigh and dare to put the weapons down. Isn’t this what justice can be all about too? Giving everything we can muster, from the deep source of our hearts, but learning to step back, to forgive, to die with our wishes, to be lonely and be in grievance after refusal, to wait for the next generation and hope that good change might come. Exhausted, surrendered, lost, but pulsating with gratitude for the robustness of life and life felt.

In seeking justice, we hope for balance. At the same time, we acknowledge and thank the existing imbalances of the world. We feel our feet against the ground. We hold our body and we say a little prayer hoping for the broken voice to recover, for the next breath to be possible, to see a dove fly across the blue sky.