Unity – nickmullis.com

My alarm sounded and I climbed out of the top bunk I had slept in since I was seven. It wasn’t a typical day but I did all the typical things that formed the routine I kind of had. I showered and got dressed and then waited for Mom and Dad to say it was time to go.

The moment came, and as I walked out the back door of our farm house I told myself I wouldn’t look back. As I walked I looked straight ahead and when I climbed into the front seat of the van I closed my eyes until the house was behind me. I wouldn’t look back. My whole world was changing and I was terrified but certain I was going to embrace the future.

In my immature eighteen year old brain I had just spent my last night in my parents house. I was heading to college and it was the end of an era in my life. I would never come home again.

I was gone for a month before I was home for a weekend and in the same bed I had slept in for years. I spent a lot of nights in that same bed for several more years as I faced a lot of change.

When I was younger I didn’t like change. That day leaving for college wasn’t thrilling. I still don’t go looking for change but I accept it when it arrives and sometimes I do seek it out.

I’m not alone either. Our culture is full of sayings, “The good old days…, I remember when…, I wish it could be like it used to be.” They are all notions built on our feeling that change is the enemy.

I wonder what it is that makes change so hard… Is it the fear of the future? We don’t know what is coming or if we will be able to handle whatever it is. We can. We have a whole life time behind us that says we can endure what is coming. We never knew what was ahead of us but we still made it. You didn’t know you would struggle in school. You didn’t know you would have an addiction that would steal a piece of your life, but you’re still here. Someone could have told you, “You’re going to be an amazing mom,” and you laughed at them — but now you are loved by your children. We didn’t know, and yet we made the future our present.

I think the pain of change is more about what we are losing. Where the future is unwritten, the past and present we know and we are comfortable with them. I know how to respond to what has already happened to me. If you start changing things, I’m going to lose things — stability, comfort, an excuse. If things change then I may hurt or someone I know may hurt.

We are a people that avoid pain at all cost, but we shouldn’t. Pain reminds us there is life and it is worth living and worth fighting for.

Here is some advice for the seasons or moments of change…

Don’t go it alone. We were not meant to be lone wolves; we are communal creatures and humanity would be better served if we lived that way. Speak out your fears and the things you will mourn in the midst of the disruption. Share each others burdens.

Don’t let anger rule the day. Change is going to happen. As the old saying goes, you never enter the same river twice. Anger is wasted energy in the world of change, because anger rarely makes things better, it clouds our perceptions and feeds our fears.

Do look for reasons to be excited. The fact that tomorrow will be different from today should stir our sense of adventure. Tomorrow is a chance to make something new, or build on a stronger foundation.

Do invite someone to share in your delight. As Paulo Coelho wrote, “Happiness is something that multiplies when it is divided.”

We only pass through this life once and change is part of the process.

“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” – Desmond Tutu

There is a certain irony in a white guy making a case for teaching about the contributions of Black Americans to literature, science, mathematics, music, theology, and the betterment of humankind. If, however, we allow the conversation to only be one-sided then it becomes stagnant and loses some of its vitality, like a spring flowing into a pond.

Far from a sense a superiority I have to honor those of varying race that have shown me a better way to live. They have treated me far better than I have deserved. I would hope that in some way I helped them become better as well because, as Bishop Tutu observed, our humanity is bound up together.

Thirty-two years after the Soweto massacre, in Apartheid South Africa, I stood in front of the school where the demonstration began. I stood humbled by the young that would give their lives for a different and better world. They would stand and march against the tyranny that would devalue them as people, though a government would march against them with tear gas and guns, they marched hand-in-hand for something deeper. They marched for humanity.

I stood at the base of the pulpit in Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, nearly fifty years after Martin Luther King Jr. preached his final sermon in that sanctuary. The passion and heart of that man can still be felt in the dust on the window sills. A passion that would speak the truth of a united humanity. He saw America better than it was and better than we deserve. He saw us for what we could be as a people that stood together.

The story of race and it’s divisions is as old as the story of humankind. We are beasts that divide and classify and sort everything we discover. It is a sad commentary that we have done the same to our fellow women and men. In dividing ourselves we have robbed ourselves of our human unity. We have stolen the richness of our species.

To regain our humanity we must find our story. We must find our commonality. To recover that which has been set aside and forgotten we must share our histories. For me to understand that we share a collective dream I need to first hear who you are and not categorize you. As a listener I must take a place of submission and serve you. It is only then that I am able to know and comprehend your value and the gift you are to all of humanity.

Henri Nouwen, a world renowned priest, gave up his fame and fortune to spend his remaining years serving a profoundly disabled man named Adam. Adam would never be able to say thank you to Nouwen and yet he had a greater impact on Father Henri than anyone else in Nouwen’s life. In the midst of his service Henri penned these words,

“Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let’s not be afraid to receive each day’s surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy it will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity.”

We pause to celebrate Black history month because it opens the doors to surprise. There are far too many moments of sorrow in American Black histroy, but there are also countless joys. When we sit together in the sorrow and the joy then we find our common story and we gain new brothers and sisters. Our family grows when we submit to the story of someone else.

We talk about the Black contribution during this month, because we all become better through the conversation. We all regain a lost piece of our humanity. We all receive the day’s surprise. As an American people we must always share each others stories if we are to maintain, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Category: Unity

Change…

The Surprise of a Common Humanity