I learned this quote from a beloved teacher of mine, the late Brother ChiSing, of The Dallas Meditation Center.
If your house is on fire, the most urgent thing to do is to go back and try to put out the fire, not to run after the person you believe to be the arsonist. If you run after the person you suspect has burned your house, your house will burn down while you are chasing him or her. That is not wise. You must go back and put out the fire.
Our country is ablaze.
It feels like at any moment our current paradigm could be engulfed in the flames of rage and grief.
Some of us will be tempted to chase down the rioters and looters. Others of us will go after police and politicians.
And our country will keep burning.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t hold people accountable for stoking the fire. We absolutely should.
But no Facebook post, no tweet, no bumper sticker, and no guilty verdict will extinguish the blaze until we address the systematic machine of racism and white supremacy that is the fuel for both these extrajudicial killings of people of color AND the rioting and looting.
You have a choice. Will you let your house keep burning?
Photo credit: Mike Shaheen