Change Happens

I wish that every time some major change needed to happen, there would be an easy way to get everyone out in the streets. It does happen occasionally when the right combination of time, circumstance, self-interest, passion, (and probably weather) occur. Witness the groundswell of activity surrounding immigration issues recently. But mostly it doesn't happen that way, so where does that leave us when our passions run high?

Change—either personal or societal—happens in small steps. If we're lucky, the steps will rebound lightly against the earth, but more likely it will feel like the mud sucking up our very soles/souls. But we do have daily options to practice the change we want—many more of those than the chances to join our bodies and voices in one great chorus. It's hard to stay on that incremental path—it doesn't seem to be doing much, we're not getting enough notice for it, blah, blah, blah—but it is the one most available to us. So if we're concerned about racism, for example, we need to find the small, daily ways to practice hospitality, equality, justice. If we're concerned about war, we need to find the small peace-making ways that are in line with what we believe.

And then we need to be ready, so that when the planets line up and the circumstances are right, we can all rush out in the street all at once.