Yesterday, April 20, a judge and jury convicted Derek Chauvin on three counts of murder for the death of George Floyd in May of 2020. This moment is both hugely significant and also a small chipping away at a giant problem in America: the intersection of racism and violence. We process this today, as the murder and conviction book end a really intense year, and that intensity shows no signs of letting up.

Part of what we talk about is trusting what we see, trusting that when injustice shows itself, we should believe it. One of the closing arguments for the prosecution was, “Trust what you have seen with your own eyes.” If we are willing to see what is so we may begin to reimagine new possibilities. It’s strange. It seems like we should feel mostly relief in this case, but both of us felt an overwhelming sadness that this one case is not enough to erase the years and years of injustice in our society. I believe addressing injustice is an economic, political, and systemic issue, but more than anything, it is a spiritual issue. We need more We in our policies and politics, more love. We need to extend the space between what we have known and what is yet to come, to sit in the discomfort of the in between and become artists of sorts. The role of the artist “is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place” (James Baldwin, 1962). An important spiritual task is to gain awareness of the darkness within.

Let us lay down our weapons and defenses and denials and imagine, together, this more human dwelling place.

*My 10 year old son’s drawing the night of the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.*