The Equal Justice Initiativeworks to end mass incarceration, excessive punishment and racial inequality in the United States. They provide legal representation to the most vulnerable people in American society, including prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes and prisoners who cannot afford effective representation.
Engage in the long, faithful work. Surrender the need of striving to be the best or always right and focus instead on leaning into Light, that reveals all things. All that is good and all that stands to be corrected, and redirected.
And as you lean into Light, be gentle with the word “darkness.” For more than it merely means wrong or bad, it is also the color of a full, starless night sky, and actual bodies of human beings who have been overlooked too many times.
Many, many words hold more than one meaning.
Language on “light” and “dark” may have its place, and this is also true, this very language has been used to say, “You are a threat. I am not. I am worth more than you.” It takes kindness to understand this, for even though kindness is a beautiful word. it does not mean that nothing gets disrupted. Sometimes a way of thinking must be interrupted in order for kindness to truly thrive.
For as sure as kindness leans into what is good, it also speaks about what isn’t right. It is compassionate and gentle when long histories are pulled from mourning into morning.
Engage in the long, faithful work of awakening with your heart and mind open to the possibility that things are more complex than they once seemed.
And as hard as it is to hold all of this, you are still free to dream: you do not have to be who you used to be. You do not have to think the way you used to think. You are free to take hopeful, thoughtful action in pursuit of better things.
So here’s to new beginnings, knowing it is impossible to ignore the long history, opening up to the mystery that grace still finds you here.
And grace is unmerited favor but it might not always look the way you want it to. It will invite you out in the open and it will also reveal what has been broken. You might have to unlearn the way you thought things would be. You might find that being undone is the best way to move on, humbly, mindfully, wholly.
For how liberating it is to pursue wholeness over perfection, finding that grace is more than a beautiful word, but a daily act of being undone, an awakening, a direction. - Morgan Harper Nichols