Consider a form of social injustice that concerns you. What would be required to say "no" to this injustice? What "yes" would be tied to the "no"? Reflect on what this yes and no would mean for you as an individual, as a family, as a group or community.
We all had our pet injustices. It seems funny to have so many to choose from that it's hard to decide, but sad all the same. How do we decided what to devote ourselves to? I am one person, I have only limited resources and time to spend, and even if I lived it 24 hours a day, I still couldn't accomplish all I would want for every issue I felt was important.
Caroline, our visitor from TCU thinking of coming to PSR, had an excellent point: we create these injustices by telling ourselves we deserve something based on our own background, but other people don't because they don't come from where we come from. Indeed, a common element in the stories chosen by each of us was social injustice based on out individual backgrounds.
It's hard for us to consider sometimes where others are coming from. I noted that often times, when I hear arguments for or against gay marriage (my own pet social injustice issue), they are framed in the sense of straight people. How will gay marriage affect the institution of marriage as a whole? What will society be like for straight people when gays marry? I think this is a false line of questioning.
Well, I suppose it's really not a false line of questioning, just questions framed in the wrong way. My difference: how will gay marriage affect gay families? How will gay marriage affect the children of the marriage? I've seen so often these commercials asking how gay marriage will affect the institution of marriage. I don't see commercials of gay and lesbian families, defying conventional beliefs to call themselves families. I don't see images of the love and the care that comes from families of all shapes and sizes.
We continued in our small groups with a practice of drawing prayer. Another practice I had never used, I couldn't help but imagine what I had on my brain: the Giants. I drew a diamond shape, and surrounded it with red and blue, filling the middle with green. I wrote victory in orange and black, but it wasn't for the Giants (well, it mostly wasn't...). Instead, in the blueness outside the diamond I made a rainbow, for it is National Coming Out Day, and I look to victory as when we no longer need to celebrate this day.
I deserve to not have to dedicate one day to coming out, and so do you.
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