This is a story that I heard on NPR a few days ago. It was an interview with Heidi Van Schoonhoven, the owner of La Grande Dry Cleaning who posted a sign outside her storefront one year ago. It reads: "White supremacy is wrong. Trump condones white supremacy. If you still support Trump, your business is not welcome here."
Heidi states that she was first moved to post the sign following Mr. Trump's response to the deadly confrontation at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. One year later the sign remains.
La Grande, Oregon is a mixture of political beliefs and is certainly not a liberal oasis. Yet, Heidi acted and risked the condemnation of her neighbors and customers and even losing her business. I was struck by this woman's courage and integrity and how it was that she was compelled to act, no matter the potential consequences, rather than stay silent.
In the interview, Heidi spoke of Timothy Snyder's excellent book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century (https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century-ebook/dp/B01N4M1BQY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1534980587&sr=8-1&keywords=on+tyranny). Specifically, she quoted Lesson #19: "Be as courageous as you can." (http://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2018/06/yale-historian-timothy-snyder-20.html)
Heidi Van Schoonhoven was educated and aware of the times in history, of which the holocaust was certainly one, in which millions suffered horrifically and died as the result of massive complicity. She named what is happening today and its parallels. And she became compelled to be as courageous as she could and act. This was her way to make a difference.
This whole interview on NPR's Think Out Loud brought home the value of civil disobedience, of courage and the diversity of actions each and every one of us can take, and of the need for us to act out of our grounding in consciousness of a higher good for us all. Our silence or apathy, our inaction or unskilled actions, our ignorance or turning the other way in the face of the suffering of others ― all this and more contributes to this place where we find ourselves at today in which so many suffer and so much of life on Earth is threatened.
It need not be so.
Just imagine if each of us were to look deeply within ourselves to unearth and become increasingly conscious of the ways that we are complicit in that which harms. Just imagine the difference we could all make if in identifying more and more of the problem we become empowered to increasingly be part of the solution. The options of how we can make a difference are endless.
Heidi Van Schoonhoven's business has thrived over the past year. Yes, she's received her fair share of criticism, especially on line. She's also received donations and countless expressions of gratitude and respect and appreciation. This is what can happen when we step into the hoop of our own courageous selves and choose to not remain silent through our words or actions in the face of injustice, dehumanization, suffering, greed, and the many other faces of violence and fear.
Among my ongoing prayers is that we humans will root ever more strongly into what it is that we bring to our human family and the family of all beings on Earth. I hold this passionate prayer that each of us will increasingly be a courageous as we can.
Bless us all...
Molly
1 comment:
BRAVO!!!
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