Reading today from Tippett’s Becoming Wise , she notes the subtlety of change in society. Yes, we see the mountain tops, the icons, the symbols, but we can easily miss/forget the groundwork that makes the change possible. We don’t really see the folks on the ground with shovels, maybe even just spoons, that are laboring to bring about a change they might not ever fully realize.
Tippett writes: “As the Great Benedictine nun Joan Chittister reminds me, the New York Times equivalent of the sixth-century Rome never carried the headline BENEDICT WRITES RULE!” Still, Benedicts work, his influence, and that of the small bands who joined him, remains with us thousands of years later. In this I am reminded of the line from the Sam Cooke song – “It’s been a long time comin’, but a change is gonna come.”
We of course need not go back to sixth-century Rome for examples of those who bring about change. Martin Luther King, Jr. comes to mind as one whose work influenced a change that lived well beyond him, a change greater than any headline would have given him in his lifetime. Jackie Robinson falls into that category also. But to Tippett’s point, they are the focal points, the “shiny objects” that grab the headlines. For every King, Jr. or Robinson there are thousands working under the radar, taking the steps that facilitate change at ground level. There were those who held signs, marched, or sat at lunch counters to support integration. There were those who actively supported integration in baseball, even if only through buying tickets and cheering a black man playing on a baseball field.
The reality is that, consciously or not, each of us is involved in change at least at a basic level. What change am I part of? What change am I helping bring about?
It occurs to me... 