Now What Shall We Do?
“I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!”
I Look at World was written 90 years ago. And here we still are.
I understand I will never understand. However I stand. I'll get stuff wrong and part of standing, to me, is being willing to get it wrong, and still be courageous enough to speak up anyway and be willing to be corrected. Because this is so important.
Please, be open to listen deeply. While righteous cries for justice erupt around our country and globe, the travel industry too has to consider and evaluate how to be and do better. Already in 2020 wellness, sustainability, and over tourism have moved to the forefront with new procedures and priorities. Anti-racism and representation must be there, too.
Premier Wellness Travel will strive to embody those values in all that we do.
We who love to travel love to meet people different from ourselves, live different from ourselves, feel different from ourselves. We travel to broaden our perspective and our experiences.
But we don't have to travel to do that. We can, even amid Covid, assiduously work to broaden ourselves. We all have listening to do and work to do. This resource is a great place to start.
Even in the darkness, there are stories of light - how the stranger offered spontaneous refuge to more than 70 protesters, how the bishop of my church quickly voiced her outrage, how a seminarian, who gave vivid witness to the outrage, supported protesters from the patio of St. John's Monday night. And humor too.
On a personal note, I'm distressed that my home for more than 30 years - Washington DC - is under a surreal military lock-down. Sirens and low-flying military helicopters have kept me up this past week. I have friends who were gassed at the White House, which is six blocks from my apartment. And yes, I voted on Tuesday.
I always look to poets and writers to express the ineffable.
Here are four that came to my mind over the last few wretched days ::
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,
and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired
by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
— Mark Twain
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.
— Rumi
Light tomorrow with today.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the tormenter, never the tormented.
— Elie Wiesel