My problem appears to have started in the summer 2016. It was only a few short months after I had lost most of my hearing.
I didn’t realize there was a connection between losing my balance and losing my hearing. “But of course there’s a connection,” my doctor told me. “You’ve lost your sense of certainty in the world. Your gait and your stance are off because, with the change in your hearing, you literally don’t know where you are in space.”
It was also the year that I had hoped to see the first female president. However, I saw the Oval Office occupied in a dark font by a man who unleashed vitriol directed at people like me: feminists and progressives, L.G.B.T.Q. Individuals, the disabled. Unfortunately, Joe Biden’s election failed to lighten that darkness. Abortion rights nationally are probably about to be crushed, and one whole party now seems ever more determined to end American democracy as we’ve known it. On Thursday the governor of Texas directed state agencies to investigate categorized gender-affirming care for trans youths as “child abuse.”
I’m not the only one who’s lost her sense of balance in this world.
But if we’ve lost our sense of equilibrium, I know from experience it’s not impossible to get it back.
In mid-February I walked, for the first time in two years, the five blocks from my apartment to in-person worship at New York’s Riverside Church, a place with a long history of fighting social injustice and of working for peace. I sat down on my old pew, No. 523. The majority of people I used see before the pandemic were gone. However, there were a few familiar faces. The Rev. was present at the pulpit. Michael Livingston, whose sermon that day was about forgiveness — an idea he wove carefully around the forgiveness that Joseph showed his brothers in Genesis 45, when they appeared before him in Egypt, years after they sold him into slavery. According to Mr. Livingston’s account, Joseph might have sought revenge. Joseph chose compassion instead and stood by forgiveness.
“That’s what we have to do: stand. When your enemies surround you, stand,” said Mr. Livingston. “When all seems lost, stand.”
He used classic Gospel anaphora to recount examples of people fighting injustices and showing forgiveness. Finally, he repeated the word: Stand!
Source: NY Times