“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and Pixie dust.” —J.M. Barrie

Greetings Dear Ones,

A friend has asked me to put a new zipper in her son’s favorite pair of shorts. I do and it takes me half the time it used to do. I am starting to get less bogged down by zippers! There is such a thing as an “easy zipper!” Woooo-woo! My inner cheerleader hoots and does a few back flips and complicated jump-in-the-air-and-do-the-splits-thingies until Prudence shows up and tells her to knock it off. In the old shop, due to the pace and volume of work coming in, we each did the work that was fastest and easiest for us. We had a darling Zipper Wizard who did them so beautifully and efficiently, I never had to practice. I stuck to menswear and bridal. So this triumph means a lot to me. It’s not just a pair of pants I’ve fixed; it’s faith in myself and my process. I think there’s a magical number of attempts we all have to do of any kind of skill-building procedure before we really “own” it. I look at the completed shorts and realize I am now one small success closer to giving myself the gift of being great at zippers. Of course, pretty much anyone can fix zippers—it just takes time and dedication—but they can seem very complicated and daunting to the uninitiated. So much Easier to let someone else do the work.

I remember not trusting that my work would be good enough—attempting with a sense of hope and optimism, then teeth-gritting determination as things went a little sideways, then finding out how to do it better next time. With every single attempt comes learning, feedback, and sometimes the urge to lie down in traffic. Eventually, I can look at a garment and say confidently “I know what to do and I DO it.” Unfortunately, some of the best learning moments come in the times when everything falls apart—the “tower moments” when all the blocks tumble.

Our country is in a tower moment now. So much is crumbling. There is so much to learn. Who are our teachers? Who can we ask for help? We CAN fix our problems. We must. We haven’t wanted to practice the skills we need to solve this because it’s always been easier not to, up to this point. But Patiently, awkwardly, we need to begin. It’s OUR business now. We own it. We might not get it right initially. That’s not our fault; it’s just part of the journey towards learning any skill. It’s not a baby’s fault he falls while learning to stand; it’s not a toddler’s fault for saying “piss-getti and meatballs;” it’s not a fiddler’s fault that she will play her instrument mostly out of tune for years. We smile indulgently and see that these are necessary stages of development—just as my sewing a man’s pants in such a way that he could not get his zipper down at all was, apparently, just a “growth stage” I had to go through.

G.K.Chesterton, an English writer, philosopher, and lay theologian (who in all likelihood never had to put a new zipper in a pair of Levis) said encouragingly, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” How else can we learn a new skill? He also said “Putting in new zippers has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” Oops, sorry, he wasn’t talking about zippers, it was the Christian Ideal—something that no longer seems popular with certain Christians. Unless of course they are just on a developmental journey of loving their neighbors as themselves and are just doing it very badly at the moment… Sort of the Love babble of immature people who have not yet learned about True Love?

In the days before we’d ever heard of a man named George Floyd, my daughter and I went for our longest run yet—one of those vicious daily plods we submit to for the sake of our “health and sanity.” We’ve been running together for ten weeks now and most of the time I manage to keep my wardrobe malfunctions to a minimum. Lately, she’s been getting inspired by our “progress” which is code for “she hasn’t had to run to the car and drive back to where she’s left her mother gasping by the side of the road” lately and she’s decided we are going to run a half marathon together. I’ve run several in the past but to do this, she will have to run further than she has ever run before. She is nervous and elated.

“This is the best part of my life right now,” she says as we run along a country lane at the frothy, golden culmination of a day. The air, mixed with the sweat on our skin, makes us feel like we have been dipped in chardonnay. Her feet take flight and soar in effortless tandem, gliding her swiftly forward over vast citidels of gravel and ant empires below. We run through clouds of black flies and gnats. From the ankles up, we belong to the sky. She is glowing. Over in the jumbo-jet of my body, things are not going so well. My control tower has shut down all communication with my legs, which were sending nothing but a steady stream of complaints about the landing gear. The pilot is nowhere to be found and the hostess is screaming over the engine roar that she is out of gin on the beverage trolley. Someone in aisle nine cannot get the headsets to work. One of our wings isn’t functioning. I’m losing altitude… I may be guilty of crop-dusting a flowerbed or two.

“This is what Trust feels like to me,” chirps the sleek and nimble Cessna next to me.

“Tell… me… more…,” I manage to grunt one step at a time. I can’t speak so I focus on the scenery and think about Trust. Can I trust my legs to make it home? Can I trust my bladder?

She talks easily, not at all like her lungs are two stiff bellows pumping hard to keep a spark from going out. “I love dancing with a strong partner and knowing he’ll catch me when we do the arial moves. To me, Trust is confidence in your movements, in landing right, in both the travel and the arrival, all of it. It’s knowing we SHALL.”

“Shall…what…?” I burp.

“This,” she says. “We’re DOING this! We are really doing it. I’m so excited. For the first time in my life, I know that I am actually going to make this happen. I’m not just hoping about it or talking about it. If my fifty-year-old mother can do it, I can. I Am!” A car comes and she sprints ahead so we can be single file, leaving me with the idea that Trust is a form of movement, action.

I have always thought that trust comes from sitting still and making myself as small and non-acting/non-threatening as possible. Since childhood, I have spent thousands of hours getting frightened animals to trust me. I put myself as far from them as possible in their pasture or pen, though conspicuously in their line of sight, and I wait. I sit there, studiously ignoring them, with pockets full of treats and a book I read aloud in low, reassuring tones. Movement causes fear. I freeze. Animals that are afraid are extremely dangerous, to themselves and others, so it is worth it to gain their trust. It’s also just plain beautiful. I’m not sure if my animals actually “love” me but they trust me—which means the world to me.

I read and nibble and act non-threatening. It once took me a whole summer and the complete works of Arthur Conan Doyle to win the trust of an ex-race horse. I learned how to keep my energy very small around her. Animals, especially prey animals, have a large energetic “safety bubble” around them—one can pierce it with mere eye contact. When it gets breached, they become alarmed and will fight or flee if able. This bubble gets closer to their bodies the safer they feel. I suspect the same is true for humans, though I’m not for one moment comparing animals to humans—not by a long shot. Humans are a damn sight sillier. And their motives are way more complex. (The works of Arthur Conan Doyle only work with some.) The biggest problem with getting humans to trust is that deep down, they do not trust themselves, never mind each other. Animals have total faith in their own instincts--“An abundance of Caution” serves them very well.

We humans try to “trust” in ways that are inappropriate—often we will do anything to try to make lies make sense to us. We override our common sense in attempts to preserve our dignity. We listen to others, to rehearsed, received “beliefs” rather than the inner wisdom of our own heart’s experience. We get insulted and incensed when those we have damaged refuse to trust us again. No wonder we often feel that “trust” is a heavy responsibility. We get as impatient as a man who has just found out he has to take his trousers down to pee.

Trust is not the same as Faith, though they are often used interchangeably. The word Trust comes to us from an Old Norse word for strength. Faith is from Latin “fides” translating variously as truth, honor, loyalty, authenticity, confidence, or belief. Obviously, faith and trust overlap like two colors of play dough stored in the same container. Emerson said “Self-trust is the first secret of success.” To me, trusting ourselves means we know our own strength. It also means we know our own weakness.

Thanks to my insightful daughter, I now see Trust as both being still and being in action. Both require strength. Firstly, we need to trust ourselves, independently. We need to know from within that we will truly support and fight for Justice in this land, just as surely as we will survive a marathon—one small step at a time. Some of us will march; others will kneel; some will fund; others will teach; some will write; others will comfort; some will be loud and public; others will be quietly invisible. In every case, no matter how we go about it, if what we do is Consistent, Continued, and Committed, we will make progress. I promise. Gradually, Gentleness will replace wildness and peace and safety will be created—for everyone, not just the privileged. It’s not the work of a day, nor even the work of a summer. Trust is a fund we have borrowed from against our brothers and sisters too many times in the past. Now there is nothing to draw on. We have bankrupted ourselves. We must earn it back in thousands of tiny acts for which we have already been paid. This is our debt.

So many of my white friends are desperate to help and wadding themselves up in fear that they will get it wrong, that their actions will be misconstrued. Maybe they will. But I think people are pretty good at sensing Intent. And if the Well-Intentioned are truly willing to learn, they will hear how they are getting it wrong and make the necessary adjustments. I think we can trust Love to prevail in the end. There is no way to force Trust and no way to trust Force. Trust can only be built from prolonged gentleness over time. Trust requires a track record. One rally, one posting, one night of prayers and tears is not enough—but it’s a start. It’s a first step on a journey—not to make Ourselves feel better, but to make Those Hurting truly heal—until that glorious moment when we realize WE got this. There is no longer an Us and “those Others” but a WE Together.

Sometimes we will need to make ourselves available when it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes we will have to sit, watching with our whole skins, attentively and patiently “doing nothing” so that those in terror can come forward when they are ready and explore the space we hold open for them. Sometimes we will have to put our Big Girl/Boy/Person Pants on (with working zips, of course!) and use our muscles to Do Something—to serve, to help, to stand up and march, knowing we will make it, one step at a time because our elders are with us and we cannot fail.

“Having Trust is not just about grounding us on what is solid and firm—it’s about freeing us and allowing us to soar.”—Katie Bell

Let the Mending Begin.

With so much love,

Yours Aye,

Nancy