How can we develop the character required for social change?
Justice
The Great Escape
Zito Madu
In 2002, the rapper Styles P released what is his most popular and memorable song, “Good Times.” The song’s title is ironic, and the chorus, which features a high-pitched voice singing I get high, high, high, is misleading. The lyrics don’t celebrate good times, nor...
Behind the Black Umbrellas
Patrick Tomassi
“What’d you see?” a man shouted. Around him, a crowd of black-clad activists gathered outside the Multnomah County Democrats building in northeast Portland, Oregon, the Sunday night after the US presidential election in November 2020. “You didn’t see shit!” the...
The Case for Meekness
Peter Mommsen
From all the losses of the last year, with its countless ordeals and heartbreaks, let’s pick out one that may seem an abstraction. It’s the loss of a once-sturdy taboo. At some point between George Floyd’s killing on May 25 and the invasion of the US Capitol on...
With Love We Shall Force Our Brothers
Anthony Barr
When I was a little boy, I had two answers to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” A preacher, I said, or a police officer. Sometimes I said I would be both. Both aspirations lasted for perhaps as much as a decade of my life. Neither occupation runs in my...
Holding Space
Anne Snyder
It’s a phrase I hear more and more these days, this notion of “holding space.” I hear it invoked by artists, therapists, retreat directors, progressive altruists. It hints at a kind of Ignatian discipline centered on the conditions required for human growth amid...
Taking It Outside
John Clair
Suddenly it seems everyone would rather simply “take it outside.” We saw these images in almost every city and town in America. Images of violence in exchange or action, splattered across the national news in waves not seen in decades. A key job of the police, and one that other citizens are less well-equipped to do, is to do what people don’t have the time or temperament or training to do when they are in a mood to take it outside. That is to find out what actually happened: to investigate.
Pressing Pause
Susannah Black
Dear Friends, Yesterday, we screened The Reunited States, a new film that engages many of the questions that we’ve been wrestling with here at Breaking Ground: Does a common life require a suppression of debate and difference, or can we find a way to join in some kind...
Irreplaceable
J. Daniel Sims
“Don’t forget. Everyone is replaceable.” I was seventeen the first time I heard those words. My teenage ego had swollen predictably as the weekend shift (scrubbing grease off floor-mats at the local deli) transitioned into something a bit more dignified. Promotions...
The Complexities of Reuniting
Breaking Ground
In his inaugural address, President Biden called for unity, quoting St. Augustine as he did so. What, in the face of an astonishingly divided country, can we hope for? Is it possible—is it even desirable—to seek unity? “Harmony makes me nervous,” said Brookings...