{"id":9037,"date":"2014-08-14T14:06:37","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T18:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/?p=9037"},"modified":"2014-08-14T14:06:37","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T18:06:37","slug":"heartsickness-the-60s-and-ferguson-mo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2014\/08\/heartsickness-the-60s-and-ferguson-mo.html","title":{"rendered":"heartsickness, the ’60s, and Ferguson MO"},"content":{"rendered":"
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via google<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I write daily. Often it’s a note to family, or a response to a friend or colleague. Sometimes revising creative work, and usually this blog. Lately, the blog has probably saved my blood pressure (normally quite low).<\/p>\n

I write to process — I’m of the Flannery O’Connor (I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I sa<\/em>y) and\u00a0 E.M. Forster (How do I know what I think until I see what I say?) <\/em>school of writing. I need to mess w\/ writing before I’m sure what I really think.<\/p>\n

But I’m also of the Buddhist school of writing: I write to try to find a way through my anger, my hurt.<\/p>\n

This crisis — this murderous collision of race and class and hate and history — in Ferguson, MO makes me heartsick. I don’t use the term lightly: there is hot pain in my chest where normally I’m pretty easy. I find myself unable to move beyond a kind of setpoint of sadness. That too is unlike me.<\/p>\n

I want to know how a lovely young man — a former student — can say he has seen NOTHING on the news about Ferguson, or about Michael Brown’s death, or about the city’s dependence on riot police instead of conversation among leaders. Where is the national outrage??<\/p>\n

I want to know where the small town of Ferguson got the idea that you can do the following:<\/p>\n

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via USA Today<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n