Walk the Talk
by Carol Stephenson
Have you ever noticed how babies don't need to be taught how to walk? I mean, they get about in different ways, not all of them literally walk, but they all have something inside them that makes them want to move around in the world. And when they are taking those first steps they reach out as if to say "Here I come!" even though they don't really know where they are going.
I've been learning a lot from kids. I learned quite a bit from the 5th grade Religious Education class when I worked with them on their social justice project. These students are true environmentalists, but they didn't suggest picking up litter or planting a tree. No, they wanted to take on global warming. And take it on they did, because if you were at the service they participated in, you saw how much passion they have for this issue. One of the many things they did was create an insert for the Order of Service with all this research they had done on how animals are affected by global warming. Also in the insert also was a short story about how a group of kids from the class who live downtown are riding their bikes to their school in Willow Glen, about once a week. I was inspired by that story, so much so that I dragged my bike out of the basement, the one that I haven't ridden in ten years, and now I bike to work, about one day a week, just like them. It's not such a revolutionary act; kids riding their bikes to school, but I have this image of them: There's five or six students, up early in the morning, biking through the streets of San Jose, which, I will tell you, can be a harrowing experience, and in my image it's like they're saying "Here we go! We're fighting global warming!" Just think, they are about 11 years old, they can't vote, they don't have money, and their voices often are ignored. But they are biking their talk because it's good for the earth, it's good for them and, what's more, its fun! And with that simple act they've captured all those things, they figured out how we are going to fight climate change.
I was inspired another day, May 1st, at the March for Immigrant Rights. I know that a lot of you went, too, but we didn't see each other there because there were, oh, 100,000 other people there, too. That day was incredible! It was moving! It was so hard to describe, but a few days later I was trying to tell my neighbor about it when she said "how dare they? They have no rights!" She had a point. I mean . . how DID they dare? They dared step out of the shadows and right onto Santa Clara Street and onto streets all over the country to say "Here we are!" and, as my neighbor put it, "We have no rights!" Yet, they changed the national debate on immigration. They have changed the course of public policy. They have changed the way the whole world thinks about this issue.
We often feel small, like those babies learning to walk, we feel like children, ignored. We feel powerless in so many ways. But we can still stand in the street, we can roll, walk, march even bike down the street and say "Here I am!" and, "Here is what I believe!" Because we still have it in us, that need to get up and move around in the world. The difference is that now we have those beliefs to guide our feet. Now we know where we are going.
