Not My Name but My Name, Not My Fight but My Fight (2 of 2 - Same Imagery)

I have a bit of an unusual last name - Goode. Other than people I am related to, I have never in person met someone else with that last name. Yes there are lots of other “Goodes” out there but I haven’t come across them in person. There are also plenty of people with the last name Good, which is spelled differently (obviously) but is pronounced the same. (Silent “e” in Goode). The name Good is very much public right now as a woman named Renee Nicole Good was killed on Wednesday by ICE agents on a residential street in Minneapolis. From all indications, Renee Nicole Good was on the scene of the ICE actions as a legal observer and protestor. There are all kinds of spins being put on what happened yesterday (watch the video and decide for yourself) but something that has kept stirring for me is that her last name is not my last name but if you say it aloud, it is my last name.

Not my name, but my name.

From the stories that have been shared, Good’s wife was also on the scene in unimaginable grief and shock of what happened. Both of them knew personally the reality of being part of marginalized communities targeted in hateful and awful ways. Good herself did not seem to be an immigrant but she was there in solidarity with those who are.

Not her fight, but her fight.

I am the grandchild of immigrants from Poland but I myself am not an immigrant. So one could say that since I am a legal citizen of the United States and the child of legal citizens of the United States that this is not my fight either. But it is my fight. It is my fight because this country welcomed my maternal grandparents to this country from Poland. It is also my fight because the scriptures that are a guide for my life have passages like this:

• “You must not oppress a foreigner, since you know the life of a foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9, NET)

• ‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:33-34)

• “Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.”All the people shall say, “Amen!” (Deuteronomy 27:19, NRSV)

• “For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.” (Jeremiah 7:5-7, NRSV)

• “...for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me... “(Matthew 25:35, NRSV)

• “In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” (Colossians 3:11, NRSV)

• “The LORD watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.” (Psalm 146:9, NRSV)

As one who seeks to follow the way of Jesus, it may not be my fight, but it is my fight.

This same concept can be applied to a host of other areas as well that are directly (or indirectly) a part of what happened in Minneapolis on Wednesday or in far too many other situations that we are all far too familiar with. While I may be a hererosexual, cisgender, white, male and have virtually every privilege one can have, these fights are my fights.

The great civil rights leader and congressman, John Lewis, is maybe most well known for his saying that sometimes you have to get into “good trouble” - something he did many times from direct non-violent resistance during the 60s and 70s Civil Rights actions to when he served as a congressman doing a sit-in on the floor of the US House of Representatives around a lack of action on gun legislation. After all, Rep. Lewis was following the model of Jesus who caused a lot of good trouble in his day (those he ate with, causing an uproar in the temple, challenging the religious leaders of his day, calling out hypocricy, reinterpreting things that had “always been that way” and so forth). Beyond race and poverty, Lewis was an advocate for so many other causes, some which on the surface might not have seemed his fights but they were his fights. Good trouble.

The video I shared in my other post also looks a bit like “good trouble” to me.

While this video can be a moment of zen, stillness, and peacefulness, it also speaks to me of how sometimes we need to whack the ice to cause some ripples and see what happens. Sometimes even if it seems, on the surface, that a fight is not our fight, many times it is our fight especially in the case of someone like me who has privilege that others might not.

I saw ripples in the sky on Thursday morning as well in some of those same images that I shared in the other post. Look at the faint lines further above the horizon in these photos.

Those ripples were where I was drawn in the sunrise this morning - the ripples in the clouds just like the ripples in the water. Those cloud waves weren’t caused by a dog-walker and photographer whacking a stick on an icy surface but instead they were caused by unseen wind currents and other factors that disrupt. There’s good trouble happening up there too.

Thursday night, I went to a vigil in downtown Cincinnati and Saturday I’ll be doing some other work that is about causing some ripples, causing some good trouble, fighting fights that aren’t my fight but ARE my fight. Even if something or someone might not seem like your fight, it may very well be your fight. This is the work of justice.

I want to close with a blessing that I read on Christy Berghoef’s¹ Substack page, Wheat and Willow. This sure feels like a blessing for good and beautiful trouble in this troubled world, for fights that might not seem like our fights but most assuredly are.

May God bless the truth-tellers and the humble peacemakers. May God bless the kind, the gentle, the merciful, the hospitable. May God bless the lovers of humanity. May God bless the disrupters of darkness.²

Not my name, but my name

Not my fight, but my fight

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

---

1. She describes herself as an author, speaker, contemplative photographer, civil discourse consultant, gardener, nature enthusiast, dreamer, wonderer, wanderer.

2. When the Law Demands Compliance and Conscience Demands Resistance