the tragic gap

In Healing the Heart of Democracy, Parker Palmer writes of standing in the “tragic gap” between the world as it is and the world we know could be. A space that doesn’t feel just or fair. A space that can feel cavernous and hopeless. A space that can spur us to action or paralyze us with fear.

It’s a term I was asked to reflect on multiple times this past week during a week of conferences and workshops around the work and purpose of higher education institutions in community and civic engagement. It’s my professional field that brings me into these spaces. It’s my personal sense of agency (as a mother, a wife, a daughter, a teacher, a justice-seeker) that compels me to engage and listen and wrestle with the tragic gap that exists between a world of “wicked problems” and unjust systems and a world of peace and abundant quality of life for all.

I was first asked to think about how I’m standing in this tragic gap as a higher education community engagement professional. 

What I didn’t know at the time was that I was being asked to consider this while children were being gunned down and murdered in their school.

While 17 people died.

The tragic gap felt more tragic and urgent this week. 

When I began to read the news, my work in the “ivory tower” of academia felt inauthentic and futile. 

My work (our work), the work of this entire field was (not for the first time) called into question for me.

What is higher education really about these days? What is our role in reducing and eliminating this tragic gap? Are we doing enough to live into our public purpose? Or are we simply adding to the problem? When does research and scholarship leave us complacent?  When does our market-driven motivations and students as customers approach (necessary to “keep the lights on” as they say), run antithetical to being about educating the next generation of leaders and changemakers? 

As I wrestled with these questions in the company of others wrestling right along side me, I recognized that the tragic gap isn’t just about mass school shootings (no doubt what was heaviest on our minds).  It’s about why we have social justice movements like #blacklivesmatter, #metoo, and #bringbackourgirls in the first place. It’s about a world in which way too many people live at the margins.  A world where people feel unsafe or “less than” simply by being their authentic selves. 

The gap is tragically wide.

And it’s even wider for the marginalized.

If you’ve made it this far through this post, I invite you to consider the following:

• Where are you standing in “the tragic gap”?

• What are you doing to bring the worlds on either side of that gap together?

There is far more to write and far more to say.  There are actions to take. I will write more on those in another post.  For now, I will pause and leave you with this photo and verse. I had the pleasure of visiting and learning from colleagues at a college campus with a 100+ year old working farm this past week.  On a walk during my time there, just one day after Parkland, I saw this picture and captured it, with the following verse resonating in my head: 

“...and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” Isaiah 2:4

As we live in this tragic gap, let’s be about the work of beating our swords (our guns, our anger, our fear, our power) into garden tools, tools for pruning and planting, growing and watering, creating and nurturing life giving beauty for all.