Category: Meditations

We often think of bearing witness in terms of large community or societal events. However, I believe that the small daily moments of bearing witness are more personal. Holding a friend after her brothers death was bearing witness to her grief and her love for her brother. These life events are not staggering when compared to the world stage, but they are staggering to the individual. They don’t need someone to “fix” anything, but simply to honor an event by bearing witness with them. -Katherine Hofmann (CLF)

What are small but meaningful acts of witness that you have participated in?

“In most cases to bear witness to another or a situation means that one is present to see the action, inaction, or solution that comes, but there is another layer to witnessing that is often forgotten. The witness is also there to furnish their personal knowledge of experience that relates to the situation. To truly bear witness is to serve as teacher, mediator, referee to the situation while being sure the party or parties learn, and hopefully award the pitfalls you already journeyed through, which is why bearing witness for our brethren is so important.” -Jacob L., a CLF member incarcerated in AR

When have you served as a guide to someone else by witnessing them?

“May we continue to attune to what Reverend Howard Thurman called the ‘sound of the genuine’ within ourselves. May we become quiet enough and still enough to notice the call deep within us that lures us towards what matters most, this call that lures us towards freedom and purpose. We ask for guidance and space and time to do just that so we can lead the lives we feel most called to live.” -Kate Steinberg

What are your practices to witness the sound of the genuine within yourself?

“Bearing witness is an act of compassion, of empathy, of solidarity, and of justice. Bearing witness is holy. Humanity is at its most powerful and transformative when we experience the truth of one another.” -Heide Cottam

When have you had a profound experience of understanding someone else’s truth?

“People who have lived in shame and isolation need all the pride we can muster, not to mire ourselves in a narrowly defined identity politics, but to sustain broad-based rebellion. And likewise, we need a witness to all our histories, both collective and personal. Yet we also need to remember that witness and pride are not the same. Witness pairs grief and rage with remembrance. Pride pairs joy with a determination to be visible. Witness demands primary adherence to and with history. Pride uses history as one of its many tools. Sometimes witness and pride work in concert, other times not. We cannot afford to confuse, merge, blur the two.” -Eli Clare

How have you experienced pride and witness supporting one another?