One of the best moments of my week was seeing the Bruce family take possession of the deed that the government, with racial motivations, had seized from their great grandparents about a century ago.

At that time, the United States was becoming the world leader in per capita GDP and Charles and Wila Bruce were part of this prosperity having established a thriving beachside resort catering to a racially diverse Roaring Twenties clientele.

Then, people who would rather that black people not be a part of that prosperity persuaded the government to use eminent domain to take the business from the Bruces and run black people out of town.

This week after years of activism and creative problem solving, the government returned the deed to Charles and Wila Bruce’s descendants.

I’m never sure if the arc of the moral universe is bending at all on any given day, let alone toward justice. 

I’d certainly wager that this unprecedented transaction is a win for justice and will be a catalyst for more acts of justice to come. I’d like to think that my enthusiasm for this outcome results from an adequately tuned recognition of such wins. Yet with many layers of injustice baked into this point in time, how to know how it will play out in the end?

Justice is an eschatological shoreline and the moral universe is a sea, isn’t it?

We can’t be sure until we end up there, though we can know for sure that we aren’t there yet.

As for the way there, I’m reminded of this Taoist story popularized in the West by Alan Watts in Tao:  The Watercourse Way. 

There was a farmer whose horse ran away. That evening the neighbors gathered to commiserate with him since this was such bad luck. He said, “May be.” 

The next day the horse returned, but brought with it six wild horses, and the neighbors came exclaiming at his good fortune. He said, “May be.” 

And then, the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. Again the neighbors came to offer their sympathy for the misfortune. He said, “May  be.” 

The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize young men for the army, but because of the broken leg, the farmer’s son was rejected. When the neighbors came in to say how fortunately everything had turned out, he said, “May be.” 

I see the connection between my daily life and the issues facing society right now – such as abortion rights and the climate crisis – like the “May be” in this story. It’s easy enough to claim there are connections, plural, but It’s much harder to assert that there is a connection, definitive and singular. I’m aware of the issues enough that they figure in the direction I take throughout a day, every day, even. Moreover, my experience of the impact of my actions on these issues is typically one step removed.

What I actually experience is the yearning for justice, the hope that this action or that action shifts the currents of the moral universe toward justice, and the knowledge that justice will probably be *yet to come* for the remainder of my days. 

I’m going to put aside how we can know that we aren’t there yet because this line of thought isn’t about the destination, it’s about the way a moment can change the odds in favor of justice, and specifically that moment when the Bruce descendants took hold of that deed. In that moment a form of action for justice came into being. Governments all over the United States now have an example to follow when they recognize a racial taking in their jurisdiction’s history. Whether they will act or not and when is yet to be.

In the now through this moment, the realm for the pursuit of justice is bigger, and in that I rejoice.