Watching Is Not Witnessing

I was (am) still processing the unresolved tragedy of Nolan Wells’s tragic death, another young Black soul who doesn’t get to grow old.

I am raising Black boys in this same America.

The same America that too often extends the benefit of the doubt to some while demanding perfection from others.

The same America that has learned to explain away injustice before it has fully mourned it.

The same America where ordinary moments, like a traffic stop, a misunderstanding, an encounter with authority, can carry a weight that many parents never have to imagine.

The same America that has made vigilance feel like another form of love.

The same America that still has not fully decided whose childhood deserves protecting, whose mistakes deserve forgiveness, and whose lives deserve the presumption of innocence.

Up until now, I’ve said very little about Nolan in public spaces. Not because I didn’t care, not because I didn’t have something to say, but because stories like this live a little too close to home. By the grace of God, my boys are healthy and well - but that does not mean that in this America I don’t carry the weight of awareness of what it means to raise black boys.

Every time I speak or present in spiritual spaces, I have a square stone in my pocket. My two sons’ names are engraved on opposite sides. Few people know it’s there.

Before I step onto a stage or into a pulpit, I rub my thumb across those names. It reminds me why I speak. It reminds me that theology is never abstract. Every sermon I preach, every article I write, every uncomfortable conversation I choose to enter is ultimately an act of love for them.

I want them to inherit a spirituality capable of helping them flourish—not merely survive. I want them to know that consciousness is not an escape from history but a way of entering history with courage. And I want them to know that love is measured not only by how deeply we meditate, but by how faithfully we refuse to abandon one another.

It reminds me why I do this work, why I venture outside the safe boundaries of positive thinking, and pop-spirituality that occupies so much of the space within my spiritual tradition. Now, it’s not that I don’t ascribe to the more pleasant and marketable tenants of my faith - I’ve been devout in my public affirmation of the application of positive spirituality my entire adult life. However, Nolan Wells, Tarmir Rice, Emmit Till, and countless others speak too us as ancestors without ever having the chance to become elders as a chilling reminder that those with the privilege of learning and practicing positive spirituality ought to put it to practice where it matters most.

For much of my adult life I have taught the transformative power of consciousness. I still believe it with all my heart. But somewhere along the way I realized that “consciousness teaching” can become strangely disconnected from compassion.

We became exceptionally skilled at transforming our own inner lives while becoming strangely comfortable leaving the outer world largely untouched.

We learned how to cultivate peace while avoiding conflict, and called it discipline. We learned how to affirm abundance while our neighbors buried their children, and called it manifestation. We learned how to speak of love in universal language while remaining silent about suffering in particular places, and called it vision.

That is not the highest expression of consciousness. It is consciousness that has forgotten what it is for.

Positive spirituality is necessary. It is simply insufficient by itself.

I do not say this as an outsider throwing stones at a tradition that shaped me. I say it as someone profoundly grateful for everything New Thought has given me.

It taught me that consciousness matters. It taught me that thoughts shape our lives. It taught me that prayer changes people.

I simply believe that if consciousness truly creates reality, then the highest expression of consciousness must include the courage to stand with those whose reality has been shaped by injustice.

Otherwise we have reduced spiritual power to personal comfort.

So for the last few weeks I’ve sat in silent prayer with Nolan Well’s and his family on my heart. Some grief isn’t meant for public posting and some outrage doesn’t translate to public opinion.

I had barely found words for Nolan when another story appeared.

A man died while in ICE custody in Houston. Days later, another death in Maine.

Different names. Different circumstances.

The same quiet ache.

It wasn’t simply the tragedies themselves that overwhelmed me. Rather it was realizing how quickly my mind had already begun preparing itself for the next one.

I couldn’t watch it.

Or perhaps more honestly, I couldn’t consume it.

Lately, that is what so much of our public life has become: an endless stream of human suffering delivered one headline, one video, one breaking news alert at a time. Before we’ve had time to grieve one tragedy, another arrives demanding our attention. Before we’ve learned the names of the dead, the algorithm has already moved us on to someone else’s heartbreak.

Something inside me finally whispered, This is not how the human soul was meant to carry grief.

Though it should be said that human beings have always carried grief. Every generation has buried its dead. Every generation has known violence.

But grief was once held in communities. It was carried in rituals. It was given songs. It was spoken aloud in prayer. Today grief arrives individually, silently, and endlessly through a five-inch screen.

We absorb hundreds of tragedies without ever sharing a meal with another mourner.

We consume sorrow without the practices that have always helped human beings survive it.

Perhaps that is why so many of us are exhausted.

The digital world was never designed to help us grieve. It was designed to keep us scrolling.

Suffering appears beside vacation photos. An obituary sits between an advertisement and a recipe. A police shooting is followed by a video of someone’s golden retriever.

Nothing is allowed to remain sacred long enough to transform us.

The algorithm doesn’t ask us to witness. It only asks us to continue watching. We are living in an age of constant watching. We watch people die, politicians lie, the people cry and nothing changes.

Yet the soul cannot remain perpetually exposed. So it adapts. It grows protective layers. Not because we are cruel. Because we are tired. Perhaps we begin to ration our compassion or skim stories we once would have wept over.

We stop learning names. We no longer expect justice.

Cynicism starts feeling like wisdom. Indifference disguises itself as emotional maturity. Eventually we tell ourselves that caring too much is naïve. But perhaps caring less is the greater danger.

Howard Thurman understood that every age threatens to harden the human spirit. The work of spiritual life is protecting what he called the "growing edge" of the soul—the place where compassion remains alive, where love remains possible, where we refuse to let fear determine who we become.

I have no illusion that one more essay will change the world. It probably won’t. But perhaps it can change the way one person reads tomorrow’s headlines. Perhaps instead of asking,

“What’s the latest story?”

we might begin asking,

“Whose humanity is asking something of mine?”

That feels like the beginning of prayer.

That feels like the beginning of discipleship.

That feels like the beginning of citizenship.

That feels like what Jesus meant when he kept saying,

“Let anyone with ears hear.”

Because witnessing is not simply seeing.

It is allowing what we see to become part of who we are.

The world has enough spectators.

It has enough commentators. It has enough consumers of tragedy. What it desperately needs are witnesses. Women and men whose hearts remain undefended.

Who refuse to let grief become entertainment. Who equally refuse to let outrage become identity. Who refuse to let another human being disappear into a headline.

Because every headline is someone else’s son. Someone else’s daughter. Someone else’s prayer.

And before they became a political argument...

they were already infinitely loved by God.

• Nolan Wells (18).

• Lorenzo Salgado Araujo (52).

• Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero (25).

Three names.

Three lives.

Three stories interrupted.

Three human beings who became ancestors before they ever had the chance to become elders.

They are not simply headlines. They are asking something of our humanity.

Perhaps that is what it means to bear witness. To refuse to let another person’s life disappear before it has first changed our own.

• What story have I been watching that Spirit may be asking me to truly witness?

• Where have I allowed exhaustion to become indifference?

• What would it look like for my spirituality to become an act of courageous compassion rather than personal comfort?

• Where have I confused being informed with being morally or spiritually engaged?

Rev. Dr. David Alexander D.D., is a public theologian and spiritual writer exploring the intersection of spirituality, justice, and moral imagination in public life. Bringing 20 plus years of pulpit ministry with Centers for Spiritual Living, into everyday life and the call for a better world. He is the author of Freedom from Discord: The Promise of New Thought Liberation Theology and the visionary behind Recovery from the Lie of Whiteness. David also writes the monthly column Philosophy in Action for Science of Mind magazine. Visit www.revdavidalexander.com to learn more.

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