Who Must Be Ready?

In a recent conversation among leaders I respect deeply, a life was laid bare before us. Not in vulnerability, but in presence. In wholeness. A person simply living their truth — not as a statement, but as breath, as fact, as self.

And the room wobbled.

Not because anything was wrong.

But because the centre moved.

Because something — someone — realigned the room to truth.

Someone, with care, voiced a common refrain:

“Maybe the community just isn’t ready for this yet.”

And I felt it. Not just in the air, but in my body — that subtle, familiar deflection. That slow, careful way power systems protect themselves under the guise of patience. As if the people most courageous, most vulnerable, most visibly different… must wait for the rest of us to catch up.

To soften our edges.

To update our language.

To get less uncomfortable.

To become better at not judging.

To feel “ready.”

But love, who must be ready?

The person living their truth — or the people watching from the sidelines of their own becoming?

Readiness Is Not Passive

We talk about “readiness” like it’s weather.

Something that arrives on its own — warm fronts of awareness, breezes of acceptance.

But readiness isn’t passive.

It’s not inevitable.

It’s a choice.

A practice.

A way of being in the world that says:

“Even if I don’t understand this yet — I will stay open.”

“Even if this stretches me — I will not ask you to shrink.”

Too often, we cloak our avoidance in the language of care.

We say “I’m not ready,” when what we really mean is I don’t want to be changed by this.

I don’t want to give up what I’ve believed.

I don’t want to be confronted by how small my compassion still is.

And so we ask the other — the migrant, the trans parent, the child with no language for their grief, the elder with a medicine way we do not know — to hold back.

To accommodate our slowness.

To wait at the threshold of their own life.

But what if readiness is not something we wait for — but something we grow into, by moving?

What if readiness begins only after we’ve said yes?

The Body Knows

This isn’t abstract. It lives in us.

Readiness is not an intellectual stance.

It’s a somatic response.

It’s the clench in the gut when someone speaks their truth and it doesn’t fit our narrative.

The tightening jaw when old belief meets new possibility.

The heat in the cheeks when our assumptions are interrupted.

The urge to dismiss, to debate, to explain away.

But it’s also the breath that deepens.

The hand that resists clenching.

The moment of stillness between reaction and response.

That’s the real work.

Not waiting to be ready — but noticing what resists readiness in us, and softening toward it.

Because a truly merciful life will always ask more of us than we planned to give.

Mercy That Moves First

Mercy, if it means anything, must mean this:

That we open our hearts not only to what we recognize, but to what remakes us.

We are not here to grant others space in our worldview.

We are here to dismantle the parts of our worldview that make others invisible.

Mercy is not an indulgence.

It is not tolerance with a smile.

It is fierce.

It is rigorous.

It is the radical discipline of remaining soft in the face of difference — not because it is comfortable, but because it is right.

We do not lead by waiting to be safe.

We lead by stepping into fire and saying, “I will not retreat from this.”

Mercy means we go first.

The Ancient Remembrance

In many ancestral traditions, the one who disrupted the norms of the village was not punished — they were honoured.

The person who dressed differently, spoke in unknown tongues, heard visions, crossed roles — these weren’t problems to be solved.

They were messages to be received.

In many cultures, they were considered threshold keepers.

Those who stand at the doorway between one world and the next.

They were the wild wind that reminded the people how to listen.

The holy interruption that reminded the community it was still growing.

So when someone shows up in a way we’ve never seen before, let us remember:

The disruption is not the danger.

Our refusal to be changed by it is.

A Candle at the Threshold

We’ve waited long enough for the world to be ready.

Ready for trans joy.

For Indigenous truth.

For queer kinship.

For neurodivergent ways of knowing.

For new forms of family, of faith, of feeling.

For grief that lingers and rage that purifies.

For miracles that don’t follow the rules.

And those who’ve held those truths — alone, unrecognised, unwelcome — have waited long enough for us.

So tonight, light a candle.

Light it for the people who had to wait at the edge of our comfort.

For those who were told their life was “too much.”

For those whose wholeness was postponed by our hesitation.

Let that flame be your vow:

Not to be perfect.

Not to know everything.

But to keep walking toward what’s true — even when it undoes you.

Because the question was never whether the world is ready for them.

The real question is whether we are ready to be transformed.