storms of nature and humanity, chaos and collective shift, minnesota storm, the choice, walking monks
yesterday i was grateful for my femininity...
today i am looking forward to a quietly productive day...
i wrote this yesterday...
in nature there are storms... massive transfers of energy from place to place... a resolution of energy imbalance on the planet… there are storms of humanity too… also massive transfers of energy from place to place... also a resolution of imbalance of energy within society… storms in nature uproot plants and trees and kill creatures large and small... humans too... storms of humanity kill plants and trees and creatures large and small... but mostly humans... we may think there is a difference between storms of nature and storms of humanity, but there isn't... they are equally indescriminant... that we are conscious of these storms is a difference... that we can anticipate and plan for storms is a difference... we haven't figured out how to prevent storms of humanity... it may not be possible... any more than it is possible to prevent storms of nature... they are that much the same... yet, we are hopeful that we can...
a storm of humanity has come to my privileged life here in the united states... i hardly know what to do to protect myself and my partner... to stand in the way of its worst intentions... i fear being swept away by a tidal wave of human storm energy... i wonder, if we survive, how on earth do we reconfigure ourselves to something more stable and more fair and more loving... how do we make the storms of humanity less and less likely...
How to Hold the Darkness: Notes on Living Through Uncertainty – The Marginalian
When the ordinary fades, when the familiar rhythms and patterns of shared living erode, something is activated within the soul. Hidden invitations and initiations arise in a time of uncertainty. The soul recognizes the markers of descent — darkness, sorrow, anxiety — as requiring radical change. The conditions of trouble and uncertainty activate some profound movement toward alterations in the psychic landscape. These are the precise times when the possibility for shifts in the collective field occurs.
and so the goal is to be part of turning the human tidal waves back, and if we can't, to survive and to become part of the shift in the collective field to a hopeful, better configuration...
the tidal wave in minnesota...
Weak Violence, Strong Peace: Who We Are in This Crisis
It's getting more extreme out there, especially in Minnesota where the unaccountable army of the Trump regime has, in the wake of its murder, beaten up employees, ripped civilians from their cars, kidnapped people who are in every way outside their mandate, knocked on doors demanding to know where the Asian neighbors live, and generally spread terror. Their prime target is brown and Black people, especially Somali immigrants, but they murdered a white woman who had shown up in solidarity.
Weak Violence, Strong Peace: Who We Are in This Crisis
Some of the things ICE employees have been quoted as saying suggest they consider the shooting death of Renee Good a lesson that the rest of us should have learned, an instruction to be afraid, to submit, to stay uninvolved. Beneath that is the usual assumption of elites and authoritarians, that human nature is essentially cowardly and selfish, that it pursues its own interests but does not take risks for the greater good. Even a lot of moderates when they limit their focus to "kitchen table issues" assume that a narrow version of our own well-being is the beginning and end of our concerns.
and, as much as we would prefer our quietude, our solitude, we are coming to a moment where we must choose sides...
Weak Violence, Strong Peace: Who We Are in This Crisis
scholar of nonviolence George Lakey has long said that polarization is not something to be avoided — it is a clarification and a crucible in which people have to choose their values, in which as the old labor song had it, they must decide "which side are you on." From it profound social change often emerges.
they are failing in their quest to dominate... even as it doesn't look like it... they are in the position of weakness...
Weak Violence, Strong Peace: Who We Are in This Crisis
Yale historian Joanne Freeman said in a video conversation with Heather Cox Richardson this weekend that "they realize it's their last ditch effort. They know that they're not a majority; they know that they do not have approval even if they're looking at all the polls that say people don't like what they're doing. They realize, and it's hard to believe this, but please listen: they are in a position of weakness, they are performing brutality, they are performing strength, they are performing dominance, because they don't have it. They don't have the numbers, they don't have the power. What we're seeing right now is concentrated, forceful, nasty, bloody because it's their last attempt to grab what they've been trying to get all along but they realize that fates are not with them."
and then there are the buddhist monks walking from Fort Worth to Washington DC...
what will your act of resistance be?...
some photos from yesterday and today...
from tuesday night at the photo salon i co-moderate with my friend steve, shown presenting his own work...
