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Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid

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I’ve been dancing around this essay for months. It isn’t about any one person, group, or event. It’s about years of study. Years of teaching. Years of joining and leaving. This essay is about some of the necessary building blocks that make up adult humans.

This essay is about not drinking the Kool-Aid™.*

We all need to learn.

Every human needs an outside force to challenge us, to come at us sideways, to cause us discomfort, to offer us hope.

But we need to not sell our souls to do so. We need to not give over our autonomy or sense of choice.

We need to practice discernment.

We need to remember we have value, all on our own.

No one person, group, or method, has all the answers. Not even us.

Groups can help us. Teachers can help us. New experiences can help us.

We often need training wheels. Systems to guide or support us as we learn. We may need to follow some pretty strict guidelines for awhile, in order to get the benefit from whatever the method we’re trying is.

But no person or group has the right to crush our sense of self.

Don’t give yourself away. Ever.

Whether it is asked for or not. Don’t do it. [Read more…] about Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid

Tear it Down: Assault, Violence, & Healing in Empire

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Tear it Down text with image of signs: If it isn't restorative, it isn't justice.

 It’s been a rough and traumatic few weeks, following a rough and traumatic year, following a rough and traumatic several decades, or hundreds of years.

It all depends upon your perspective.

***

You think it can be fixed. Amended. Reformed.

It can’t.

***

Rape. Harassment. Assault. Murder. Degradation. Trauma. Shame.

***

There is nothing about our current systems that is not working exactly the way it is meant to.

These systems are meant to punish the poor.

These systems are meant to exploit women and female presenting people.

These systems are designed to shame non-alpha men and male presenting people.

These systems are designed to prey upon the weak and to reinforce their weakness at every turn.

These systems are designed to put psychopaths and abusers in positions where they have power over others.

These systems are designed to support constant predation, violence, and the reign of fear.

These systems are designed to kill.

***

When a country’s economy is largely set up to serve the military and the ultra-wealthy, how can we not expect that it would filter down into mass shootings, the murder of women and femmes, the constant killing of Black, brown, and Native citizens by police, the torture of children, the rape of janitors working the night shift, and the crushing of the working class?

Predators run this world. We praise and reward them for it. Every single system is set up to show predators how much we care. About them.

These systems will not change. These systems cannot and will not be reformed.

These systems must be toppled to the ground by the very people whom they have preyed upon. These systems must be broken by our refusal to go along. To cover up. To feel ashamed. To wish that we were wealthy and powerful and gleaming with the sleekness only brought about by living off the suffering of others. [Read more…] about Tear it Down: Assault, Violence, & Healing in Empire

Solidarity Becomes Our Resistance: Thoughts on Confronting Empire

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solidarity becomse our resistance - cover
On a recent domestic US flight – from SFO to JFK– federal agents checked every passenger’s identification before allowing them to exit the airplane. They said they were seeking a non-documented immigrant.

People complied. Now, I wasn’t there, so perhaps some of them questioned what was happening, but as far as I know, every person showed their ID. The “immigrant” was not found.

What if every single person on that airplane said as loudly as possible, right to the agents’ faces, “There is no reason for you to ask for identification. There is nothing that compels me to offer you proof of who I am. In solidarity with any immigrants who may or may not be on this airplane, I refuse to comply.”

Imagine it. All it takes is for one person to take a breath and begin.

We can practice saying these words out loud: “I refuse to comply.”

[Read more…] about Solidarity Becomes Our Resistance: Thoughts on Confronting Empire

Well, Forge, Flame: an Imbolc Essay

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Well Forge Flame coverImbolc is coming.

My altars are all packed away, along with art and books, photos of ancestors, and most of my clothing. I have a computer, some client files, two paper books, and two suitcases.
But poetry moves through my blood. Stories tap out from my fingertips. I march in the streets, strong and true.
And after pounding rain, there comes the sun.
I have no altar to Brigid, except the altar in my heart and of my life.

Sometimes we know we need to be stronger.

We need to have the right tools for our lives and work…or we need to become the tools themselves. Sword. Plow. Rake. Hammer. Chisel. Wedge.
Sometimes we desperately need healing, all the way down to our bones.

We need rest and comfort. We need for our cells to stop multiplying, or to increase.
Sometimes we need to feel inspired again.

To let the words or sounds or actions pour through us, and out into the world.

Sometimes we don’t know what we need. Or what we want.

So, lighting a single candle, we return to the image of the flame.
Sometimes we don’t even have a single candle, so, pouring clear water, we drink.

The Goddess Brigid is said to tend the flame and the well.

She presides over healers, poets, and those who work the forge.
There is no mistaking the power of any of her facets. And while I have sometimes prayed to her for ease, that is not the main teaching she has brought into my life.

For many years, when friends asked how I was, I would reply: “I’m between the hammer and the anvil.” There was a visceral sense of being banged out and shaped into something more fitting, more useful.
In my years of chronic pain and illness, I struggled with healing. That in itself felt like a different forging process.
Still other years, the flame of inspiration has burned brightly within me, and my own fire has burned true.
I don’t mistake her faces for each other, yet I know I need them all. I also see the ways in which her powers overlap. The elements of life are not contained.

Sometimes the forge is what we need for healing.
Sometimes our healing process feels like being in the forge.
Creativity is no different:

Sometimes creativity is a steady, flickering flame guiding us forth, but other times we are between the hammer and the anvil, both being pounded and striking our own blows. And other times, in order to create, we must dig into our bodies, hearts, and souls, and bring forth the power of our woundedness. We create in order to heal.

There is power in both the submission to the process, and the strength that comes from the teaching of each face.
The forge.
The well of healing.
The fires of inspiration.
We apprentice to them all.

If we are fortunate, we learn.

Hail, Brigid. Blessed be your name.

 

 

T. Thorn Coyle, 2016

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