We Can Build Hope

Edit, October 1st:

Last night, the US government shut down, stalled in negotiations by a small minority. This is affecting aid to women with infants and small children, veterans, and a whole host of others. Mutual Aid has always been important, but is becoming more and more so every day. In my mind, we must find better ways to  care for each other, and take our power back.

I wrote this last week, on September 25th: 

“Every single person in the world should have food, shelter, healthcare, and education, before any person is worth billions.” – Umair Haque, economist

Yesterday at the house of hospitality, in two hours and ten minutes we went through 80 gallons of soup, several giant bowls full of salad bigger than my arms can encircle, and tray after tray of bread. I don’t have exact measurements of the salad and bread, but unless you cater huge events, it is more than you might imagine.

The yard was jammed, pretty much every seat filled in the dining room, under the outside canopy and in the sunny yard, on benches set up around the blooming roses and small trees. A lot of people were sleeping where they could find a slot to tuck a blanket. Life on the street is exhausting. They know that here, behind these gates, they most likely don’t have to worry about being beaten, robbed or moved along.

I posted the amount we had served yesterday and got several nice responses along the lines of “you do good work.” That wasn’t what I was after. What I was trying to convey, in posting the stats and closing with “People are hungry” was that this is just one soup kitchen in one city. 46.5 million people in the US live below the poverty line. It would take a paltry $175.3 billion to bring them all up to the poverty line. That would likely be enough to get a large number of people on their feet. Not all, but many.

People are hungry.

People are starving. People need education. People are being killed on the streets and in their homes. People are being killed by drones, from the sky. People need clean water. People need beauty.

The world is out of balance, the Divine Twins of generosity and greed are both present, but too often these days, the Twin of greed seems to be holding sway. “…despite recent turbulent economic times, demand for super yachts has remained steady” reports Luxury Society. We know the other stories, too: the cost of celebrity weddings, money which could provide clean drinking water for a million children. The U.S. Government selling arms to dictatorships all over the world, making a profit from oppression. 500 prisoners in California having spent 10 years in solitary confinement. War veterans getting their food stamps taken away…

And yet, last week when I asked people to share the ways in which they engage in mutual aid, all sorts of answers came in: donating to food banks, working in a mental health clinic, offering emotional support to friends, setting up barter economy, growing and sharing food, volunteering at domestic violence shelters, doing drug counseling, offering showers and meals to young people in their neighborhood.

The Divine Twin of generosity walks strongly among us. 

Why am I writing this? It is easy to give way to frustration and hopelessness when things feel skewed and out of control. It is easy to lose our sense of center and agency. It is easy to give our power away to those we see as controlling the systems we live within.

We don’t have to let greed take over. We can match greed with generosity, bringing greater equilibrium to the world. We can mediate these forces, making space for a third force to arise, a new way of being that we can’t even see, hear, taste, or touch yet.

We can build hope. No one is going to give it to us, despite their promises. We can claim our power and share it with one another. 

Help me. Please share the ways in which you are sowing love, justice, and beauty. Share with us the ways in which you are allowing generosity to flow. Share ideas about how we can help one another.

What kind of world do you want to build and how are you helping to manifest it?

#hope #justice #mutualaid #oligarchy

Naked, and Unashamed

“If we could admit how bad things are, that would be the beginning of something good, of a kind of radical honesty with ourselves. That would inspire a certain compassion for one another because we would understand that we’re all in the same boat, all shipwrecked. To confess the wounded, fractured condition of our lives—that is who we are! And that would be the beginning of wisdom in deconstruction, of something good. If everyone actually believed that, if everybody acted on that, there would be better political processes and better relationships. If people actually believed that they really don’t know in some deep way what is true, we would have more modest and tolerant and humane institutions.”  –  John Caputo

A friend posted that quote yesterday. I responded:

We hide so much. We lie so much. We fear so much. This keeps us away from love.

If we can come to be honest about our heartbreak, about our terror, about the ways in which failure dogs us, or hope makes us feel insecure, if we can come to be honest about our need to feel desired, our quest for recognition, the ways in which we have been hurting, and have hurt others, the ways in which we found laughter and joy, or worked through some pain…we can come to better know ourselves. We can come to better know one another. We can develop true compassion. We can know the world. We can imagine something better than ambition for money or power over others. We can imagine a place where we truly meet one another, truly see one another, where we stop playing status games: baring our necks or lording it over one another. In doing this, we open more fully to the flow of love. We heal.

There have been many things planted in the soil of my life, things that have grown into a person, an adult, a human still figuring out how to more fully love the world.

I have grown through alienation. I have grown through being slapped full force across my face for a failure to swim while scared, or for being thought to have disobeyed, or for… I have grown through being told I was ugly by those who were supposed to love me. I have grown through insecurity. I have grown through listening late at night, not sleeping, not sure if things were safe. I have grown through watching my brothers get beaten. I have grown through deep seated anger, like a heat in my body. I have grown through “are you a boy or a girl?” I have grown through hating and loving in the same heartbeat. I have grown through sickness. I have grown through my working class father’s failed ambitions and through my mother’s fear and inaction. I have grown through chronic physical pain. I have grown through lack of feeling beautiful, through feeling continuously undesired. I have grown through learning to throw a punch. I have grown through heartbreak. I have grown through betrayal. I have grown. 

I also know that all this pain is not the whole of my parts. Those moments are not the only moments. But admitting the pain was part of coming to heal. Admitting anger was part of coming into power. Admitting grief enabled my ability to feel loved.

What lies are we still telling ourselves and each other? What are we hiding, and why? What are we holding outside the stream of love?

Sometimes we still don’t feel safe enough to, as bell hooks so eloquently puts it. “…face one another as we really are, stripped of artifice and pretense, naked and not ashamed.”

Before we can face one another, we need to be able to face ourselves. We need to observe our emotions, actions, thoughts, words, sensations, postures, and actions. We need to look into the mirror of the world and ask: what do I reflect, and what is reflecting me?  At least, that is how it has worked for me.

The darkness can be frightening; it can also be a fecund place for planting something new. 

We can meet on fertile ground, watered by tears and sweat, spit and sex. We can meet on fertile ground, a ground growing with things planted deeply in our darkness, straining toward the light.

Love to you, whoever you are, and whoever you are becoming.

#healing #honesty #Love

There is Love Enough…

Love is the most powerful force in the universe.

More powerful than thought. More powerful than war. More powerful than shame, or hatred, or ambition. More powerful than gravity. Love draws me toward you, always. Even in anger, love opens me up and draws me near. Love will not forsake us. Ever.

Do you feel unloved? Do you feel unworthy? There is love enough for you, too. I swear. Even in your abandonment, there is someone out there that loves you still. I do. Whether I have met you or not, whether I even like you or not, whether we agree or disagree, there is still love. I feel it. This isn’t hyperbole. This isn’t a sham or an exercise in theory. This is a  ground shaking reality. Too much for you? That I cannot help.

Take a breath with me. Allow your exhalation to soften you just enough to let the smallest thread of love enter. Let it snake up from your sex into your chest. Let it crawl down from the top of your head and down to your fingertips. I love you. She loves you. He loves you. They love you. The stars sing of your beauty. You move to unheard music. You are alive in the flow of love. You are.

Let yourself be, just for this moment.

Let yourself be held within this love. 

______

After last week’s posts on love – first the one for Dr. King, but especially the one on Love and Anger – I was so happy when this message came through, high above the earth, on my way to Rotterdam. I wrote this for no one in particular, and for many people whose faces rose and fell before me as the words flowed forth. Love to you all. 

#Love