Falling in Love

(What helps you open heart and soul enough to fall in love?)

What is the thing you love most? What will you do to save it? If you had the chance, what is one thing you would do?

Back off from that extreme. What is one thing you love at all? What would you do to help it: how would you offer help, comfort, assistance, encouragement or strength?

Every being on earth affects each other being, for good or ill.

I decided to travel less – for the health of the planet and my own – but last night I was on a plane again. For someone who was traveling 2-3 times a month, traveling once every few months is a big improvement. Perhaps not enough, but it is something. En route to teach in Maryland this weekend, I’m stopping off in NYC because an Occupy Wall Street activist asked me to come teach In New York. She said people needed succor after the hurricane. So I am here to do two benefits for the hardworking people of Occupy Sandy who can still use our help. It doesn’t feel like much – four or so hours of teaching and a train ride to my other gig – but I can do it, so I shall.

(What helps you open heart and soul enough to fall in love?)

Just checking Twitter on the airplane, my heart widened. I saw many things that inspire me: I saw men around the world fighting for the rights of the women they love. I saw communities gathered to comfort the families of children lost to racism, classism, and grave injustice. I saw the cisgendered supporting the transgendered and vice versa. I saw artists painting, making music, and dancing. I saw people planting gardens in the neighborhoods that wealth forgot. I saw people struggling to free themselves from their own emotional chains. I saw communities organizing to face off foreclosures, or to purchase medical debt. I saw students saying “education is a right!”

My heart fills with all of this. I feel grateful. I fall in love. Again and again, I fall in love.

How about you? What small acts of connection are you doing this week? How are you acting, or preparing to act, to bring healing, kindness, love, or justice to this world?

(What helps you open heart and soul enough to fall in love?)

I send you love, no matter what you are doing, no matter where in the world you are.

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The benefit classes are “Spirituality in Times of Crisis” at CRS, 123 4th St, Wednesday at 7:30 pm and “Manifestation: The Powers of the Sphinx” Thursday at Catland. Please see my calendar.

#Love #activism #occupy #OccupyWallStreet #action

Becoming Healers

We do not live in isolation.

“How do you heal yourself and help others?” I asked. The answers poured in:

“by building my mind, body, and community every single day.”“trusting my self to stand tall and reach out instead of within.”“by speaking my truth as lovingly as possible.”“Quiet meditation & working on things like afghans for veterans stuck in the hospital and small beanies & blankets for babies stuck in Children’s Hospital to help me heal.”

When we work toward our own healing, everything changes. Things ebb and flow – there will be times when we retreat from our interactions with the world in order to do some deep re-assessment or healing work that can’t be done during too much engagement. But then we cycle back out: we bring our healing selves into the world of change, into the world of joy, into the world of pain.

You will see from the few answers I selected – and I simply chose the first that came in – that this looks and feels different for each of us. In helping others, we heal ourselves. In working toward our own healing, we increase our capacity to help others. We also simply bring more healing into the world. That matters.

I won’t list everything that feels like it is going wrong in the world: all you have to do is check out the BBC, or Al Jazeera, or your Twitter feed to see it. I just want to remind us all that everything we do to counter injustice, dis-ease, hatred, or isolation, is a victory for the impetus of healing. 

The personal is political. The political is personal. We are interwoven. Re-member.

In the trailer for the movie Starhawk is trying to make of the Fifth Sacred Thing, Maya Greenwood asks: “How do we become stronger healers than they are, killers?”

How indeed?

We show up every day. We start with ourselves, we continue in community.  We start in community, and continue with ourselves.

#FifthSacredThing #healing #Politics

A Just and Joyous May Day

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Today, I will work. Then I will gather together bright ribbons.

I will go out to the plaza in a vibrant, art-filled, violence-torn town and fashion a May Pole for workers, for anarchists, for the homeless, for students, for socialists, and for those who care for justice. These are my people.

Together, we shall dance.

Today, as a Pagan, I celebrate Beltane – a festival of cleansing, creativity, burgeoning, and the joyous renewal of sex. This is a happy day, a gorgeous day. I honor the season, the strengthening sun, and the ancestors who danced to wake the fields.

Today, as an Anarcho-Socialist, I celebrate May Day – a festival of choosing autonomy, of choosing justice, of choosing to support those who work hard each day, rather than supporting those who rule the land through use of cash. I honor my working class family. I honor my activist friends.

Bonfires will be lit today. Marches will be marched. May Poles will be danced today. Workers will ask for equity, for justice, for a living wage and a good life shared by all.

Today, all over the world, people will march for immigrant rights, for a livable wage, and to commemorate the Haymarket Protests, and the Pullman Strike.

Today, I will honor Dorothy Day who founded the Catholic Worker on May Day 80 years ago.

Today, I will honor Cora Anderson, who died in that liminal space between Walpurgisnacht and May Day, 8 years ago.

These two great women, one whom I knew, and one whom I did not, both taught me many things.

Today, I will fashion a May Pole – tying ribbons to a flag pole in a plaza before a march to raise the minimum wage. Today, I will ask the people of the plaza to join the dance.

May your day be blessed. May justice rise. May we sing together, the traditional song of May:

“Unite, and unite, and let us all unite, for summer is a coming today…”

Happy International Have Sex With a Worker Day*. I hope it is a good one. Bread and roses, everyone. Bread and roses.

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This has long been my name for this day. Beltane + May Day = International Have Sex With a Worker Day 

#Beltane #MayDay