The earth and all that is sacred is under siege
This is a difficult time for many…for all that are not male, white, and rich. That leaves a lot of us.
I am an older woman now, an elder. I have seen much in my life and learned things, often painfully. I have come to an age where I can see and feel the importance of kindness and compassion. I can see that love is the language that we all need to be speaking more, that we are more connected to each other than we think. It breaks my heart to see and to feel all the calls to cruelty and separation.
Everything that is sacred and good is being attacked. Kindness, empathy, compassion, caring for each other and for our earth…it is all under dangerous attack. There is much desecration and assault going on. I feel such deep grief at the things that I see and hear, at the losses happening daily, at the damage and trauma to our souls.
Sacred land is no longer safe. Other forms of life that we are meant to care for and protect are left unprotected, as new laws are passed and old protections are dismantled and destroyed.
The battle cry is “Drill, baby, drill.” The metaphor could not be clearer. The earth is being raped. And women’s rights to their own bodies is being violated, just as the earth is. There is much rape going on, everywhere. Even men are told what they must be. Our leaders want them to look a certain way, even to the point of testing testosterone levels.
We are being goaded into separations and false divisions, so that as long as we focus on ”the other,” we don’t focus on who is leading us into these divisions. The malignant male (not all males are malignant, but there is the image and power of the malignant male strongly apparent in our world today) is grabbing power, destroying sacredness, inciting hatred, violence and division. Wars are created, alliances formed to destroy others. Friendships and alliances that worked for good are being destroyed. Those labeled as different (pretty much those who are not white, male and rich) are given pejorative labels, attacked, even openly killed. Ideals that we have fought for (imperfectly, for sure) are being cast aside. War is their answer. Attacking others, taking what is theirs, power is seen as dominance and destruction.
People are herded into detention centers where we really don’t know what is happening to them, except that it is evil. Killing has become permissible, with no trial or jury, only guilt proclaimed in the name of domination and control. Words are twisted: being “woke,” inclusive, or diverse becomes a bad thing. These are things that made our country great, and they are now maligned.
Our health is in danger, with medicines and gifts of science cast aside with no basis in fact. We are refusing to work with other countries to prepare for when the next pandemic arises, which it will. Our leaders look up to others who have been cruel in their domination.
Blame is placed everywhere by those fueling the hatred and division, to distract us from where it really belongs. New traumas and attacks happen daily to destract us from who is creating the trauma and destruction. We are constantly trying to catch our breath. They want to keep us all divided and in fear, because they want us to forget how much power we have when we truly unite.
Yes, we have always had our differences, but in the past we have come together in the end, as Americans and as human beings just trying to do the best that we can. How will history define this time, if we even have much time left and are not all destroyed before then? How did we get here? What have we become? What have we lost?
They are disconnecting us from each other and from our healers and their wisdom, and from everything sacred and feminine. They keep us from truly seeing each other, caring about and loving each other, feeding each other.
There is a parable, the Parable of the Long Spoons (a traditional story found in several religions) about two rooms , each with a group of people seated at a huge table. In each room sits a huge bowl of soup, and in each room the spoons are too long for anyone to feed themselves. One group is flourishing, happy, smiling. The other is starving and sad. Can you guess what the difference is?
The people in the first group feed each other and they thrive.
How do we get back to the best of us? How do we begin? I am old, but as the Greek proverb reminds us, we can be part of planting the tree in whose shade we will never sit. And I do see this spirit rising all around us, people waking up to the reality of what is being done to all of us. We need to hear our own voices and each other’s voices and use them together.
I protest. I contribute. I make calls. I write postcards. I vote.
I do, I must admit, sink into despair at times. It has been harder to write regularly. I have not painted in a while.
But I come up for air and look around at all the acts of kindness and love that I see that they don’t want us to see. I try to add my voice to the resistance in whatever way that I can.
I am not dead yet.
And neither is our country.
