Regeneration is an act of choice, of strength and ferocity. Nature teaches tenacity.
I post in support of Black Lives Matter at this time of horror in America’s timeline of oppression. I was steeped like a teabag in the ammonia of racism and callous disregard for the species of the earth on whom the webbing of our lives depends, which was Life with white middle class privilege in The Atomic Era of America’s experiment. I have been schooled on standing with others against discrimination by many wise friends of diverse ethnicity, my daughters, and overcoming physical disability. Being an “other” is ever a learning opportunity in the monoculture.
Here. A story which still says it all after 25 years.
We are in a delivery room. A group of us, staff of an Afrocentric treatment program for pregnant and post-partum women and their children, assist a woman bringing her second child into the world. Her first baby is a beautiful chocolate brown toddler with physical disability from severe drug exposure during pregnancy, whose special needs her mom is learning to handle as they rebuild relationship. The baby arrives with gratitude, for mom & baby are well. Tears stream down our Japanese Hawaiian, Black, Latinx, Euro-American, and Black-Native American faces. Tears, our common ocean of love and joy, salty and nourishing. Mom gazes in sheer adoration at her son, murmuring “Look at you, baby...so beautiful...so w h i t e!” Our stomachs drop as we meet one another’s eyes in wordless anguish, witnessing the seeping poison of internalized self hatred, hurting for this beautiful woman and her children, because there it is....her daughter is dark like her, but the boy is lighter, without physical challenges, higher in her esteem though she is unaware of her appraisal. Racism, sexism, The Oppressor. The lynchmob, the Siwash List, the knee still on her neck, hanging over her children even before they face it in the schoolyard and the street.
Now. 25 years later we have a Nazi in the highest office of our nation.
Who ARE WE?
How do we treat others and all living beings created in beauty by the Web of Life?
What can we do to Co-evolve our humanity along with all species?
I say. Choose to see. SEE. SEE AND FEEL AND BE MOVED.
STAND WITH, THAT ALL MAY HAVE EQUAL STANDING.
Let’s ask every single forbidden question of ourselves individually, and collectively, paying serious attention to actions we can take to build The Much Better World in the wake of COVID19. For the diversity & inclusion of all people, and all animals and the Earth herself.
E n u f f...said artist Ntozake Shange.
Can we just DO THIS. FOR LOVE.