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This is a collection of word's I've gathered from my community, teachers, and inspirers that address the shift that we see happening around us in the world, the pain that comes with witnessing the truth of our humanity, the gratitude that is possible,
and what our potential future could be.
"Standing down is not an option". I hear it, I feel it, and still, my voice often trembles. I feel like I'm reigniting my political heart with wet kindling. At least there are dozens of hot matches every day. Thanks to all of you who are opening the eyes and waking us up.
- Kait Singley
When your privilege around citizenship status, whiteness/light-skinnedness, religion, class, education, gender, sexuality, ability, and so much more becomes clearer each passing day of this fascist regime... privilege is choice; what will you choose to do with yours?
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
Let's get organized y'all. #CriticalScholarsNetwork
- Christina Marie Chaise
Oh Dearly Beloved Family.
We have seen this coming, haven’t we? The days are dark now, and growing darker.
Violence spreads like a plague, searing with fiery lashes, while leaving in a wake fomented by the scorching of soft flesh by malice and ignorance, a putrid and poisonous smoke that darkens the light and shudders the will. Here, fear festers and turns the fertile barren and cold, leaving a shivering numb where once was borne such beauty of life. In the wasteland of terror and hatred that remains, shadowy figures huddle close, taking refuge in one another as they shelter themselves against ‘the others’, who loom in the unknown, threatening to destabilize and destroy what little is left in which to take comfort. The bloodthirsty lustfully lick their lips, and savour the flavours of domination, diminution, and power.
We have seen this coming, haven’t we? We knew it would come to this.
And we’ve also seen what follows. Have you not journeyed into the heart of darkness yourself – in dreams, in visions, in that place far beneath the feeble constructs of language - and read the signs written there?
I return from the space between worlds with a message.
It is a message for me, but perhaps also for you, who may have forgotten. Are you ready for it?
The message is this: stop.
Stop. Stop with the words. Stop with the opinions, the beliefs, the concerns, the solutions. Stop knowing. You don’t know anything, and you’re not making anything better. Just stop. It’s all emptiness. It’s all going nowhere. Just stop.
Listen.
Listen to the wind. It has been speaking through us since breath began. Can you hear it? Do you think you are smarter than the wind? Listen to the fire and to the water, whose energy and flow define all that we are. We are nothing without them, but how often do we seek their counsel? Do you think you know better than they do? Listen to the Earth. Ancient consciousness speak to us now. They need us to hear. Why aren’t we listening?
The solutions are not where we think they are. We’ve all become so lost in the illusion and trap we call ‘knowledge’. We don’t see how confused we’ve become.
Feel.
Feel the song and dance of energy and light that shimmers through your being, as trillions of intelligences shine together as One, flickering into life for this moment, against the vastness of eternity.
Pray.
Feel and pray, allowing the song within you to be shaped by the love in your heart into a dance of peace and unity that shines clear and true into the emptiness of hatred and fear.
The way forward is together, dear family, leaving no one behind. Let the illusion fall away, and feel into the silence that allows the heart be heard. In the space beneath the language of thought and knowing, all that is lives unified as One. The only way forward is together, with our adversaries, as one family.
Surrender.
Resistance is not the way. Resistance breeds conflict, tension, and otherness. The way is surrender. As we surrender into our true nature as children of Earth and Sun, we inoculate our whole against the forces of division and fear. In surrender, love and unity flourish, and fertile soil is cast for the delicate processes of healing.
Love.
In the truth of love, violence and fear become contradiction and nonsense.
Stop. Listen. Pray. Surrender. Love.
All other paths lead to ruin.
She is here. She is waiting. Remember who you are and call Her. The time is now.
- Brandon Be
'In Praise of the Earth' from 'To Bless the Space Between Us' by John O'Donohue
Let us bless The imagination of the Earth. That knew early the patience To harness the mind of time, Waited for the seas to warm, Ready to welcome the emergence Of things dreaming of voyaging Among the stillness of land.
And how light knew to nurse The growth until the face of the Earth Brightened beneath a vision of color.
When the ages of ice came And sealed the Earth inside An endless coma of cold, The heart of the Earth held hope, Storing fragments of memory, Ready for the return of the sun.
Let us thank the Earth That offers ground for home And holds our feet firm To walk in space open To infinite galaxies.
Let us salute the silence and certainty of mountains; Their sublime stillness, Their dream-filled hearts.
The wonder of a garden Trusting the first warmth of spring Until its black infinity of cells Becomes charged with dream; Then the silent, slow nurture Of the seed's self, coaxing it To trust the act of death.
The humility of the Earth That transfigures all That has fallen Of outlived growth.
The kindness of the Earth, Opening to receive Our worn forms Into the final stillness.
Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth For all our sins against her: For our violence and poisonings Of her beauty.
Let us remember within us The ancient clay, Holding the memory of seasons, The passion of the wind, The fluency of water, The warmth of fire, The quiver-touch of the sun And shadowed sureness of the moon.
That we may awaken To live to the full The dream of the Earth Who chose us to emerge And incarnate its hidden night In mind, spirit, and light.
Home
no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.
you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well.
your neighbours running faster than you, the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body, you only leave home when home won't let you stay.
no one would leave home unless home chased you, fire under feet, hot blood in your belly.
it's not something you ever thought about doing, and so when you did - you carried the anthem under your breath, waiting until the airport toilet to tear up the passport and swallow, each mouthful of paper making it clear that you would not be going back.
you have to understand, no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.
who would choose to spend days and nights in the stomach of a truck unless the miles travelled meant something more than journey.
no one would choose to crawl under fences, be beaten until your shadow leaves you, raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of the boat because you are darker, be sold, starved, shot at the border like a sick animal, be pitied, lose your name, lose your family, make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten, stripped and searched, find prison everywhere and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side with go home blacks, refugees dirty immigrants, asylum seekers sucking our country dry of milk, dark, with their hands out smell strange, savage - look what they've done to their own countries, what will they do to ours?
the dirty looks in the street softer than a limb torn off, the indignity of everyday life more tender than fourteen men who look like your father, between your legs, insults easier to swallow than rubble, than your child's body in pieces - for now, forget about pride your survival is more important.
i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark home is the barrel of the gun and no one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore unless home tells you to leave what you could not behind, even if it was human.
no one leaves home until home is a damp voice in your ear saying leave, run away now, I don't know what I've become but I do know that anywhere
is safer than here.
- Warsan Shire
Therapy
the hard season will split you through. do not worry. you will bleed water. do not worry. this is grief. your face will fall out and down your skin and there will be scorching. but do not worry. keep speaking the years from their hiding places. keep coughing up smoke from all the deaths you have died. keep the rage tender. because the soft season will come. it will come. loud. ready. gulping. both hands in your chest. up all night. up all of the nights. to drink all damage into love.
- Nayyirah Waheed
Did you rise this morning broken and hung over with weariness and pain and rage, tattered from waving too long in a brutal wind? Get up, child. Pull your bones upright gather your skin and muscle into a patch of sun. Draw breath deep into your lungs; you will need it for another day calls to you. I know you ache. I know you wish the work were done and you with everyone you have ever loved were on a distant shore safe, and unafraid. But remember this, tired as you are: you are not alone. Here and here and here also there are others weeping and rising and gathering their courage. You belong to them and they to you and together, we will break through and bend the arc of justice all the way down into our lives.
- Audette Fulbright Fulson
Anthem
Here fly we through the great deep of space on our lovely azure home.
Here spin we Humanity along the Great Milky Way at speeds we cannot fathom.
Held in tow! S/He does not let us go! The pull of he/r gravity, he/r power, he/r majesty, he/r great force shuttles us endlessly through space. The magnificent behemoth Milky Way holds onto us, and provides every last thing that we need
To live!
Yes, our sun, our solar family and yes we, the minuscule 7 billion strong human race.
S/he is in love with us!
Here fly we through the great deep of space on our lovely azure home.
BUT! We are not in Love with us, we the 7 billion strong human race.
AND! We are not in Love with our lovely Azure home, flying through the universe.
We humans have had a tremendously difficult time to stay alive and thrive throughout the millennia. Thus have we grown indelibly hardened in ways we can no longer deny:
Holocaust, genocide, fratricide, war, torture, terrorize, slap, spank, belittle, curse,
Judge, condemn, dominate, rape, imprison, enslave, ignore, and kill, murder, slay
Gobs of humanity, tons, billion trillion tons of human desecration, and death
Bomb, dynamite, explode, ram, decimate, extract, mine, ignite, burn,
Poison, pollute, and pillage our lovely, generous, abundant Earth.
Here fly we through the great deep of space on our lovely azure home.
We lovely, treasured human beings of creation are beautiful and ugly;
Saintly and perverse, good and evil; generous and stingy; haughty and groveling;
Asleep and awakening.
Our awakening: the wheel, then cars, jets, spaceships, and intergalactic missiles
Words, books, computers, consciousness and telepathy
Dreams, visions, shape-shifting, precognition, and levitation
Prayers, ceremonies, time travel, with synchronicity and miracles.
Ancestors calling, guiding, helping, healing themselves, and us too.
Time Travelers we, made in the image of mystery: dark matter and light matter,
As multidimensional as creation itself, non-manifest, manifest.
Here fly we through the great deep of space on our lovely azure home.
Yes, the majority of our human family is living in poverty
Too many are starving, too many are kept in ignorance and servitude.
And the brutal chaos of divisiveness and war are too much our mode.
Let us embrace every single human being in need.
Let us join in discovery of our complete family-hood. Not only are we
Related, the same blood flows through all our veins throughout our entire
Family Tree back into the eternity from which we arise.
Here fly we through the great deep of space on our lovely azure home.
And NOW! NOW we are in a very crucial time on our Earth.
Many of us are being rocked by:
The Great Barrier Reef decimated by 50% and some parts 65%!
Aleppo is a bombed out city full of starving, suffering people
Fukushima is leaking/spewing radioactivity constantly, constantly
Our glaciers and polar ice caps are melting ever more rapidly
12 million children eking out existence on the streets of Brazil
How many more on the streets of Africa, Indonesia, India,
The United States, Europe, Asia, indeed all nations?
How many of us are in the anguish of starvation?
How many of us are in the throes of drugs, alcohol, depression?
We are rocked by Brexit, rocked by the US Elections
Rocked by the Standing Rock Sioux, Water Protectors
And the many others who have stood their ground.
The holocaust & colonial wounds between the Tribal Nations of North,
Central, and South America have never been acknowledged nor healed.
The holocaust wounds of Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia have
Not been acknowledged nor healed.
Here fly we through the great deep of space on our lovely azure home.
All these and more are calling us out of our deep sleep of Denial, fear of our Caring,
Our Heart of Darkness of millennial grief, tsunami rage, and callous hearts.
We are called forth by Love itself
Love speaking, Love calling, Love demanding
Love melting the heavy shields over hearts.
Love revealing the unspeakable acts, searing wounds
All buried in our history and psyche in the deepest caverns of forgotten.
These are the wounds that only Great Spirit can heal.
Love, the great healer, the great compassion
Revealing our lost state, our forgotten legacy
One Family of Humanity, inspirited flesh.
Healing becomes wisdom and we know the deepest truth:
Deeply, eternally beloved are we
Throughout our lives, beyond time
Before the womb and after the grave,
Beloved, treasured humanity.
Here fly we through the great deep of space on our lovely azure home.
We are calling forth our glorious birthright:
Capacity, talent, inspiration, innovation, discovery, serendipity, epiphany,
Illumination, radiance, brilliance, creativity, generatively
Eternal and limitless raw potential.
As we swoop our first breath and our whole life through
Let us, all of us know who we truly are.
We are called out from callous caverns of lonely ego into the full light of our being
Not one of us untouched by our entire human legacy.
Pure integrity lies in healing, re-collecting our dis-integrated parts.
Sweet bird of paradise human
It is time to leave our chrysalis and cocoon and fly!
Let us herald forth! Let us explode!
Let us ignite one another in the full capacity of our grandeur to Love!
Here fly we through the great deep of space on our lovely azure home!
- Jean Fleur
The past few weeks, and especially today, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a dream I had a few years ago has been haunting me, gnawing at the back of my thoughts.
In my slumber, I found myself in a setting filled with fond memories- the summer camp I went to as a child, Kinderland, a camp borne of the Jewish far left labor movement, dedicated to social justice and preserving jewish culture. But these memories soon turned sinister. The feds, who during McCarthy's reign of terror had frequented the camp for commie blacklisting fishing expeditions, had returned. Many of us gathered to discuss what to do about this, but as we did, the world around us began to alter. The entire dreamscape shifted slowly darker, as my groupmates and I slowly realized that these people were not here merely to take our information. They were no longer agents of the FBI, their business casual suits having transformed imperceptibly into the unmistakeable uniforms of Nazis Stormtroopers. They were here to kill us, every last one. The remainder of my sleep that night was a feverdream in which I and my friends were persued by Nazis through the camp, hiding here in the arts and crafts room, running there through woods we knew better than they. At some point we managed to trap our main pursuers in the camp's theater, named after Paul Robeson, which we proceded to set ablaze with the candles we would otherwise have lit during the camps holocaust commemoration. We then fled, and through the compressed timespace of my sleeping brain ended up in New York, which itself was a sort of future hellscape, overrun by jackboots. I then awoke.
Obviously it does not take Frued to analyze such an on the fucking nose dream, but in the past month, it has felt more prophetic than introspective. As Nazis take a prominent place in our government, we must see their ascendence merely as a logical extension from the facism of the FBI, and their open advocacy of genocide as merely an emboldened proclamation of the US governments centuries old slow burn genocide of Indigenous people, African Americans, and black and brown folks in general. Like in my dream, our greatest artillary against facism is historical memory, and the intuition provided by generational trauma.
Most importantly, I have come to find the dream a bit of an inspiration this past week. Just as we were willing to burn down the theater which we love so much, which had such fond memories and political meaning to us, so too must we be willing to tear down this country's whole god-damned government to stop the atrocities it seeks to commit against us. We will build something better in the ashes.
Never forget. It must never happen again.
- Jesse Deen
Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am.
--Rainer Maria Rilke Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29