written 30 October 2022
published 6 November 2022
The election is a few days off. Most people have already voted by mail, so we sit here in anticipation, with our fate still to be determined. The partisan divide is huge. Republican extremists claim Democrats are all Satan worshipping pedophiles. Democratic extremists claim Republicans are all fanatical religious money loving fascists. The growing climate crisis doesn't care.
As a progressive Democrat, I see the right-wing attacks as external projections of their own unaddressed issues. My Trump addicted nephew, with deep unresolved rage issues, quickly descends into personal attacks, claiming that libs are all "haters". Sexually repressed "religious" leaders focus on sexual issues in others, then show up in the news as sexual predators themselves. Where in the Bible does Christ support hate, abuse, or killing? Most of those who demonize current immigrants descended from immigrants who enslaved millions and exterminated the Native Americans.
I live with a baseball fan, and as we watched the post season games, the Republican ads pushing fear show up regularly, paid for by "Citizens for Sanity", a Florida based Trump aligned group. The Republican Supreme Court allowed unlimited dark money to fund this kind of campaign.
The choice has always been between love and fear, between cooperation and competition, between inclusion and exclusion. It feels like everything is building to a crescendo because we address only symptoms, not the fundamental cause. As I have said many times before, humanity is being challenged to awaken from the illusion of separation.
I recently started reading "Braiding Sweetgrass", by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Native American university professor of botany. This wonderful book bridges the division between the reductionism of orthodox science, and the experience of unity fundamental to all the aboriginal cultures.
She points out that English, a dominant language of the planet, is 70 percent nouns, which are objects, versus verbs, which are active. Werner Heisenberg stated that "our experience of the world is structured by the questions we ask". As an English speaker, my entire language perspective is structured to objectifying everything, rather than experiencing it as active living forms. Imagine watching your mother being treated as an object, processed into discrete parts, and sold in the market place for private profit. That is the western way of viewing the natural planet, just resources to be extracted. However, a unity perspective sees the Earth a living being, nurturing all life with myriad gifts, not earned, but offered.
For humans, the most immediate offering is the oxygen we require every few seconds. This is an ongoing gift from the plant and algae beings to everyone, for which we have never paid, just take for granted. Because we never recognize, or appreciate this as a gift, we mindlessly destroy the sources, killing the forests and poisoning the oceans, as we race for increased fiscal profits.
Kimmerer describes the Thanksgiving Address, which starts each school day at her local Indian school. All the students participate in this expression of thanksgiving, enumerating the gifts given by the natural world which benefit humanity. For each gift mentioned, the response is "we are of one mind", creating a group awareness of gratitude. This contrasts with our dominate culture rooted in entitlement.
In a recent "What Could Possibly Go Right" interview of Joanna Macy by Vicki Robins, Macy describes how she responds to the growing destruction of the planet. "My first word to anybody would be, don’t be afraid of your sorrow or grief or rage. Treasure them. They come from your caring. When you’re not afraid of that, if you learn to treasure it as binding you to this beautiful planet, then it will nurture in you a fierce clarity for what can be done and be done by just you. So, you’re going to find in your willingness to be here, a great love. When you stand in that gratitude to be alive in this world, then when you take the next step into articulating your pain for the world that’s been given and felt, then it grounds you."
Live in the present, and start your day with gratitude. The rest becomes not only manageable, but punctuated with moments of joy and wonder. The choices we make shape our experience.
Update from last week: the direct line to sign up for Ukiah's program of 100 percent renewable power is 707-463-6747, ask for Lori.
