Month: April 2023

It’s 5:09 in the afternoon as these words begin to take form. Thus far, this day has been quite the adventure!

I’ll catch you up in a minute!

First… now.

I just woke from a well-deserved, post-Physical Therapy nap, at 5pm. Big dog snoring at my feet, I reached for my phone.

First stop… checking on a message stream with and for a small group sister facing huge challenges about 1800 miles away. Holding space is intense sacred work in a crisis.

Caught up, it was email time. Here — for real! — are the first 4 things in my box:

1. From the Audubon Society… ACT NOW to Stop the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Extinction Act! Apparently, we’re actually okay with Lesser Prairie-Chickens, though the US Congress may be about to remove them from the list of protected species, which – grammar/labeling challenges aside – the Audubon Society is actually trying to stop.
2. From Care2Action Alerts… A migrant center caught on fire. Officials left people locked inside to burn. At least 40 people died at this Mexican migrant center near the U.S. border and, “public servants and security guards present during the fire did nothing to save the people burning alive inside — they wouldn’t even open the locked doors to let them escape the blazes.”
3. From Patriotic Millionaires – The Senate must investigate Clarence Thomas and Krysten Sinema over their financial ties to Harlan Crow. Never mind for a a moment than Sen. Sinema’s name is actually Kyrsten… Billionaires should not be able to buy a Senator or a Justice on the Supreme Court but… it looks like it may be working.
4. From Team Progress America… The House could vote TOMORROW… Kevin can only afford to lose 5 votes… (I’m guessing you’ve heard about the Debt Ceiling thing…)

I did my version of the next right thing about each of those messages, with tears flowing down my cheeks, blessedly conscious of the notion of filters and how mine were – in that moment – filtering what I read. Which is a bit like saying I was conscious of what was under my reactions to what I was reading.

Being conscious is often not huge fun. And it gives us the opportunity to make aligned choices instead of reacting in the mythical knee-jerk kind of way.

(This is, perhaps, a good time to mention that my particular US Senators and Representative, as well as the more local crowd, are not unaccustomed to emails from me. At least their interns are not unaccustomed to emails from me!)

Why? I have 2 granddaughters growing up in this world!

I won’t bore you with my opinions on these particular issues.

I will tell you that reading them “through” the filter of knowing that there is a county in these United States of America having – in this moment – 400 women and children waiting for space in a Domestic Violence shelter sharpens my sense of WTF are we thinking???

And then there’s the whole standing in my voice, my sovereignty, thing that’s an essential part of not only the conversation in the places I hang out, but the global conversation in our world, in this moment.

So… for the intrepid among you… here’s the heart of the matter, for me…

Subjugating, beating, terrorizing, depriving, and not seeing others, in order to make ourselves feel bigger, more powerful, more important is just wrong.

Continuing to subjugate, beat, terrorize, deprive, and ignore others, even after we see, is more wrong.

I can’t fix it all. Neither can you. But, together, we can make choices with that truth in our hearts. Lots of choices, over and over. And, little by little, it will get better.

Which, for me at least, is a good bit more true than doing nothing.

And, yes… if you were wondering, the whole Furniture Yahtzee game going on around here has a lot to do with exactly that! With doing more with what we already have. With making literal space for helping others. With surrounding ourselves with intentional reminders of our Big Why’s.

Also, somewhere in the dusty corners of my awareness, there’s a quote from The West Wing…

It’s an honor thing!

Maybe I can’t remember the exact context because all of life is the context!

For now, though, new truth added to my Red Madonna Sanctuary canvas…

ps… furniture Yahtzee goes on! The ancestor space, above, makes my heart happy!

pps… speaking of ancestors — Mothers Day is coming soon! Check out FierceArtWithHeart for great, affordable gifts for moms and grammies. Even for you! Choose mugs, posters, greeting cards, and other cool goodies while there’s still time for the print-on-demand elves to make their magic!

Okay… technically the one I’ll get to in a minute is tied with Grammy for my favorite word. And that, right there, lets you know it’s a really big deal!

It’s a Hebrew word which, transliterated into English, would sound like tzcar. It means remember. It also means to remind!

And, yes… it’s no doubt near the top of my consciousness because the time from sunset Monday to sunset Tuesday, this week, was Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Now, as you probably know, I like learning new things!

One of the things I’ve learned, just in the last few months, is that my 70th and 71st great grandfathers were a couple of Jewish guys named Hezekiah, who had some other complicated stuff in their names which seems to connect them to the House of David. (And, yes, the time was right. We’re talking dates commonly referred to as BCE.)

Then there’s the fact that my granddaughters have Jewish ancestors… considerably more recent than the Hezekiahs.

Now, when I mixed all of that into the simmering soup pot known as CNN, yesterday, I wound up with a whole lot of noticing and wondering bubbles!

You, of course, may be noticing and wondering other things. These are just mine…

There’s a whole lot of what’s mine is mine going on in this world. And a big batch of what’s yours is mine, too.

The power over team is getting a whole lot more air time than the power for folks.

The whole familiar = safe and different = danger bit is spreading like – well – a pandemic.

To be honest, I kept trying to turn it all off. I cried. I swore. I signed petitions.

And then, the ah-hah!

You see, I’d spent the morning at Physical Therapy, getting – if you’ll pardon the image – a whole lot of dry needles stuck in my hip.

Not fun. Not remotely comfortable. But, important, because I have things I want and that means doing some things differently along the way.

And, seasoning the pot, if you will, an old favorite quote from the Quaker tradition:

In order to learn, we must be willing to be changed!

I’m starting here: ALL the people are OUR people!!!

At least, in theory! In practice, it probably looks a whole lot like ALL the people who want to be OUR people, already are. Or, WE the people… if you prefer. Not race or nationality. Humanity!

Which isn’t too far from, Come unto me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Mt 11:28).

As far as I can tell, there have always been some folks who don’t want the world to be us… they want it to be us and them.

I get it! The vast majority of us grew up with the notion that we’re still here so the way we’ve always done it has to be the only way.

Karl Jung has a good explanation for the theory. It’s the practice that’s not working so well these days!

Which kind of implies that we’ve got to start right where we are!

Where I was, about 6:00 this morning, was curled in the bed, trying to sleep while Grandmother Moon was hanging on the wall, channeling C.J. Cregg!

Yep! The West Wing!

Season 2, episode 9. Galileo.

NASA looses contact with the landing craft mission to Mars. The President needs to talk to thousands of school kids.

Press Secretary, C.J. Cregg is all for going ahead with the televised classroom plan, even though they don’t know what happened to Galileo. Her reason went a lot like this…

A lot of those kids are afraid to raise their hands or go to the blackboard because they might not get it right. Let’s show them how the big kids do it. Let’s tell them we’re going to keep trying…

I’m with C.J. And I’ll go one step farther. What if it is our job to go to the blackboard, when it matters. Even when we’re not sure how it will all turn out?

What if our job, in this life, is to claim what’s in our medicine baskets and raise our hands… for my girls, growing up in this world, and for all the people who come with and after them???

ps… the painting is In the Beginning. The word in the limb of the tree of life is – you guessed it! – tzcar. To remember and remind!

pps… got a hand to raise? Need some help along the path? Let’s talk! The calendar elves will hook you up… 45 min. My gift. (Yep… me raising my hand!)