Another way to put it...
Another way to put it...
Ego-less, elder energy...
This morning, I wrote these words to a dear sister… and then altered them into a post on social media:
Dear beloved Canadians,
No matter what side you find yourself on... we need to be bringing elder energy to the calcification on both sides of this situation.
I rewatched the film A Testament of Youth last night, to spend time with the energy of Vera Brittain, a patron saint of mine! You no doubt know her story. After losing her fiancé and her brother during WW1, she somehow found the courage to tell parents who had lost their sons, not to seek revenge and economic sanctions against the German people. She knew it would create a monster.
The scene where she has to tend to German soldiers, is the scene all Canadians need to be watching today. She could no longer dehumanize them.
Touching their wounds and bringing compassion to their agony.
I think we are seeing a whole lot of very real, undealt with PTSD rearing from up out of the 20th century, on both sides of this situation. Each side believes the other is a fascist.
I have seen memes comparing Trudeau to Hitler, but have seen even more memes (in my newsfeed) comparing the anti-mandate movement as a whole, to the Nazis. Neither accusation is fair. But if this continues to become less of a prism, and more of the binary of two ideologies ramming against each other, we have the potential to create, collectively, with our own egos, the possibility for either side to reach dangerously overreaching potential.
We have arrived at the eye of the intertidal zone of the past and the future colliding. How we tend to this epochal storm matters very much, no matter how hard it is.
If Vera could do it after all that loss, I can try and step out of the rigidity of my position, to bring 'pitié' into the picture. It really means: "feeling the sorrows and sufferings of others"... and... 'kindness toward a person... especially an enemy".
Our Creator, who is and always has been ever present, is in this with us.
I remain more than ever committed to the deep work of racial justice and change, but have had to admit it was my ego running the show. And... having reached down into the depths of how precious, but ugly it is, and having touched a whole lot of "Euro-trauma" down there, I can assure you, that my ego isn't going to get us very far.
I invite you to "die" with me.
People everywhere, on both sides of this, are hurting, and afraid.
This morning I found this a Capella version of a song written for Vera Brittain, by Sue Gilmurray ... and shed a few tears as I listened.
beautiful and so true. I do believe we are living and acting out of traumas, individually and collectively
Hello Alana, I really appreciate this and see the wisdom in it. I have struggled with a certain balance ever since my wife and I served as human rights monitors in Palestine in 2013-14. We came away with stories of the larger story, the oppression of an occupied people by a foreign power, the state of Israel.
It would have been too easy to demonize the Israeli state apparatus in the people running it, the checkpoint guards, the young soldiers, indeed the entire nation as it supported this oppression, except for those courageous Israelis who act as dissidents despite difficult opposition to them. So I hereby betray my bias.
But the reality is, as Vera's example shows, that we must never lose sight of the humanity of the people on the "other side", no matter how just or right our own positions in our minds. We work to seek justice and equality and above all a just peace, but our struggle is with ideas and fears and prejudices, not people. And your healthy self-examination in your blog pages is most helpful in my own personal balance here. Thank you, and stay warm.