There’s a rickety bridge between me and you

Between me and everyone else

Between me and myself  

 

This last year has been a space of prioritizing the bridge between me and myself over the bridge between me and others. At times, I didn’t understand the distinction, I felt lost in the effort to discover what it means to put my own health and wellbeing first. I felt selfish, I was afraid I would discover all the ways in which I am not good to myself, or lacking skills for living my life, or too fragile to live alone. 

 

I am feeling for wholeness on this rickety bridge, maybe it’s a rope bridge, with some of the cords starting to fray, some have already come loose and are dangling off the edges. I need to slow down and check my footing. I am scared. And I am committed to ease and kindness in the face of my own fear. 

 

There have been days on this journey back to myself where I have been scared or felt overwhelmed, and I have had so many moments of joy, ease and pride. I have built a steady connection to my own heart. And I have determined where I need to ask for support, which friend to call when I need to whine, who to reach out to about moming, who will let me raid their fridge without blinking. As I have rebuilt the bridge to me, I have also been mending the bridge to others. These efforts go hand in hand.

 

There’s also a rickety bridge between me and society. I’ve always felt a tenuous connection to authority and the rules, to society. In high school, this went largely unnoticed because teenagers are so grumbly anyway. I would walk around the parking lots in Scarsdale thinking about colonialism, genocide and all the dead Indians under the asphalt. I felt the weight of racism. 

 

In college, the rickety bridge continues, through a political consciousness raising that supported me to think critically about the US, about the ways that capitalism would eventually eat itself alive, and that quite possibly, the structure of democracy would not be sufficient to save it. Save us. 

 

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Then fast forward through a professional career in HIV/AIDS prevention and advocacy, needle exchanges, and eventually antiracism work - well, the rickety bridge has been swaying full tilt. As a queer woman, an anti-Zionist Jew, I rarely felt the US government cared for me, or was looking out for me in particular.

 

When I worked on the electoral side of things, I remember hearing a lot about the people who didn’t vote. There was so much antagonism expressed by my colleagues, my friends and family - how could someone refuse to vote. I have to admit, I didn’t understand the confusion. I voted. I have always felt like people died and fought for my right to vote and so I will vote…  Maybe my loyalty to democracy came from nostalgia, or I was honoring ancestors. However determined I was to perform democracy by knocking on doors and casting my own tender ballot pretty much every election there was, I never stopped understanding the folks who said not me, for the many reasons they refused to vote. 

 

When a system takes more than it gives, and the evidence for its brokenness is apparent, it’s a choice to say “no, I won’t play.” A valid one. I refuse to blame people who don’t vote on the state of things. Representational democracy has been broken for a long time. From Big money in politics, to gerrymandering, to the utter cowardice of the DNC, to the fact that election day is not a national holiday - there are a myriad of things that people are uninspired, frustrated, and “not political.”

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So back to my rickety bridge. Looking around this spring, at the blooming trees, the beautiful tender green emerging all around me, I am at a crossroads. 

 

The government seems determined to keep harming the most vulnerable. I am facing another tax season. Why in my right mind would I pay my taxes? As a queer person, as a woman, as a mother and sister? As an antiZionist and liberationist? I felt this last year and did nothing. I have felt it for years and years. It’s the matrix. We are merely batteries supplying power to a corrupt and despicable system.

I do not wish to contribute to the mess. 

 

There’s a rickety bridge between me and you

Between me and everyone else

Between me and myself 

 

 

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In order to stay centered in my own humanity, I continue to seek shelter from my own despair. Here is my latest list. I hope there are items here that you can relate to, or lean into as we make our way forward through this current abyss:

 

→Locate and contribute to a steady community of practice. Whatever that looks like for you. This anti-Zionist Jewish queer space, Ruach, has been life giving for the last year.

 

→Reconsider guilty pleasures. Perhaps these pleasures are joyful acts of subversion, are sustainability investments, are a means to feeling whole at the moment. 

 

→Create. Anything. Tap into a form of creativity that feeds you. Music. Garden. Movement. Art. There is no end to the human capacity for creativity. Check out the ArtistLounge on Reddit. 

 

→Saving money! These financial moments are real. I am using this little wooden box I saw on Instagram and it’s got me in a groove. 

 

→Putting down time in my calendar. Looking ahead and making sure I have time to chill, walk around, go places. 

 

→Random telephone calls with friends when I am in the car! I am loving reaching out to folks and just sharing my sadness, my longing. It’s a huge relief to feel connected to my community. When was the last time you called a friend? 

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A Brave and Startling Truth

By Dr. Maya Angelou

 

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet

Traveling through casual space

Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns

To a destination where all signs tell us

It is possible and imperative that we learn

A brave and startling truth

 

And when we come to it

To the day of peacemaking

When we release our fingers

From fists of hostility

And allow the pure air to cool our palms

 

When we come to it

When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate

And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean

When battlefields and coliseum

No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters

Up with the bruised and bloody grass

To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

 

When the rapacious storming of the churches

The screaming racket in the temples have ceased

When the pennants are waving gaily

When the banners of the world tremble

Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

 

When we come to it

When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders

And children dress their dolls in flags of truce

When land mines of death have been removed

And the aged can walk into evenings of peace

When religious ritual is not perfumed

By the incense of burning flesh

And childhood dreams are not kicked awake

By nightmares of abuse

 

When we come to it

Then we will confess that not the Pyramids

With their stones set in mysterious perfection

Nor the Gardens of Babylon

Hanging as eternal beauty

In our collective memory

Not the Grand Canyon

Kindled into delicious color

By Western sunsets

 

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe

Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji

Stretching to the Rising Sun

Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,

Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores

These are not the only wonders of the world

 

When we come to it

We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe

Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger

Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace

We, this people on this mote of matter

In whose mouths abide cankerous words

Which challenge our very existence

Yet out of those same mouths

Come songs of such exquisite sweetness

That the heart falters in its labor

And the body is quieted into awe

 

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet

Whose hands can strike with such abandon

That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness

That the haughty neck is happy to bow

And the proud back is glad to bend

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction

We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

 

When we come to it

We, this people, on this wayward, floating body

Created on this earth, of this earth

Have the power to fashion for this earth

A climate where every man and every woman

Can live freely without sanctimonious piety

Without crippling fear

 

When we come to it

We must confess that we are the possible

We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world

That is when, and only when

We come to it.

 

A treat to hear her read it:

Maya Angelou reading her poem "A Brave and Startling Truth" | United Nations

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Provocations and Nourishment

 

Emma Goldman 1911 Woman Suffrage

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“We make sense of life and we guide ourselves by the story we tell ourselves about us and the context by which we live the larger story.” 

Listen to Joanna describe three stories we are telling ourselves. Joanna Macy - The Hidden Promise of Our Dark Age | Bioneers (her talk begins 6 minutes in)

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 The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee is a coalition of local, regional, and national groups and individuals from across the United States. For everyone interested in or actively refusing to pay taxes for war, NWTRCC offers information, referral, support, resources, publicity, campaign sponsorship, and connection to an international network of conscientious objectors to war taxes.

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This American Life: 857: Museum of Now - This American Life. Four days in the life of Ranjani Srinivasan, a grad student at Columbia University who fled NYC to save her life. Listen or read the transcript.

 

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Upcoming Opportunities

Looking for an easy way to plug into the work for justice and to gain community organizing skills? Our monthly action hours support the work of our partners to win racial and economic justice. Join us in monthly, one-hour gatherings where we will call, text, or email whomever we are pressuring that day. You’ll receive training and support throughout the session as well as a community of fellow SURJ members to take action with. Come on in!

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Mighty & Tiny Coaching - it’s on! I am taking on three new clients this spring/summer. Let’s talk about getting Mighty & Tiny at the same time! Mighty in your purpose and values alignment, while being tiny in your scope. 15% off my 5-session coaching package for readers of my newsletter.

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Facing Human Wrongs: Unsettling Wellness is an experiential, online course for care workers broadly defined, with an emphasis on mental health/psychology but also including medicine, bodywork, and other healing modalities, home and nursing health aides, etc.

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Regional Organizers for Community Change!

A semester-long immersive experience to deepen your leadership skills, develop vision + strategy for your work, and build deep relationships with other movement leaders in North Carolina. Designed for leaders with 5-15 years of experience, this program combines academic theory with practical training.

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New Ancestors fall coaching group coming October to December. 12 weeks of support centering anti-racism in your life. Save the dates and reach out for a strategy call.

 

Toward Justice,

Evangeline

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