NOTICINGS: Inalienable rights? What now?
There’s a crack in everything
What now? I can’t stay for long with bottomless despair. My nature turns, like a rabbit fleeing hell, to fix it and to do something.
This is where I am now. Notice the fence behind this hollyhock.
I want us on the freedom side of the chain-link fence. The one that the SCOTUS 6 has enabled this president to do whatever he wants. Like a king.
I listen to Leonard Cohen.
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
A thundercloud
They're going to hear from me
But Cohen doesn’t leave it there.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
Between bitter assessment and believing that there is a crack in everything,
I turn to Hold Space.
To hold space means to do two things at once: participate in a nationwide howl AND know in my bones that I do not know what spontaneous, surprising, generous, fresh-new, idea and/or action will pop up to help us all turn this ship of state around.
Hold space for remembrance.
Hold space for grief.
Hold space for terror, and readiness.
Hold space for care, goodness, trust, and truth.
Hold space for the wild, the unencumbered, the freedom to follow through on an idea that might unlock the grip of tyranny.
Hold Space so that what is needed can be known.
Leonard Cohen’s The Future continues to ring in my head.
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
Give me Christ
Or give me Hiroshima
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby
It is murder
Hold space for the light that comes in through every crack that is in everything.
I am not writing to suggest that we feel better, which someone thought I was doing. Of course, I want us to feel better. Absent a calm internal ballast, clear thinking and actions are all but impossible. Feeling better now has a utilitarian purpose: to overthrow the Trump government for a government that represents the majority. Us.
To hold space is not instead of, but with.
Source: Minnesota 50501 DiscordI heard a wise person comment about an idea Aristotle had: humans stretch out to know.
Like plants seeking the sun.
Not planted by any gardener. Just appeared. Wild. Like life. Everywhere. All the time. From the beginning of time.This hollyhock. Alcea. Over 80 species in the mallow family, Malvaceae. Native to Asia and Europe… travelers. A diversity. Like all of us.
This stretching towards the sun, this stretch of humans to know, is deeply connected to longing. Not for a clear targeted thing, but something you know exists, and you are connected to it.
The “it” is our inalienable right to be oneself.
Inalienable means that it is impossible to take away.
The “it” is our inalienable right to make our vote heard.
Inalienable means something that is not transferable.
What now? Good question.
Turn now from a wail to doing something.
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Notes