Parts of the Whole

"Mommy's eye. Ronin's ear. Mommy's nose. Ronin's mouth." We play our new game while he nurses just as he has since birth, reclining near my heart, meeting my gaze in effortless, intimate trust.

Suddenly, gently, he pulls away and, unperturbed but clear, signs "more." He's thirsty. After he has just "nursed." I know what is happening, as it happened when Ronin was the wee one growing within me and Oak was the child weaning: my body's wisdom is redirecting resources to the new life emerging.

A sip from a cup, and Ronin is satisfied. But I can't quench the pang of mourning the loss of this precious relationship brings.

Pregnancy nausea and fear for the planet have been my constant companions today. I am learning to trust the same truths in both my immediate, viscerally physical reality of tending and creating children and in my movement through the wider world:

I am giving what I can.
What I have nourished to the best of my ability, I can release with trust and gratitude.
What I am tending may be small, even imperceptible, but requires my energy and deserves my focus.
It is okay to let things move on.
It is okay to stay right where I am.
It is okay to believe that slow work is worthy.
It is okay to treasure what is good.
It is okay to despair at what isn't.
It is okay to be as needed, and I can decide what is needed.

I sometimes wonder what I'm doing, having another child in tumultuous and unpredictable times, as so much dangles from a precipice. But then I watch my silly-giggly children slow-dance-embrace and pull each other across the floor in uproarious fun at just being who and as they are. I feel a swell of nausea, both uncomfortable and reassuring, telling my body and soul that Life prevails. I feel tears well as I sit next to my beloved sister and friend, in my comfortable home, surrounded in rain and light.

I have had to surrender what I thought was required of me just to stay alive. What I have known in that void is the rapturous disintegration of the non-essential. I've sat in that liminal space, being not one person, not two people, looking in the eyes of eternity. This is where I can return in any moment I choose, remembering that nothing is ever lost, that hope is a practice of survival, that my power is my authentic participation in the unfolding of everything.

Eyes. Ears. Nose.
Mine. Yours.
Parts. Inputs.
To the Whole.

What we truly thirst for is quenchable not by milk or water, but by the secure, loving trust that what we are doing together, if it is done truly together with least harm, will be enough. That our energy in any given direction will eventually expire. But that something new, in mystery, is always coming into being.

This is our dance, tipsy and terrifying and transformational. Turn, turn, turn. Hold on. Release. Let your heart spill over. Say it's enough. Stay. Surrender. Sing.

An Open Letter to My Fellow White Folks

Time for some real talk, Good White Folks.

Here's the overview: White folks, we are racist. It is dangerous to not acknowledge this. However, once we do, there is a real chance for healing, for internal reconciliation, and to make ourselves actually useful in the fight against white supremacy.

I can almost guarantee that you felt a repulsion at the thought that “we are racist.” That's because, even though you and I are racist by birthright, I would guess that you, like I, long NOT to be. We want to be good people. We want to think we're evolved and enlightened and compassionate. We want to think that we're better than our forebears or the white people marching in droves with torches. We want to think we were raised to be good people and are being good people in the world.

Please hear me: I am not saying you are not good. I am not saying you aren't trying to do the right thing. I am not saying you are intentionally trying to be racist.

I'm just stating the fact that racism is alive in you.

Since before we were born, we've been swimming in a white supremacist milieu, unconsciously internalizing a racist blueprint of the world and our understanding of self. Wittingly or not, we have been participating in and perpetuating systems of oppression that simultaneously benefit us and keep us trapped since before we were conscious. We can barely recognize this because we have been looking at everything through the lens of white supremacy since before we can remember.

Is this hard for you to believe? What I have found is that, if we tell the *absolute truth* about what comes up in our conscious and unconscious at any given moment, we can begin to more clearly see and examine the functions of white privilege and white supremacy operating in and through us.

Let me give you one example. It's an uncomfortable and painful example to talk about because it's not something we want to be true about us. Nevertheless, I have yet to meet a white person who can outrightly deny that this is their experience. Here it is:

Most (if not all) white people have had experiences of intrusive, bigoted thoughts. These intrusive thoughts may come frequently or infrequently, noticeably or imperceptibly, in a variety of contexts, but they come. They come as the fleeting, unwelcome thought, “Of course it was a black person.” They come as the fleeting assumption about someone based on skin tone, even though you are a “woke” white person. As the mental substitution of a nasty, racist word (one you would NEVER say aloud) in place of a normal descriptor. As qualifications of someone (only non-white people) by a word not relevant to the conversation. As a fleeting fear when appearances conform with racist images purported by media. As split-second decisions made based on information assumed about a person of color before you. As a thoughtless microaggression, tone policing, or racist platitude.

These intrusive, bigoted thoughts also come as the paranoia of being extra nice to the person of color in the room to prove you're a “safe” white person. As the adamant defense of yourself as an “ally.” As the broadstroke but “positive” comments about an entire people. As your paralyzing fear that keeps you silent in the face of an overt racist.

Who among us can claim that none of the above have ever happened, nor continue to happen, within us? If any of the above examples have been true for you, it doesn't make you irredeemable or evil. It makes you a human in white skin.

This is just ONE example of the ways white supremacy works within us. There are countless ways we can learn to notice and there are countless ways we have likely not yet recognized its movement through us.

Racism is alive in us. This is why it's essential to admit and claim it: when we can look it in the eye, we can acknowledge that IT IS NOT US. It is a function. We are the operator. We can reprogram. We can retrain our minds and hearts. We can work to liberate ourselves. We can get more free.

Until a few days ago, most of us in Louisville weren't aware that a particular statue in Cherokee Triangle glorified a Confederate slave owner. I cannot tell you how many times I drove by and didn't know. I didn't stop to really look. I didn't read the plaque. I simply curved around it and continued on my way. There are racist edifaces in our psyche and spirit as seemingly obvious as a huge, bronze man on a horse that have managed to blend into our mental-spiritual scenery, but that redirect our actions every day. Stopping to take a good look and being honest about what we see, within and around us, is a first step.

That's when we can begin to deconstruct the racism alive in us. We can become more conscious of when it's ME talking or when it's the WHITE SUPREMACY talking, and how the latter has harmed the former. We can better acknowledge our privilege at work and humble ourselves. We can begin to participate in the work for justice as a better accomplice to people of color…because we can more clearly see that we aren't “helping others,” but rather we are saving ourselves, thus saving humanity.

The truth is, this is the hard, slow, painful, but essential work of a lifetime. We may never finish our efforts to examine, heal, and recover our racism before we die. But every bit of honest extrication uproots this legacy for our children. It cultivates the possibility for them to separate themselves and keep themselves separated from the claws of white supremacy. It lays a more truthful foundation for solidarity. It begins to plant seeds of freedom.

White people, we may not have created the white supremacist world in which we live, but we belong to it. It's ours. Let's claim it so we can change it. Let's take responsibility so we can eradicate oppression. Let's be honest about who we are so that we can better support and accompany one another on the journey. Let's foster collective liberation so that every last one of us can become who we really are, who we want to be, in freedom.

Dawn

My children have taught 
me to wake up with the sun,
to open my eyes 
when exhaustion from a night 
of screams threatens to
keep my soul closed to the day.
I rise resentful,
sad, apathetic, afraid.
But their eyes meet mine,
brown mirrors of potential:
joy at the closeness;
delight at whispered sharings;
curiosity;
acceptance of what is now;
trust in Earth's turning.
Their hearts, hands reach, pull me up
through the clouds of doubt
toward their dawning promise.