Where Oh Where...
Rest As Resistance
It has been a while since I have posted here… and the reasons are many.
Overwhelm, depression, anger, frustration, loneliness, and more. Now, having said that, what am I here to say now? If you are an empath, a reasonable, logical, and sensitive human, then you have, or are currently feeling, some mixture of those same emotions. How can one escape or ignore what is happening around the world, as if burying our heads in the sand will somehow prevent wars, genocide, greed, corruption, and mass assimilation of inhumanity from spreading like an airborne bioweapon?
Acknowledge what you feel. Look directly into the abyss without flinching. And come together in community to share joy, laughter, and support one another to reignite, reinvigorate, and restore our faith in humanity and what is possible.
No rational person wants to see democracy unravel, while families struggle to feed, care for their children, and keep a roof over their heads. No sane person will justify ludicrous claims from the incompetent as if they are experts. Next, we might hear, “Autism is caused by saying Happy Holidays and not Merry Christmas.”
“Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.” ~Mahatma Gandhi
No humane person wants to witness the massive loss of life or the destruction of villages, homes, or other structures just to remove a people or to cover everything in gold.
As a minister, I have a duty to flip the switches and bring light back to the room. When I was in middle school, I understood the lesson from the German theologian Martin Niemöller, who wrote the poem “First They Came.”
Did you know that he was sent to a concentration camp?
Do you know what his “crime” was?
He was imprisoned due to his association with the Confessing Church, his opposition to government involvement in the church, and his resistance to the Nazi regime.
State involvement in church, you say—sounds like Christian Nationalism, doesn’t it? And here we are, many New Thought folks arguing against us speaking out. The arrogance of believing we can change the world just by sitting on our meta-asses is nauseating. We can pray, vision, meditate, journal, smudge, carry crystals, and sing Kumbaya every day, and none of that will bathe us, feed us, house us, or warm us. Action must follow all spiritual practices; otherwise, our metaphysical malpractice, metaphysical masturbation, will surely lead to metaphysical malfeasance.
[...] A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.”
~Desmond Tutu
A world that works for all is not going to manifest itself by eating frosted Lucky Charms, waiting for Mercury retrograde to end, or tithing to our local centers. If we want to experience that, we need to understand what it truly means, what it looks like, and what it takes to create it. If we are the ones with the vision, maybe we should also talk to people in leadership to inspire them so they also catch the vision. Maybe it’s time to speak to the United Nations and get global leaders, educators, thinkers, strategists, and builders aligned with our vision. That is, if we even know what vision we’re following.
Rev. Raymont Anderson, PhD., the spiritual director of The Center for Spiritually Integrated Arts, author of Moving Mountains: The Journey of Transformation and Visual Music: Interpreting Songs in American Sign Language
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First, I must admit that your first paragraph totally summed up my current emotional and mental conditions. But, I have to say it’s somewhat scary when someone like yourself admits to feeling all those things too. If someone who understands the principals as deeply as you do, principals we all strive to live by, struggles, what chance have I, I ask? But then, it’s also unquestionably comforting to know it’s not just me who falls out of balance from time to time.
I, too, think I’m seeing a good portion of our leadership practicing less of what they preach around today’s national and global crisis. I often think we’re getting too much mentioning of ‘thoughts and prayers’ without the moving of feet, but I also understand how frightening it is to contemplate how to safely, yet noticeably, move them. I recently left a center that I had invested nearly two decades in building because I felt some of our actions did not match what we claimed our vision to be, and I sensed we were pretending not to notice.
It’s frustrating. Very frustrating. Thanks for letting me know that you feel it sometimes too because that’s crucial to my feeling supported . . . and more importantly thanks for inspiring me to show up even when I’m afraid and doubt myself, because that will help me be brave. I’m not thirty and bullet-proof any longer, but I can be as loud as I ever was!
I see you. I love you and I’m all in!