Disposable.

I refuse to believe
that the only choice this country has
is to separate families.

I refuse to believe
that the only choice this country has
is to isolate babies
and to cage toddlers, children and teens
in barbed wire boxes.

I refuse to condemn parents for
trying to bring their children
to a place where they hope
to find
safety and hope
for their future.

These are people.
Just people.
Like me and you
and us.

What is happening to these people
is a warning sign.

Any government that is able to brainwash its citizens,
into believing that protecting this country means
tearing families apart
and inflicting permanent emotional and physical harm
on infants, toddlers, children and teens

is a government that will come for you next.

For me next.

What random power-fueled excuse will it be
when the next round-up is called?

Who will they next train their eye upon?
Which of us in in their way?

Professors and teachers perhaps for teaching history and reason,
for training young minds to think critically and deeply,
for nurturing new ideas and new voices?

Writers, artists and creators perhaps
for giving word, voice and form,
exposing the truth and
fanning imagination and hope?

Who will be next?

America has been here before,
it has stood on this doorstep
of intolerance and atrocity.

We know what it looks like
and we know the generations of
pain that follow.

The US has done this all before,
the circumstances both different and similar:

Native Americans.
Slaves.
Japanese-Americans.
Muslims.

Chinese Exclusion Act.
School segregation.
The Civil Rights movement.
Women's rights.
LGBTQIA+ rights.
So many others...

We watched it happen in other countries,
in Nazi Germany.

We condemned what was happening
"over there"
 brazenly confident in our
great American democracy,
so sure
that it wouldn't be us.

And yet it has always been us.

Human history--
US history--
is awash with a river of
what were seen as "disposable people"--
people who were different,
people who were OTHER.

People who were seen as  standing in the way
of whatever was defined as "good" and "proper".


But I ask you,
at what point are any of us
ANY OF US
safe from becoming
disposable?

People

This morning I woke up
got my coffee
and re-read an opinion piece
by author Christopher Myers.

He wrote it on June 24th, 2016-
a little over a week after the
June 12th shootings at the Orlando Pulse
nightclub.

And in that piece Mr. Myers
gently,
sorrowfully,
peeled back the layers
of fact, fiction and feeling
surrounding the Pulse shootings,
surrounding the aftermath,
surrounding the violence and death
suffered and caused by

People.

People.

The knot that seems to
always be  in my chest
tightens and aches
as I write this.

It's a knot that has been in my chest
for too many years
because I have never fully
EMOTIONALLY
understood
how people could look at each other
and feel such
fear,
hatred,
intolerance.

It's as if what my brain intellectually knows and learns
doesn't quite sink into the deep core of me that feels.

Because I love  people.

I love the idea of what people could...
could create
could dream
could reach
could cure
could heal

could be.

My love for people has grown
from accepting people.

And I admit my acceptance is
imperfect and ever-growing
because I,
like every other person alive,
must work at educating myself
so that I can better accept others.

 I make mistakes
and keep working
so I don't make them again.

People think acceptance is easy,
intuitive and natural.

But it's not.

Acceptance is a relationship
and just like any relationship
it takes work.

We must work
to not be ignorant of
all the ways people yearn
to be recognized.

Recognition matters because many humans are made to feel like they are not
people.

They not accepted for what and who they are.


And when  a person is  not accepted for what and who they are,
they are made to feel

like they must prove who they are. 

Like they must take it apart and make it explicit for those who refuse to do the work of acceptance.

Like the intolerance and hatred is THEIR fault and it is THEIR job fight against it.




Identity is perhaps the only part of being a person that cannot be taken away.

It can be silenced, mocked, insulted and tortured, but it cannot be taken away.

Not even in death.

Today I will re-read articles written in memory of the
people who died on June 12th
for no other reason than they were
being who they were,
celebrating the fleeting joy and acceptance of community. 


They deserved to live.
and they deserve to be remembered.


Like all of us
they were people.

Rules

Mostly listen.

Speak carefully.

Feel for yourself,

Feel for others.

Wear a smile

until tears or fury

come.

Then put the smile

back on.

The rules are easy.

Give more than take.

Help more than demand.

Touch more than withdraw.

Make mistakes.

Own mistakes.

Learn from mistakes.

Move on.

Try

and try

and try.

The rules are easy.

Apologize when wrong.

Forgive.

Give yourself permission

be imperfectly human.

Accept that everyone is

imperfectly human.

The rules are easy.

Above all

believe.

And accept.

And care.

And dare

to dream.

No Easy Answers

Humans seem to be hard wired to seek out simplicity and to deflect blame.

We want easy answers.
We seek simple solutions.
We look for someone--anyone--to blame, as long as that
someone
is someone else.

These things have always been true
and are true now.


I consider the ever-escalating number of shooting deaths
that are happening
in schools
shopping malls
theaters
on our streets
in our homes
almost
everywhere.

People immediately polarized themselves.

"These shootings are caused by mental health problems."

"These shootings are caused by slippery NRA powers
and lax gun laws."

"These shootings are caused by faulty parenting."

"These shootings are caused by young people who
bully each other,
who #walkoutnotup"

The blame is tossed everywhere
and lands nowhere.

Meanwhile,
people are hurt
students die
and our next generation
is demonized for finding their voice.

This polarization,
and blame
change
nothing.

BECAUSE THE WORLD IS COMPLEX.

School shootings are caused by
layers
of problems,
layers
of pain,
layers
of political backroom deals
and lingering manifest destiny myopia.

Our world is complex and layered
and messy and uncomfortable.

Each of us,
every action,
every decision,
every great achievement
every heartbreak
every tragedy
every miracle
everything
comes from complex
layered
messy
bits.

Our ability
to
steer our
community
country
world
rests not with
a single leader,
a single political party,
a single solution--
but in the
beautiful complexity
of depending on each other.

Belief

I believe in the promises of the sunrise.

I believe in the mysteries and dangers that night can bring.

I believe in the fickle friendship of the wind.

I believe in the  stubborn repetition of the ocean's ebb and flow.

I believe in the hard strength of trees and rocks.

I believe in the emotionless power of erosion
that sculpts mountains into valleys.

As long as the earth exists,
these are the things in which
I can believe.

Nature's beautiful, deadly, scientific rules
are steadfast and logical.

Nature takes no sides,
has no favorites.

And so has earned my belief.

Everything else is hope.

I can hope that humans one day learn
how to accept before they hate,
how to think before they act,
how to consider before they speak.

I can hope that humans one day learn
how to share before they take,
how to protect before they attack.

I hope these things,
but I don't believe them.

Not yet.
Because humans have so
so
so much to learn,
so far to go.

I sometimes wonder
if we humans do end up
destroying ourselves
will it happen
because we let it happen,
or will it happen
because
Nature
made it so?

Price

And so the doors
of prestige and celebrity, 
of power and money
are being flung open one by one.

As each door opens, a person falls out,
someone who we assumed was

upstanding
trustworthy
truth telling
or
at the very least
in possession of
a moral compass.

Each person falls at our feet
and looks up at us.

This is the bittersweet price that is paid
when a country finds itself in thrall
to a monster.

The monster is in our house.
We put him there
and somehow he is still there.
Perhaps the gnarled hands
of political power
and insulated fame
are stronger than we thought,
or perhaps we have been weakened
by our impotent fury.

So we turned the monster's tale in on itself
and are opening the doors behind which
other monsters are hiding.

We are starting at the bottom
and working our way up.

Just as we cannot reach the top of a mountain
or climb to the top of a tree
by  jumping at the middle,
so we have discovered we cannot
unseat the monster
without first dismantling his throne.

Prepare yourself monster.

We are on our way
up.

Truth and Gratitude: A Thanksgiving Rant

"Thanksgiving" is a loaded word in the United States.

If one says "Thanksgiving", most people's minds will  unspool a film reel of family gatherings hearkening back to bucke-hatted European pilgrims and selfless indigenous Americans coming together within a gentle pastel cloud of inter-cultural bliss. 

Young children are led into murky historical re-enactments  of a supposed "real" "original" Thanksgiving,  or, for the sake of playing it safe, guided towards turkey-focused art projects. 
Hand turkeys?  Anyone?  Of course hand turkeys. 

And then there's the food.  "Thanksgiving" brings us visions of turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, a table figuratively and literally groaning under the weight of rewarding our good fortune with a food-frenzy.

I get it.  My family has always celebrated Thanksgiving.  We too look forward to swelling up with the pressure of eating a combination of foods I'd never regularly cook nor serve  in such alarmingly vast quantities and carb-laden varieties.

And of course with our fascination in having an excuse to  spend one day gorging and sipping and then burping and napping, comes the marketing. 

Thanksgiving isn't just a holiday, it's a money-maker. 
Because aren't all celebrations potential money-makers in our American society?
Of course they are.

But...

"Thanksgiving" doesn't have the blissful roots in harmony or shared feasting that people in the United States have been led to believe. 

The truth about the "original" Thanksgiving is muddled.  Our national storyline about the European pilgrims and indigenous Americans is twisted into half-truths, non-truths, and fairy tale.

If you were to write an outline upon which the traditionally taught American Thanksgiving story was written, you'd find the truth hiding--scattered about, names of people and places shifted away from their real stories, embellished, disguised.

So where is the truth?
What is the truth?

These are the questions we must ask ourselves.  These are the questions you must ask yourself.
(These are questions for which I have included a few links below--and I encourage you to look further in order to dig deeper into the facts in order to reflect upon your own assumptions and beliefs.)

It is now approximately 400 years after the original pilgrims landed in Massachusetts Bay. 
I would suggest we have not gotten any better at promoting or discerning fact from fiction.  In our heady, tech-savvy Internet-fueled society we are still battling pouty cries of "fake news", still needing to wade through muck of promotional fictions in order  to find the truth of the world. 

400 years later and we are still trying to figure out who we are, and how much we are willing to use, abuse and sacrifice others to achieve our personal ends.


Tomorrow I'll be once again  preparing foods that were probably not available 400 years ago to pay homage to a holiday that is based on myth more than fact about a group of people--the first of many--who got in a boat, sailed across the world for their own subjectively good reasons only to land on someone else's doorstep. 

I'll probably wonder, as I often have over the years, what would've happened if  the story were twisted on it self, and it were the Native Americans who had set sail from their shores, landed somewhere in Europe and then simply began building their settlement on someone else's land. 

And when we sit down tomorrow at our own table laden with food,  I'll reflect on the good things that this last year has brought, and I'll send my gratitude out into the chilly November ether.

But we don't need it to be November 23rd in order to celebrate our gratitude, or to come together with friends and family.  Love and good food can be shared anytime.

Likewise, we shouldn't need it to be November 23rd to reflect on the lessons--and lies--of history.
Truth and wisdom and being willing to admit wrongs and embrace acceptance can and should happen every minute of every day.

If and when this finally happens, I promise you, I'll be so very grateful.







Sources


http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/Teach-the-Real-Story-of-the-First-Thanksgiving.shtml

https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/culture/social-issues/6-thanksgiving-myths-share-them-with-someone-you-know/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-shocking-savagery-of-americas-early-history-22739301/?page=5

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/us/thanksgiving-myths-fact-check.html

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/11/25/rethinking-the-way-we-teach-thanksgiving/lets-all-tell-the-true-story-about-thanksgiving

https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/search?q=thanksgiving