My Monday Morning Writing Is So Late That It Is Now Tuesday Morning But Let's Talk About Racism8/15/2017 I was at a festival this weekend. This is why my writing is a morning late. I was away. Deep in a Fern Gully forest without access to anything other than what was going on around me right in that moment. The moistness of the air from mile high trees and moss and ferns. The dusty paths and open, hay-covered fields. The sweet and small lights that hung from trees around stages and tents and places to play throughout what is known as Beloved, a festival in Tidewater, Oregon that pulls to it this most loveliest of people dressed in festival wear and multi-colored gear and cloaked in the deep and warm colors of openheartedness.
I was away in this place and so did not know what had transpired in Charlottesville, Virginia until I pulled away from the festival grounds and began the long drive back to my world. And still I did not know, hoping to hold on to the simple space of being connected only to other dear souls and not to technology and media and the bright and harsh light of my iPhone screen. And so for much of the drive home I did not know anything. And then I did. Where once the rhetoric was blatantly covered in insidious skin and callous calling, now even this superficial camouflage has fallen away. The rally in Charlottesville is blatant and hateful. It is racism and intolerance and hate and bigotry. It is dangerous and dividing. And it is unacceptable. And it is not new. What we see, what is unfolding in leaves of darkness and despair is not newly planted and only just growing tall but the face of this country for a long time. We were founded on this. We ripped away lands and forged through a culture to inhabit this country. We pushed methodology and ideology onto those who did not think the way we did just as we preached the love of God and goodness. We covered our evils in religion and embraced the concept of freedom as we decimated others whose ways did not match our own. And then we did it again. Bringing forth from other lands men and women and child to forge our lands work and tables and bear our children in the most inhumane of ways. And we did this as it was done in other places, too. All over this dirt and water, ice and coal land we call earth, we ripped away the cover that lay upon those who do not think like us, dress like us, walk and talk and love like us. This is the human experience. We are hateful and intolerant beings. We are fearful of those we do not know or know to be different than ourselves. We use words and swords to judge and justify. And we call it freedom of speech and freedom to assemble. We are darkness. But we are light. This I believe it true. And just as we are evil and intolerant and racist and afraid we are goodness and light and fearlessness and love. There is movement happening in the world. An embracing of self and a search of higher meaning, a deeper connection and an opening to Source. And so there is a flare up of hatred, too. Of darkness and isolation. Of fear of change and a gathering of judgement and anger. Of course there is. The balance needs balance. And it needs this fuel of fire. We need to see these moments in Charlottesville, Virginia so that we can respond to them, like for like. Goodness and hope, love and inclusion, do not live in darkened alleys and deep, dank caves. they live out in the open. Darkness needs to come out of hiding, too. Charlottesville, Virgina is our next and new playing field in this game that we call life. It is our opportunity to stand up in the clearness of the day. Nothing is concealed anymore. There is no question of where the hatred lurks. It's standing now in full light for all of us to see.
1 Comment
Bob Tutnauer
8/15/2017 11:31:56 am
SIMPLY OUTSTANDING !!
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