Genocide in our Prisons

 WA state prisoners are dying of Covid as is true of prisoners throughout the country.  On 12/23/2020 there were 2,294 cases of Covid in the WA state prisons which was close to 10% of all the cases in WA state.  We have all read how people of color and native communities are disproportionately getting Covid and dying. This is both because of their disproportionate work in service jobs with high contact with the public but also because of lifelong substandard exposure to quality healthcare, as well as generally poorer diets leading to many pre existing health conditions rendering them more vulnerable to the virus.  This is magnified under the racism of our prisons.  Due to racism, BIPOC are more frequently charged, tried, sentenced and imprisoned for longer than white people committing the same crimes.  While white people are 72% of the population of WA, they are only 60% of the prison population.  Black people while being 5% of our state population are 18% of the incarcerated, the 11% of Latinos are 13% of those imprisoned, and Native Americans are incarcerated at 2.5X their rate in the population. Similar statistics exist around our country and are in fact much worth in southern states where the majority of prisoners are African American.

Initially the prisoners had no access to masks, ate in crowded cafeterias– in short they were sitting ducks.  Most of the prisons are overcrowded and they can be housed in rooms with 6 prisoners in bunk beds in one room or at least have cell mates.  Masks arrived after infections had already arrived.   The New York Times reported that in CA when San Quentin was ordered to reduce their overpopulated prison population (it was hoped through release of non-violent prisoners) they complied by transferring the prisoners to other state prisons which resulted in the spread of the virus to every prison in that state.  There is little and inadequate access to health care under the best of circumstances in state prisons.  At this point all visitation has been cancelled and prisoners are confined to their cells round the clock (an hour out for exercise every 3 days - showers on schedules) and yet still it spreads.  The guards as well to attend their jobs risk their health and the health of their families.

Imagine being trapped with the virus unable to get away.  Essentially just waiting till you get it.  This is a mass experiment in herd immunity.   This will be survival of the fittest. Those who get it must fight it off or die.  And here again the prisoners of color have higher pre-existing health risks making them at greater risk to die from it.

This is genocide.  Please write to Governor Inslee (or your Governor) that prisoners and guards should receive priority for the vaccine after frontline workers and those in nursing homes (also trapped where they are too easily exposed with pre-existing conditions.)  Of course everyone in our country needs to be vaccinated.  It is part of the ongoing tragedy of the Trump administration that we have so many cases and so few vaccine's.   Since many people feel prisoners deserve to be punished and deserve whatever they get this will be a hard case to make.   But even if one believes they deserve to be punished do they deserve a death sentence for every crime you can be incarcerated for?   Should the racism that disproportionately placed them there also be a death sentence?  There have been calls to protect them by releasing those with non-violent crimes to reduce the number of people at risk in the prisons.  Those proposals have not been acted upon.  

Please act

UnTrumping Our Country

 I have finally settle into some feeling of confidence that we will not have an unending rule of Trump. I have stopped the 4 years of breath holding, as I watched the march towards the "signs of fascism" check list playing out in my country of birth.   See previous post written 4 years ago when Trump won: for the actual list from historians on the steps towards fascism.  

So as we emerge into a new ruler of Corporate America or Empire in Decline 2020, I am clear on some important agenda items clearly revealed by the last 4 year debacle.  These are agenda items for if we ever want to reclaim a democracy, for if we don't want to live in Oligarchy.

1) Serious Election Reform: It means passing absolute protections for voters right to vote.  This would include figuring out the least tamperproof way of voting and making it the standard for our country (to hell with every county having a different way of doing it and different technology and some poor counties having inadequate machines).  It means making registration be automatic with getting a drivers license (as hugely freed the Black vote in GA) and an easy way for people who don't drive to also register.  It means passing national protections for physically safe voting during an election.   In other words that it is guaranteed on the Federal level so no state court can ever again block a governor for ordering changes to accomodate protecting people's health during a pandemic or other health threat.  Also perhaps by determining a national standard for how we vote it will take care of this but assuring that access to polling places cannot be restricted to make voting burdensome and that options are always available to people who work on voting day.   Working should never be an obstacle to voting.

2) Overturn Citizen's United - or election finance reform.   This will also need to be accomplished from a national bill.  We need to outlaw dark money, and the best way to get the influence of money out of politics is just to set a ceiling for total amount of campaign advertising any candidate can spend.  It will level the playing field and bring those of us who were harassed by hateful ads full of lies and endless robocalls some peace.   Maybe then candidates would have to campaign on the strength of their message!

3) Police reform nationwide - we are tired of the murder of BIPOC people in our streets by the police.  This must stop.  This cannot be regulated, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, or state by state.  Just like the passage of the civil rights bill reformed Jim Crow obstructions to voting (till over thrown by a biased Supreme Court) this problem of police violence must be solved on a national level.  All of the standardly understood reforms like: de-escalation training for police, anti-bias training, body cams, no choke holds, etc. etc must be passed on a national level.  In addition we must start seperating out on a national level the jobs that really belong to social workers - like responding to mentally ill citizens or wellness checks and start removing those jobs from police jobs and shift the funding.   We also must demilitarize the police.  There is no reason, never was, and never should be a reason for our police departments to be the "used equipment" sale ground of the military.   Military level weapons should be banned from police departments!  What might you say does this have to do with fascism?  The increased militarization of police and use of them to control civilian populations is part of every facisist state.

4) Assure the Teaching of Science in our public schools - between climate change and the pandemic it is clear that a scarily high percentage of Americans don't really understand how science comes to its outcomes or believe in science.   It is time this changes.  It will only really change if we teach it in our schools.

5) Protect a Free Press and its role in a democracy.  Between the effects of more and more people getting news online and more and more papers dying and less actual reporters in the world a free press is at risk and it is actually considered one of the cornerstones of democracy.   It has also been under attack for 4 years by Trump which is typical under fascism that press becomes centralized, controlled and delegitimized.   So I am going to stop treating press as service to choose or not choose and treat it as a cause to support because I believe in it.  So I am going to buy actual online subscriptions as "donations".   But beyond that it is very clear that anti-trust law will have to be applied to the consolidation of media which has brought us things like Fox news.  We may also need some laws that clarify the line between opinion and the reporting of facts and return us to an era when the "editorial page" or the anchor opinion piece were distinct and the line was not blurred.  The marriage between Fox news and the President more closely mirrored a propaganda channel or state sponsored news then a free press.

6)  Decriminalizing the PIBOC community - It is time to end the disproportionate prosecution and longer sentencing of people of color.  It is a long haul to a complete redo of our justice system.  However, some good first steps would be mandatory anti-racism/anti-bias training for all prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges.  We also need to move to a restorative justice model for all non-violent crimes. There is a long list of what needs to be done in this arena

7) Defining the 25th Amendment.   While there are many things I do not agree with Nancy Pelosi about, I do agree that the 25th Amendment if not clear enough.  Even before Trump it left a lot of grey areas about what to do if a President was simply under anthesia for a brief procedure, or was temporarily disabled by heavy drugs, or temporary medical symptoms.   It sort of relies on the person holding the office to use good judgement before being disabled and to act in good faith.   However, as we have seen under Trump if a presidents mental health deteriorates they maybe the last person to admit it.  Thus we need a procedure which has been agreed to years before it is needed and which both parties recognize could be relief for a country from a bad situation.   It needs to be spelled out very clearly!  Given that we now know 6 presidents were deeply disabled/ill/dying at the end of their terms (and a few wives were secretly running the country) we just really need this reform.

8) Election disclosure reform.   Before the 2016 election it had been "tradition" for a long time that the Presidential candidates released both their tax returns for a number of years and also their annual medical exam results.   I think it is fair for the voters to know if someone who is going to rule this country is playing fair, paying their share, and is healthy enough to lead.  Once again Trump proved these traditions are only as good as someone operating in good faith.  I believe that once not shielded, we will learn of the depth of both his health problems and the depth of debt he was in that would have made him ineligible for national security clearance, if not elected, because of the risk of blackmail or influence peddling.   This should never happen to our country again and can be prevented by passing a bill requiring these two disclosures of Presidential candidates.

9)  Ethics reform - rather than counting on meaningless promises to "drain the swamp" followed by just the opposite - lets make it law that someone who has been a lobbyist cannot be hired onto a cabinet post of head of a dept for at least 4 years after serving as a lobbyist.   (This may also help some people not take lobbying position at the end of an administration if they hope in another 4 years to serve another President).  Let's also in that same bill make nepotism illegal.  No hiring of family members into white house positions or cabinet positions.

10) The End of the Electoral College!  This one is so past due!  Given that 2 of the 5 times that a President has gotten into office without winning the popular vote have happened in the last 20 years.  It beyond clear that this structure was put into place by a land owning aristocratic founding fathers who did not fully trust the popular vote, and attempted to have a way to "correct" it through privileged electoral college voters "if needed".   All this had really done is leave a way to manipulate away from the will of the people.   Previously people have argued that some populist nut case could get it in if there was no electoral college.  Quite the opposite, given that the electoral college, not the popular vote gave it to Trump in 2016, there is literally NO justification for this elitist institution.  This will be hard to correct thru a constitutional amendment, as nothing is easy to do that way.  But if a few more states pass the interstate compact against the electoral college it will be done!  If you live in a state that has not passed it yet...please do this work! 

11) End Gerrymandering - As some have become painfully aware in the past 4 years - how one party has kept itself in power especially in state houses but also in the House is by creating districts that are so absurdly drawn that they look like paint splats on a map.  It should be federal law that a bi-partisan commission draws the map, and it stops being the work of the party in control assuring that it remains in power.   The same new legislation should protect the Census gathering which sets us up for the redrawing of districts.   Protections should be put in place to prevent the politizing of basic data collection.

12) Restrictions on Pardons - Again the founding fathers imagined that whoever would be elected President would be a fair and honorable person.  They never would have imagined the cronism and deceit of pardoning colleagues who are charged with committing crimes on behalf of the sitting administration.   Since that has happened under the most corrupt Presidents (Nixon and Trump) let's place a limit on Presidential pardons.   Presidents should be restricted from pardoning anyone who is charged with committing a crime in service of the current administration.

13) Protection of whistle blowers - It is critical to accountability within a democracy  that whistleblowers can bring to the attention of the public and the press wrong doings that are happening within the government without fear of loss of life, career or reputation.   The active firing and punishment of whistleblowers has a chilling silencing effect that breeds loyalty to authoritarian leaders and a climate of fear rather than openness in government service.  Although we have a national whistleblower law apparently it again needs to be actually made law that whistleblowers cannot be fired.  I hope the incoming President will restore the title and retirement benefits of everyone who was wrongfully fired.

14) Protection of civil servants- this country has always had civil servant positions in DC that were bipartisan.   People were career civil servants and served under each administration of either party, faithfully carrying out administrative duties.   Under Trump various employment protections were removed so they could be fired at will - again making the workings of government hinge on loyalty rather than faithful duty.   This was particularly troubling when applied to immigration judges so they became vulnerable to being fired for a decision that the Administration did not like - jeopardizing the notion of a free and seperate judiciary.  I hope the incoming administration will restore the protections for civil servants and immigration judges and also reemploy any who were removed for opposing the lawless behavior of the previous occupants of the White House.  This is part of why Hitler had so much power is because all levels of government were loyal to him and operated in the fear of being perceived as not loyal.

15)  The end to enemies and racial targeting - the hallmark of fascism is the identifying and targeting of enemies.  In Nazi Germany it was Jews - as well as LBGQT folks, and radicals.   In Trumps America it has been Muslims and Mexicans and Black people.   It is time for this 4 year reign of hate and terrorism to end!  We have a lot of children and parents to reunite, and a lot of restitution to be paid for the trauma's that have been induced.  Clearly we will need to work hard on the teaching of tolerance and anti-racism.   We need to correctly identify right wing hate groups and white supremist groups as national terrorist groups.   I look forward to the day where when they march in a state capitol that the President speaks out condemning the behavior and when attempts to kidnap a governor is met with support from the national level and is followed by aggressive prosecution of actions like this that simply bring fear and unrest to our communities.  I look forward to when peaceful protestors are not treated as threats and violent protests are stopped.

16) No National Service - we MAY have stopped just short of instituting a Nazi like Hitler's Youth.  For the last two years the Trump administration has been positioning in reaction to a lawsuit that rightfully pointed out that drafting only men is sex discrimination, to make a youth service corp for all young people between the ages of 18 and 24 to serve two years.  Some would serve in the military and some in civilian service such as building the hated wall.  It would be better to end compulsory service for either gender and move toward the ending of our endless wars.  Militarism is another sign post of fascism, nationalism, and empire.  Our military is $100 billion dollars more in 2020 than it was in 2016.  Let's cut the bloated military budget.

17) The end to rampant sexism...and isms.   It will be such a relief to not have a President who is charged with 16 sexual assaults on women and who constantly displays blatant disrespect and misogyny.  (President Biden is also charged with sexually inappropriate behavior).  But it is nice to have a cabinet that is not an old boys club.   It will be nice to not have sexism, racism, able-bodiedism, classism and homophobia and Xenophobia modeled by the most visible position in the nation to our children.   Facicism uses the control of women as one of the ways to control a population.  By stacking the Supreme Court to overthrow Roe Vs Wade, despite the vast majority of Americans supporting it...we were well on the way to returning to a state imposed control over female bodies.   We will have to work hard in the next few years to counter the stacking of the courts and for the passage of the ERA so we can end the legal ability to suppress women.

18) The end of censorship - a classic tool of fascism used to control the expression of ideas.   No more will government websites forbid the use of terms related to climate change, or dismiss or silence climate scientists who work for the federal government or scientists or doctors attempting to tell the truth about the virus even if it is inconvenient to the occupants of public office whose policies maybe flawed.  It maybe necessary to pass laws prohibiting the censorship of government employees.

19) National neighbors - fascist countries/Imperialist nations terrorize other countries.   We have been doing so for decades.   But it would be nice to go back to keeping our treaties, not insulting other leaders at every turn with culturally inappropriate behavior, and being in some way participants in global efforts to work on global problems.

I am under no illusion that President Biden is some sort of saint; he is neo-liberal.   I do not expect all these things to be done.   I do expect some of them to be done.  Some of this will depend upon what happens in the Georgian Senate racism and if Congress is able to act with some unity.  But mainly I name these things because this is OUR work to do if we want a democracy.

Living in the God Space

It is very tumultuous times in the US.  We are facing the most important election in our history.  One that will determine if we stop being a democracy and become an oligarchy instead.  It is very unclear what will happen, and this is happening in the midst of a global pandemic uncontrolled in the US due to lack of leadership.

I feel like I have been distracted from my professional life as a psychotherapist, distracted from my clients.  So today in Meeting I was praying for my clients.  For me what this meant was to hold each of them one by one in my attention and imagine them whole.  There were some clear themes that emerged of what seemed need to be and feel whole:  To know that one is loveable and loved, to be able to lay down the injuries of that past to come fully into the present, to be able to self sooth and come into the peace of our universe, to be able to set boundaries so no harm comes and to be able to not have to try to hard, to relax into the universe as it is.

This made me think of quote (misattributed to Nelson Mandela but actually from Marianne Williamson) that has long been on my bulletin board:

"You're a child of God.  Your playing small doesn't serve the world.  There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insurece.around you.  We were born to manifest the gory of God that is with us; it's in everyone.  As we let our Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

That quote for me is about living into the bigness of who are as a Child of God.  Who we really are before and after injury.

Recently when Trump was admitted to the hospital for Covid, I noticed a wonderful space opened up for me.  It is was not the space created by rejoicing in his illness or potential death, but it was a space in which I was able to imagine for the first time in a long time my country not controlled or diminished or manipulated by him.  It was a space where he is no longer President and no longer can create havoc.  There was much relief and peace and possibility in that space. What I quickly came to realize was that whether he left the hospital, alive or dead, that it was I who was in charge of that space. It was a space I could choose to stay in and or to dwell with, or I could in fear return to a universe controlled by Trump.

This makes me think of the words in the Peace Testimony: "We utterly deny outward strife and tumult.  We live in the Life and Power that takes away the occasion for all wars".   Think of that it is a space, an energy that is not war, the opposite of war, a place without outward strife and tumult.   And we live into that space.  It too is a choice as one could live in the space where there is war and tumult.

I am not talking here about some Pollyanna world where we close our eyes and do not see or feel war, or Trump, or the injuries my clients have suffered.  I am simply saying that in the God space there is another set of possibilities.  Ones with more wholeness, more peace, more possibilities for growth, healing and justice.

To Elder

 Quakers have this funny practice called Eldering.  Even the name of it is antiquated.  It comes from a time when someone very respected was called an Elder.  However, from early on in Quakerism because of the value on equalatrism it was recognized that young people and women could be elders.  (Rather unheard to in the 1600s).  This was because it was a mark of being mature in the Spirit.   The person was a spiritual elder, someone who lived a grounded, spirit inspired life.  They understood Quaker practice and the underlying beliefs that went with Quaker practice.

There were many roles that Elders played.  They sat on the facing bench and held the Meeting in the Light, thereby deepening the worship.  They acted as anchors and mentors for Friends engaging in new ministry.  They often would accompany a Friend who was in traveling ministry to help them stay true to their Light and not overshoot their leading. They would speak with and nurture those who were newly giving ministry in Friends Meeting, encouraging the development of faithful ministry.

But the practice of eldering is something slightly different.  It was/is the modern day equivalent of "calling in" ( the opposite of calling someone out which is often with anger and criticism.)  It was to speak to someone who was seen to be morally straying, or lost, or beyond their light, or behaving inappropriately and to lovingly call them back into the Light.  A powerful example of this was when John Woolman would travel and meet with Quakers who were owning slaves and he would speak to them or the moral wrong they were doing TO THEIR OWN SOUL, and plead with them to sell their slaves.   This is not to say that he did not believe in abolition or have great concern for the well being of the slaves.  But since he saw slavery as a sin, he reasoned that to own a slave was a sin that corrupted and damaged the soul of the slave owner just as much as the enslaved person.

That was the power of eldering but it also got its self a bad name in the middle years of Quakerism when it became a sort of rigid litmus test of moral conformity with people being "written out of Meeting" by Meeting elders for such sins as singing, dancing, wearing lace or marrying outside of the faith.  The over correction for this was Friends largely have turned their back on this practice.  I regard this as too bad because from my point of view we are sadly lacking true eldering in modern Meetings.  We both lack Friends who are really grounded in Quaker practice, we lack mentoring for younger friends in everything from clerking to giving faith ministry....but most importantly we lack a real accountability when things go estray.

Friends to a large degree have drifted into an American Liberalism - a desire to be open and accepting to everyone - to a point that often surrenders having an actual defined set of beliefs or boundaries.  While Friends drift towards a more codified set of testimonies, calling them "SPICES", we oddly do not stand up for these truths that we have found.   If Friends exhibit conspicuous and unsustainable possessions we do not even lovingly discuss Simplicity with them.   When male Friends exhibit learned male privilege in our gatherings, we either sigh and turn away or attack with a Feminist critique, but we do not lovingly labor with them over how and why to change that behavior.  It is rare that anyone talks about how us pacifists are all paying for war. We accept many behaviors in our committees and our business meeting which are frankly secular behaviors from our work places that are not part of Quaker Faith and Practice.  (see also previous post on eldering and conflict: http://thefriendlyseeker.blogspot.com/2019/10/it-may-not-surprise-you-to-hear-me-say_30.html)

"Quakers behaving badly" is a phrase that brings a slight chuckle and smile to most long time Friends faces.  Yes we know about Friends being behaving badly -we have seen it many times.   This ranges from Friends who speak too often and too long.  Friends who "mansplain" Quakerism (and other subjects) to the rest of us.  Friends who rant and lecture about politics to the rest of us.  Friends who talk about the news in Meeting for worship and who have never given a spirit filled message in their life. (Is this NPR or is this God?)  Alignating young people and people of color with unconscious ageism and or racism.   Letting fear about changing from "the way we have always done it" get in the way of considering what new Light might show us.   Over editing minutes, hung up on Grammar rather than finding what Spirit is trying to say through us.  Being attached to forms over the purpose they were intended to serve. Friends who have tantrums in business or committee meetings, who we silently allow to do this to everyone else. Refusing to talk about critical issues because we are uncomfortable with conflict and have forgotten that Light is available on all subjects.    Unable to identify what we believe because we are practicing acceptance of all to the point where there is no Spiritual Center.  I could go on, and feel free to add some of your own in comments below.

But the bottom line is we will continue to have Friends who are behaving badly until we again have Elders who can lovingly share Quaker practice and belief with those Friends behaving badly and loving show them another, Quakerly set of possibilities.

Covid is still teaching

When the pandemic first started I felt fairly clear about its connection to spirit - it seemed it had come to teach us to slow down, to connect again to the earth - and so with that I felt a certain peace about it.  (See past 6 posts).  But as the pandemic continues on, and on, and on, and on with no apparent end in sight, I like so many grow weary.   I am sad that we cannot learn better and prevent so many deaths.  I grieve for all the people who have lost loved ones, and how have lost jobs.  I'm saddened for the young people who graduate without graduations, or cannot start schools or careers or even hold a marriage ceremony.

As I start to notice that it is about impossible to start anything or even complete anything for that matter, I begin to puzzle at Spirits intention for the length of this?  Have we not slowed down enough?   My daughter wrote an amazing poem about the 6 feet of distance, and the 6 degrees of separation and the ways in which these two things teach us that we are all intricately connected to each other.   https://www.facebook.com/sara.grendon/videos/3637330776281070

As I complained to a Friend about the endless of this experience she replied: apparently we are not done learning.  And I realized she is right.  If we are suppose to learn that everyone on the planet is intimately connected to all other lives - tethered in a web of life to which we all depend and to which we all impact....then we have not yet learned it.   The masks are not to protect ourselves but to protect others and yet we cannot yet embrace that we have a sacred responsibility to each other to protect each other.  Some people are still working on the chapter of believing that science is truth - still struggling how to know that this experience is true.  But for the vast majority that believe it true we still have yet to learn how to honor our connection to each other.

So I guess we shall be held neither moving forward or backwards till we can learn that we are all connected.

Spirit Message for the Pandemic

I have previously on a different blog written about a prayer practice I have of offering up a question in prayer and then opening various spiritually meaningful books and receiving their answer.   A while back I did this asking God:  What would you have me know about this pandemic?  The answers below speak to me of viewing the pandemic as a spiritual event, of examining how we live in the world, understanding the dying which is happening more now, as part of a cycle of life and death that is part of the human experience, how to face our own potential mortality and that of those we love.

Below are the messages I received:
From the Book Emmanuel II: "As you learn to perceive with an open heart, what seems to be taking place on the physical plane of your world, it becomes time to speak.  What? Anything your heart tells you.  To whom?  Anyone who will listen.  The moment you speak from love and not from fear, you assume the mantle of leadership..your responsibility is to hear your own hear.  this is a schoolroom for learning how to love what appears to be absolutely unloveable."

From Thomas Kelly in a Testament of Devotion  There is an experience of the Eternal breaking into time, which transforms all life into a miracle of faith and action.  Unspeakable, profound, and full of glory as an inward experience, it is the root of concern for all creation, the true ground of social endeavor. This inward Life and the the outward concern are truly one whole and were it possible, ought to be described simultaneously.

The Prophet by Kilbran  The section of Freedom
"You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care or your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.

The Book of Emmanuel I: the door that unlocks the soul into incarnation can fufill many purposes; teaching others ass well as self.  When a life is designed to serve both ends then the cause and the call are magnificent.  At those times, the higher wisdom can say "And this is necessary now". ....Can a soul learn from a type of fear so pervasive that there is no space for understanding?  The soul can learn.  Perhaps the human being cannot.

Wayne Dyer The Power of Intention:
With self as a focal point, you sustain the illusion that you are your body, which is a completely seperate entity from all others.  This sense of separateness leads you to compete rather than cooperate.  Ultimately its a "no-match" with Spirit, and becomes a huge obstacle to your connection to the power of Source. 

Michael Singer The Untethered Soul.
This is how negative cycles happen.  You actually take a piece of your stuff, which is nothing but deeply seated disturbance from your past, and you implant it in the heart of those around you. ...This is how people ruin relationships and destroy their lives.   Do you doubt that a single blockage getting hit in your heart could case a fall that lasts a lifetime?  I has been known to happen...when a block gets hit, its a good thing.  It's time to open up internally and release the block energy.

If you fall along the way, just get up and forget it.  Use the lessons to strengthen your resolve.  Let go right then.  Do not rationalize, blame, or try to figure it out.  Don't do anything.  Just let go immediately, and allow the energy to go back to the highest center of consciousness it can achieve.

I sent you a warning....

Have you heard the joke about the man who is in a flood and he is on the roof of his house and he prays for God to save him?  First a log goes by, then a boat, then a helicopter.  Each time he says no he is waiting for God to save him.  When he finally drowns he angrily confronts God and God says to him:  “What did you want?  I sent you a log, a boat and a helicopter and you turned them all down!

I feel in this pandemic situation that God is saying; “Well I have been trying to warn you.”

In 2011 I sent a draught so severe to the Southwest that the Churches prayed for rain as the cattle died.

I sent you innumerable hurricane’s: Sandy, Katrina, Harvey, and Dorian...over 410 billion in damage. I sent Mathew to destroy Haiti and Maria to destroy Puerto Rico…and all you did was turn your gaze away.

I sent you record flooding last year devastating your breadbasket

Last year I sent 6,782 separate fires to California alone burning over 2 Trillion dollars worth of homes.

And when that did not get your attention, I burned a whole continent of Australia, over 100 billions worth.

But still you said:  “Too bad for those people”.

  

So now I have sent you Corona – a problem so global that no one can ignore it, so deadly that no one can minimize it.  I have brought you to a halt, I have joined you at the hip….and now do I have your attention?

I, Lynn, need to be clear, I do not believe in an Old Testament God who is vengeful and all powerful and goes around smiting people.  I believe in a Mother Earth, a Universe that is intelligent and an eco-system of which humans are but one player in an intricately and yes divinely woven interdependent and quite perfect system.  But due to a reductionist error in both how our brains process and in how the great theologies of the world have worked, we have seen ourselves as separate from and above or in charge of nature, and it has lead to catastrophically bad choices.

For that reason I want to learn the lessons Corona is trying to teach us.

The first one, just incredible gratitude for all that I am so privileged to have: my health, still a job, food to eat, and a roof over my head that I own that will be mine even after other hard times go by.

I want to learn to slow down and be still and hear what the earth is telling us, that it is sick, very, very sick and needing our help.  Global emissions are already down 5%

I want to notice the way it tells us all our fates are linked as one.

I want to notice God’s cry to care for the least of these among us in this time of suffering.

I want to take up the demand for a jubilee year – for the forgiveness of all debt, to let us start from square zero to rebuild, not for some amongst us to start from square negative 10.

I want out of the destruction before us to rise up like the phoenix to build a new society, one based upon justice and humanity out of the rubble of the disaster we have wrought with policies that have made it worse.

Who Am I?

Who am I? is an exercise in the Alternatives to Violence Project three day workshops on non-violence.  In the exercise, on 10 tiny slips of paper one lists all of the "identities" that one identifies with.   Eg: Mother, therapist, Quaker, woman, activist, etc.    Then one places them in order of importance with least important on the bottom.  Then you are invited to turn the pile over taking the least important one and "throw it away" - feeling into what it would be like to no longer have that identity.  Then you throw away the next one, sensing into that.....and so it continues.  The instructor manual warns to leave people with 3 identities and only suggest they could release the final 3 if it felt right to do that.

This is an exercise I did dozens and dozens of times in my time as an AVP facilitator.  As the pandemic swept in bringing the ban on travel to and from Europe, and stay in place recommendations and then orders....as events cancelled ranging at first from long distance travel and conferences to events over 100, and eventually....EVERYTHING, I found myself in a life size game of Who am I.
First releasing my vacation trip, then the conference for 180 people I had planned for months for the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, then a workshop to be given in Portland, and then Friends General Conference and the workshop I was to give there.  Later even more painfully I would surrender the local Earthday parade: Procession of the Species, and FolkLife - a Memorial Day weekend of fun I have attended every year for 32 years without fail.

I was sort of surprised how easily the identities/expectations fell, although some were harder than others.  But there was simply a feeling of falling into a new world, an alternative reality in which none of those things existed and where nothing involving human contact existed.  In the liminal space which I had entered where everything and anything (both bad, unexpected and even good in a new way) seemed possible - these old identifies seemed almost irrelevant.

Since then I have listened to a number of people who have service identities who have been unable to serve in their accustomed ways because of stay at home orders, talk about how hard it feels to not be able to help, but even more strange how lost they feel without that role (identity).  As it so happens I believe that it is deep in our DNA in response to crisis to help others - this after all from our first tribal time was how we survived.  And it is the thing I most detest about this crisis - that its very nature forces us to go against the instinct to help.   However, when serving other people goes from being an impulse to an identity - one which one is profoundly uncomfortable with, than perhaps something else is actually happening.  Many people are also having to release the identify of "busy" which for many is also a defining identity and find new experiences of how to be connected to other people - both the ones under their roof and the ones they cannot see in person.   We are being forced to find other ways of both entertaining and exercising ourselves - ways more simple and perhaps basic to original human existence.

Some people talk about when things go back to normal.   I hope they don't; I hope we will learn some things from this gigantic game of Who Am I.   As was always the case with Who Am I there is the opportunity as you throw away external identities to find, or notice again, ones own more core spiritual identify and to discover the eternal nature of the soul that is always with us underneath the external wrapping.   To know more deeply who we really are.

Cyber Worship and Traveling Among Friends

I have spent years doing political organizing over Zoom, but when I have even suggested doing a committee meeting over Zoom friends have been very resistant.   Now however in this brave new world of pandemic crisis has forced us to do something that even with liking Zoom I did not think would be a good idea: have worship on zoom.   And Friends are surprised that it is working pretty well.

The first week my Meeting did this we were visited by someone who grew up in the Meeting who was from Italy (and in the midst of a very scary time for Italy).   The Meeting also supports a project in Uganda to support Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered people in a country that will kill them for the "Offense".   We were able to be joined from a woman from Uganda from that project.

This got me thinking.   This week I joined the Meeting I was a member of for 25 years before moving here.  Next week I will try to join the Meeting I grew up in, even though that will be a two hour time difference.....and waking up for 8am worship is a bit daunting.  My travels never take me back there anymore and so it feels like a gift this sort of possibility. I'm pretty sure I cannot get myself together to visit my favorite Eastcoast Meeting because that would mean starting worship at 7am my time. But just this idea that one can suddenly freely - without expense, travel or time - visit almost any Meeting....is actually quite awe inspiring.

Both last week and this week worshiping with different groups I noted that people who have health issues that makes it too hard for them to come to Meeting normally were joining us, as was also true of a Friend who lives far from any Meeting and sometimes travels an hour to be able to worship with us.

My Meeting also held a "community dialogue" which was a time for all to share about how they were coping. It went on for two hours with 25 people and was really lovely and rich.   My former Meeting was discussing how to use the "chat room" function of Zoom to have "Committee Sunday".  (Frankly in most Meetings where committees meet at seperate times- it is easier and each committee just gets its own link for its time.)  They were bravely considering if they could try Meeting for Worship for Business.

I will still always favor in person worship.   It's just part of how I feel about people.  But I am going to ask FGC if they can start offering online worship that runs every hour on Sunday across the US time zones AFTER the pandemic, so that those isolated or health challenged Friends always have a place to worship.

What a funny silver lining from a pandemic.

An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans by Kristin Flyntz

Those of you who read my last post will notice the similar theme here:

An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans

Stop. Just stop.

It is no longer a request. It is a mandate.

We will help you.

We will bring the supersonic, high speed merry-go-round to a halt

We will stop

the planes

the trains

the schools

the malls

the meetings

the frenetic, furied rush of illusions and “obligations” that keep you from hearing our

single and shared beating heart,

the way we breathe together, in unison.

Our obligation is to each other,

As it has always been, even if, even though, you have forgotten.

We will interrupt this broadcast, the endless cacophonous broadcast of divisions and distractions,

to bring you this long-breaking news:

We are not well.

None of us; all of us are suffering.

Last year, the firestorms that scorched the lungs of the earth

did not give you pause.

Nor the typhoons in Africa,China, Japan.

Nor the fevered climates in Japan and India.

You have not been listening.

It is hard to listen when you are so busy all the time, hustling to uphold the comforts and conveniences that scaffold your lives.

But the foundation is giving way,

buckling under the weight of your needs and desires.

We will help you.

We will bring the firestorms to your body

We will bring the fever to your body

We will bring the burning, searing, and flooding to your lungs

that you might hear:

We are not well.

Despite what you might think or feel, we are not the enemy.

We are Messenger. We are Ally. We are a balancing force.

We are asking you:

To stop, to be still, to listen;

To move beyond your individual concerns and consider the concerns of all;

To be with your ignorance, to find your humility, to relinquish your thinking minds and travel deep into the mind of the heart;

To look up into the sky, streaked with fewer planes, and see it, to notice its condition: clear, smoky, smoggy, rainy? How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy?

To look at a tree, and see it, to notice its condition: how does its health contribute to the health of the sky, to the air you need to be healthy?

To visit a river, and see it, to notice its condition: clear, clean, murky, polluted? How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy? How does its health contribute to the health of the tree, who contributes to the health of the sky, so that you may also be healthy?

Many are afraid now.

Do not demonize your fear, and also, do not let it rule you. Instead, let it speak to you—in your stillness,

listen for its wisdom.

What might it be telling you about what is at work, at issue, at risk, beyond the threats of personal inconvenience and illness?

As the health of a tree, a river, the sky tells you about quality of your own health, what might the quality of your health tell you about the health of the rivers, the trees, the sky, and all of us who share this planet with you?

Stop.

Notice if you are resisting.

Notice what you are resisting.

Ask why.

Stop. Just stop.

Be still.

Listen.

Ask us what we might teach you about illness and healing, about what might be required so that all may be well.

We will help you, if you listen.

The Corona Virus and Climate Change

So here we are suddenly thrust into a Pandemic.  Living in circumstances none of us could imagine even a month ago when the epidemic was sweeping China and Iran, etc.  We are living a crisis of a type that has not happened in any living person's memory (100 years since the last pandemic).   We are living a nightmare in someways made worse by how much of a global community technology has made us.  (100 years ago people did not fly in hours from one place to another.)

As I have been doing Joanna Macy's Work That Reconnects for 10 years I cannot help but see this catastrophe through that lens designed to help us face "the Mess we are in without going Crazy" or with Active Hope (the title of her last book).   It feels to me like sharing some of these thoughts would be helpful to others as well.

As someone who has been doing climate work now for 13 years I have been long been staring down grim scenarios for humanity and our planet.  The worst case scenarios all involve the total breakdown of society as the environment itself fails.  Logically there is a terrible economic fall out of such scenarios and the breakdown of various societal structures, but even the worst case scenarios did not see things like that happening for 10 to 15 years.  Some of those scenarios also envisioned old epidemics literally rising out of the permafrost or no longer enough vaccinations to suppress.

But what is actually happening is a scenario no one but a science fiction writer envisioned and would appear unrelated to Climate Change.  Yet Joanna's words still powerfully apply for me.  She has talked for a long time about non-linear time, the idea coming forth from quantum mechanics of parallel time, and she has said: our ancestors and our descendants are trying to help us, and the non human beings.  I had the dawning realization the first time I listened to her "why do I think all the solutions will come from the minds of humans living right now?"   During the sHell No campaign in the NW in 2015 - Kayactvists tried to stop Shell from parking a rig in Seattle and going up to Alaska and testing to drill off the coast of Alaska, and activists hung off a bridge in Portland to stop the ice breaker coming for repair.  I had several experiences then that felt powerfully to speak about what Joanna was speaking of.

The rig alluded the two dozen Kayactivists trying to block it in Seattle but by the time it got across from Port Townsend some Kayactivists - only 4 or 5 came out and it swerved slightly to miss them and ground.  It was only stuck a short time, but I felt as if the earth had reached up and grabbed it!  I felt as if the earth were trying to help.   Later, the ice breaker was damaged (apparently by ice) and had to be brought down to Portland for repairs...causing delay. (Again I felt the frozen ocean had reached up ripping the ice breaker and helping us.) It was further delayed as it left by activists hanging on ropes from the bridge blocking their path and by kayactivts that also darted out and blocked their path. That whole delay only took two days, but added to the time lost on the repair and Shell wound up not having enough time to do their test drilling and without that info their board cancelled the whole project (partly also aware of the negative public outcry.)  In the end I felt the earth had puts its finger on the scale and helped ups to win that battle.

For those of you very scientific this account will drive you mad.   This is a spiritual story.  It is a story of how beings from another time are conspiring on behalf of all life to save us.

What you say does this have to do with the Coronovirus?  Well I want to be clear I am not celebrating anyone's death.  I am not oblivious to the untold suffering that the virus is bringing by stopping the global economy in its tracks....but I will say this: look at a list of the industries currently in a tail spin:
airlines, the oil industry, cruise ships, the financial industry....all of these are leading contributors to climate change.  We are literally seeing as the flying and way less driving is happening as people are compelled to stay home the green house gases reducing and the deep smog over China lifting.  The eco system has produced a virus that is both reducing the population of the beings in charge of climate change and it is also changing our most climate destroying behaviors. 

Sure when the epidemic is over people will go back to flying and driving and spending money....but maybe just maybe we will begin to realize that much more telecommuting could normally occur, that it is crazy to fly across the country for a convention where we listen to a talking head that we could easily have listened to on a screen.   Maybe we will think twice about flying across many states to go to a sports game or watch a play.  Maybe we can hold flying a privilege for weddings and funerals and to see the dying.   Maybe we will learn how quickly we can change policies when we really KNOW we are in an emergency (she says with the anger of being told for three years that we will protect the trees next session or being told by portfolio managers that they know oil will become a stranded asset put policy prohibits divesting from it.)  Maybe in the ashes of this mess we will decide we might as well reconstruct things in a way that will survive climate change.  Maybe just maybe we can learn from this experience about the way we have been living and how we need to live.

Joanna Macy is a whole systems thinker.  One of the "games" she has us do in workshops to illustrate systems theory involves each of us secretly picking two people in the group of 20.  When we say go you are to place yourself equadistantly from those two as the group moves (that can be in a line or a triangle).  The group keeps moving and moving trying to establish this perfect equilibrium.  Then one predesignated person drops to the ground and the facilitator says: if you are connected to someone on the ground you must drop too.  Within seconds the entire group is on the ground.  This is a powerful lesson that we are all connected to each other in the web of life.   This is why the moment the ban on travel to Europe was  announced I knew our economy was going down.   I knew it would force airlines into bankruptcy, that as they lessened flights other things would go wrong, etc.  I knew that as we restricted movement in order to stop the spread of the virus that it would stop economic activity and close businesses, many forever.  This is the painful side of the generally beautiful truth that we are all connected to each other.

It is also why it is so important for how we now respond to this.  It we act as every person for themselves we will create a hell.  Like the person who knew they had the Covi-19 and flew on a Jet Blue plane anyway exposing every person on that plane.  An unbelievably selfish act destroying the web they belong to.   But I also see people right now reaching out to get groceries and meds for those who cannot do it, and trying to figure out how to help those who are becoming unemployed over night. Several NBA players responded to the cancelling of their season by donating to replace the incomes for the season of the minimum wage janitors and hotdog sellers, etc. associated with the stadium.   We are all payed millions, but how can we help those who are struggling right now?

History is full of crises.  Crises that pivoted us as a people in a good way and crises that pivoted us in a bad way.  Example - the poor resolution of WWI leading to economic hardship in Germany made ripe the rise of Hitler promising a new bright future for Germany.  The worldwide recession was responded to by Roosevelt in a transformational way of creating social security, public works projects, unemployment insurance, etc.   We will choose what comes out of this crisis.  We can let the rich use it to snap up even more resources or we can recreate a society that provides universal health care, sick leave and maternity leave for all, and that begins to really seriously address climate change.  Some may find what I say to be an incredible tale of silver linings or fairy tales.  But we are the ones who will decide what the final outcome of this story will be.

Surrender and the Serenity Prayer

My Meeting has been going through hard times.  So much so, that it has been hard for me to write for my blog.  I have been doing by prayer practice that involves asking a question and opening in succession books that have been sources of spiritual wisdom and seeing what they speak to me.  So what is coming up for me right now is about the serenity prayer:  “God grant me the courage to change the things I can and the serenity to accept the things we cannot and the wisdom to know the difference.”   This prayer has always been a struggle for me to get clarity around because, as I have written elsewhere, being raised Quaker I was raised with perhaps an inflated sense of what I/We could change.  Afterall we were the people who fought to get religious freedom for the US, to end slavery, to get woman the vote, to end the Vietnam war, etc.  We also are taught to be part of all the decision making of our Meetings and to feel that every voice counts.  

So when you carry that sense of personal empowerment and duty, it is very hard to draw the line of what can I change and what must I accept?   Also deep in the nature of Quakerism is the search for a perfected world, for bringing God’s Kingdom down onto earth.  After all we say to the world that we should act without violence, uphold the equality of all, speak the truth at all times, etc.   These are not goals most of the world pursues or sees as “practical”.

Therefore, in looking at huge disappointments I currently have with my Meeting in its ability to uphold our testimonies in the face of behaviors that are not congruent with them, the difficulty to say no when no needs to be said, or to challenge something when challenging it will be a struggle, I have mainly felt the need to DO things.   However, more than a year and half of doing, on my part and many people’s parts have lead to no resolution or peace.  

So I am now turning towards the serenity part of the prayer or the surrender part as I experience it.  I am touching into a deep learning in my years of being a therapist.  As a therapist you can offer people support, encouragement, guidance, healing, and sometimes inspiration …. But in the end they are always on their own.  They will make their own choices, even if inside of patterns, and sometimes those will be for growth and change and sometimes they will be to repeat destructive choices.  I have had to die to my own impotence over, and over, and over again.  

At first I hated that about being a therapist; but eventually I found something very true in it and actually when I stopped fighting it – something peaceful.  I was able to connect to the notion described in the Bible that the Divine Parent knows everything about us, every hair on our head, judges us not because of knowing the extreme complexity with which we act and yet is there for us, always available, always ready to start a new with us, always inviting us to go towards the Light.

When I would get in touch with that reality then I could understand better that sometimes I am just a witness to the suffering, other times I am holding their intention to grow and change till they can come back to it.  But mainly I could understand that I had reached the end of what I could do and had to rest in what was/is.   In my morning prayers right now I found words also about stepping back from the mind trying to solve everything, from ego or frenetic action.  The reminders to drop back away from the story and drop into ones true spiritual self.

I am still trying to understand what that means about commitment to beliefs that I hold as true.  I don’t think I can simply walk away from those values without abandoning the manifestation of Spirit as I know it.  I think it means still speaking the truth as I know it when I have the possibility to do so.  But I think it means having to drop the expectation or hope for Quakers to be any kind of perfected people.  It means that I will need to work in an intensive way with non attachment every day.