Showing up
Look at what we’ve survived. A global pandemic, with our city as the epicenter. Months without the things we thought we needed to live. Plans, dreams, businesses destroyed. Sickness, anxiety, precarity. Look at how we showed up. We stitched masks and brought food to strangers. We took care of our friends. We were careful and generous with each other. We discovered how strong we are.
It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that this movement sweeping the country is coming in the midst of a pandemic. Maybe COVID-19 helped us see that what we thought was stable and necessary is not. What else might not be as stable as it seems? An entrenched racist system of governance that has been with us since this country’s beginning? What else can we rethink? That without a $6 billion annual police budget, New York would be a Mad Max chaos of looting and violence? What else can we do without? The sense of safety that nonblack people gain from having a militarized security force ready to attack anyone who bothers us, just a phone call away?
I know we’re all scared right now. The COVID emergency tore apart the structures of safety and control that used to circumscribe our lives. Watching protests, anger and violence can make us even more scared. But everything is about what we do now with that fear. Trying to ignore it will only work for so long. Moving past our aching, enormous, blinding concerns about our selves and extending our hand to those asking for it is the only way forward.
What I’m reading
Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis, by David Loy
Excerpt from an interview with Joanna Macy
With the little time left, we could wake up more. We could allow this whole experience of the planet, which is intrinsically rewarding, to manifest through our heart-minds — so that the planet may see itself, so that life may see itself. And we can bless it in some way. So there is some source of blessing on us, even as we die. I think of a Korean monk who said “Sunsets are beautiful too, not just sunrises.” We can do it beautifully. If we are going to go out, then we can do it with some nobility, generosity and beauty, so we do not fall into shock and fear.
Joanna Macy was talking about the extinction of the human race due to climate change. I know that may feel like just one more impossible worry on top of everything else. But to me, it’s inseparable from the solidarity that is showing itself in this moment of upheaval. If there was ever a moment to make ourselves better, that moment is now. Can you imagine if, as our sun sets, we finally listened to each other? If we finally made the Earth a home for everyone who lives here? What a spectacular moment to be here for.