Friday Links: Peace and Change Edition

Go ahead; get upside down this week. (image source)

The autumnal equinox is on the 23rd, and Peace Day is on the 21st, so this week is all about peace and change. These links are to prepare you not only for peace and change, but also the historical Papal visit that starts on 9/22.

Peace One Day: Jeremy Gilley started this push for an international day of peace back in 1999. he made a documentary called Peace One Day, pushing for all of those at war - nations, tribes, and citizens - to put down their arms for just 24 hours. Needless to say, he was unsuccessful, but in 2001 the United Nations declared September 21st and International Day of Peace. People all around the globe celebrate by attending concerts and volunteering. Oh, and also shooting each other and persecuting the innocent. But Rome was not built in a day. Maybe remember Sutra 1.33 today, and let that be your activity:

"By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and disregard for the wicked, the [mind] retains its undisturbed calmness." (click to tweet!)

The Autumnal Equinox: It's important to know what these things are. It's also important because we all want to balance a raw egg on its end.

Because Yoga Balances Strength And Ease: Along those same lines, you should practice handstand on the autumnal equinox. Maybe it only works if you are shaped like a raw egg, but it couldn't hurt to try. Handstand is about strength, but it's also about alignment and bone stacking. Never say never.

The Pope's Visit: I am not normally a big fan of Catholicism (my fault! my fault! my fault!), but I am a fan of this Pope. He has brought compassion back to the Catholic Church, along with a little bit of common sense. This scares me for him, as many devout Catholics are fans of neither, and Pope Francis likes to mingle among the people. That his visit coincides with both the week of Peace Day and the change of seasons seems like no coincidence.

Now you're all set to handstand while being peaceful and celebrating the Pope's visit. What other wonderful things are on tap for your week ahead?

Tilting At Windmills

So this past week I have had two major anxiety attacks. So major that they required a double dose of anti-anxiety meds to knock them back, and even that took twice as long as usual.

I feel like I am not meant for this world sometimes. It seems like all of the vibrations in the universe travel across the plane of existence and settle in my bones. It's too much, too overwhelming: the pain, the sadness, even the happiness sometimes. I remember cowering undeneath  a seat at a Washington Bullets game when I was young, maybe six, covering my ears and crying as everyone around me roared their approval at a come-from-behind victory.

The hate spewed online and seething below the surface of many interactions this past week in Baltimore has been unbearable. As the news about Freddie Gray unfolded, changing from weeks of peaceful protest and calls for action to two nights of violence and rioting, I scrolled Twitter obsessively.

This week, I have deleted my subscription to multiple news outlets and blocked several "rebuild Baltimore" groups on Facebook. I am contemplating deleting my Facebook page altogether and archiving my Twitter feed.

Maybe it is cowardice that forces me to take actions to protect myself, but I am really struggling to cope with what is going on in this city and the deep history of racism and discord and the massive leaps of faith it will require to change, leaps of faith that I am not ultimately sure the bulk of humanity is capable of making. Certainly not many residents in Baltimore, when many in the northern neighborhoods recite standard white privilege mantras ("I can't believe they destroy their own neighborhoods!") and in southern and western neighborhoods where crime unrelated to the unrest has seen a spike as police and National Guard forces were engaged in concentrated areas of the city.

Tilting at windmills. Spitting in the wind. Bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon.

That's how changes feels. Impossible.

I am breathing. I go to yoga. I am trying to sleep (on an air mattress with a hole that lands me hovering above the floor by the time my alarm goes off in the morning, but a mattress is coming in less than two weeks so I suck it up). I write down what I am grateful for (and there is so much), but the world seeps into my skin through my pores, and I can't stop it.

I dream nearly constantly of the ocean, a beach with the water in front of me and no sound but the wind and the waves. No people, nothing electronic, nothing, just the sand and the water and the wind. You can't take a vacation from yourself, as much as you try (my early 20s proved that to me), but I am struggling to find equilibrium in the city. I am nesting in the nearly-finished rehab, and it feels like I am building a fortress. This can't be healthy, but it feels necessary.

What do you do when it's too much?

 (as an aside, I am not writing anymore on the ways in which Baltimore needs to be fixed. I have three other blogs on the subject but just have to step back. Part 1 and part 2 are still up. For now.)

(image source)

 

 

 

 

 

Unless And Until: Baltimore

Unless and until all lives matter as more than a soundbite and a hashtag...

Unless and until we are so sickened by the site of assault of any kind...

Unless and until equal rights are more than a campaign slogan...

Unless and until everyone has a voice...

Unless and until it stops being, "Would you look at those people..."

Nothing will change. When someone sets a senior center on fire and burns and loots their own neighborhood, businesses owned by people they know, they feel they have nothing to lose. They are disenfranchised to the point that they don't feel like they even live in the same country that they see on TV.

Two blocks from the looting last night are million dollar homes.

Police set up in front of Camden Yards but let rioters destroy their own neighborhoods.

People of all races were dragged out of cars and beaten.

The mayor was silent for five hours, appearing only to look beaten herself and call the rioters thugs.

Please don't misunderstand: I cannot condone anything that happened last night. But my endorsement or the lack thereof is not the point.

People keep quoting MLK, to wit: "A riot is the language when people don't feel heard" (paraphrasing).

But it's more than that. Before they can open their mouths, rioters don't even feel seen. It's The Invisible Man all over again. It's black men disappearing. It's an entire race of people excommunicated from the business of life by the color of their skin. Before we judge the actions of a few (and it was only a few, in relative terms) imagine what you would do if everyday you were told you were inferior and not worth anything, both implicitly and explicitly. Chances are good you can't begin to imagine it. If you are reading this blog (and even as I am writing this blog), you have privilege that is so ingrained it doesn't even feel like privilege. It just is.

Unless and until we can pretend to put ourselves in the shoes of others for just a moment to imagine that they love their children just as much as we do...

Unless and until we are committed to the success of everyone, not as a handout, not as a hand up, but as a journey that we take side-by-side...

Unless and until we are as invested in the future of the whole country, not just a select few...

Nothing will change.

It's not a conservative vs. liberal thing. It's not Christians vs. Muslims. Or us vs. them. It is us vs. our own humanity. Are we humans? Are we separated from the animals by our compassion and ability to reason? Can we not see that this is an issue that goes beyond throwing money at a problem?

Buying a house on a block of abandoned rowhouses is not the solution.

More testing in school is not the solution.

More death and violence is not the solution.

The solution requires nothing less than a cultural shift in attitude on both sides. It almost requires a do-over, a wiping of the slate. When you burn something down, you can live in the ashes, assemble a crude structure to keep the rain off but that will probably fall down again, or build something to last.

Unless and until we get to the core, address the institutionalized nature of deeply held prejudice and remedy the wrongs on both sides, our flimsy structure will come crashing down around our ears. Maybe not in a year or five years or ten years, but maybe today. Or tonight.

We are not these riots. Are we?

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The Green Bean Truck

We drove down two-lane back roads into Delaware early Saturday morning. Corn was turning yellow in endless fields on either side of the road, and there was a stillness to our travel unbroken by wind or birds or other cars.

Our first view of the Chesapeake Bay in a long time. Flat calm and structural steel on a bridge that is the purest memory of my childhood.

Two hours later, we pulled into our driveway...

...and greeted the newest edition to the tiny house family.

(he was dispatched, along with several of his kinfolk, many of whom had decided that a tiny house was just the right size, although other than each other the pickings were slim.)

There was work to be done, but not for the dog. He got comfy on the porch and watched the world go by. The world, in this case, consisted of a car, some birds, and innumerable bugs. There was a lot of sleeping.

Later, this. A doughnut and a dog and a beach chair. A slash of light from the setting sun.

And later still, coming home from a walk. Blurry, yes, but exactly what we saw through the trees.

In the morning, sleepy babies in the loft...

...a walk to the beach...

...and a critter, trying desperately to make it to the other side of the road.

(Most of his wooly bear friends didn't make it to the other side, so it was hard to use them to predict the winter. We also found a very dead but wholly intact frog, stretched to his full length, a large pile of glass, and more mosquitoes. No snakes, thus far.)

We followed the green bean truck most of the way home.