Tag: politics

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Sister, I see you.

by DeniseLeave a Comment on Sister, I see you.

ChooseLoveSister, I see you.

Holding your handmade signs and shouting words of anger and frustration at the young woman walking past, using your voice to inflict pain on another wounded soul. I wonder if you’ve given any thought to the woman who might hear the words coming from your mouth.

The scared teenager, desperate to break the cycle of abusive relationships and poverty, trembles under the weight of her decision. She has for the first time, seen her own value and taken responsibility for herself. In that instant, her path shifts and her purpose solidifies. She will eventually go on to impact the lives of other young women but first she must lift the blanket of shame your words have thrown over her.

Sister, I see you.

Hiding safely behind your computer screen, sharing words of condemnation for women you have not met, using your platform to spew hate. Blindly sharing words you have not validated, written by someone you do not know. I wonder if you’ve given any thought to the woman who might read what you have written.

The young mother with the precocious toddler who has just been told her unborn baby has not developed a brain and it matters not at all how very much she wanted this baby or the many months she tried to get pregnant, he will not survive birth. Laws in the state she resides force her to leave her little boy and stay overnight at a hotel in order to safely end a pregnancy she would give her life to save. It is during this horrendous drive that she scrolls her facebook page for distraction and reads your words labeling her a murderer. She will not conceive again and will eventually find joy in the child she has but your words will forever echo.

Sister, I see you.

Sitting in the café, surrounded by friends, chatting righteously about your virtues. Pontificating the holy difference between you and those “other” women. I wonder if you’ve given any thought to the woman sitting next to you quietly absorbing the weight of your judgment.

The friend you assume to know, secretly raped by a man she thought was safe, a well-respected man who wielded power in the community. His power used to silence her much like your words. Holier than thou postures shaming misunderstood choices, building walls where bridges should be.

Sister, I see you.

Sitting in fear of the truth that we are all the same, working furiously to build the case that we are different. Doing our best to navigate this human experience, we are faced with choices designed for our growth. We rank choices as if they have varying levels of value, as if some lessons are more important than others. This is not true. All lessons have value to the learner. It is not our place to judge the lessons of another person. Judgment comes from a place of fear. The ego uses this fear to drown out love, because where love exists, the ego dies. To recognize the connection between us would mean recognizing our own shadow parts and sitting in a space of vulnerability. It is in this space that love exists.

We are the same you and I, created of the same Divine energy, often in need of reminding. We stumble our way through this life doing the best we can at any given moment. Not one of us knowing any more than the other, our obstacles become our foundations, the building blocks on which we stand. Let us not use them to stand against each other. Judgment is a hate filled tool. Lift it not, for its purpose is not to build but only to break.

Together let us end the cycle of division that feeds on labels of judgment. Let us dare to stand face to face and look into the mirror of our sister’s soul seeing the Divine light that joins. And when asked to choose, let us be brave and choose love. For we are more alike than we are unalike.

-namaste

 

Published Article

To my Fellow Reluctant Activists: we were made for this

by DeniseLeave a Comment on To my Fellow Reluctant Activists: we were made for this

 

Lately, I find myself reading news articles, checking source validity, fact-checking video interviews, researching world history, and engaging in political discussions. Over the past few months, I’ve written letters, signed petitions, made phone calls, attended rallies, and marched at our nation’s capitol. My morning routine now consists of at least three phone calls to my representatives and one additional call to “the office of the issue of the day” followed by a tweet and a post that hopefully, in some way, informs others of what I am learning.

None of this comes naturally to me. I’m an introvert. I’m the person who loves snow days because it means I can enjoy quiet time without feeling guilty that I should be engaging with anyone other than “my people.” I’ve yet to reach that point people talk about when they’ve had too many days without human contact and they start to go stir crazy. On the contrary, more than a few hours actively engaged with strangers and I’m in need of isolation to recharge myself. I love sitting in silence and have no need to make conversation to feel connected. I love reading and writing, crocheting and yoga, Hallmark movies and The Andy Griffith Show. I have no desire for suspense or intrigue. I like happy endings…predictable happy endings. At 52 years old and after a lifetime of denial, I was finally comfortable knowing these things about myself and had no desire to change. However, the universe has recently conspired to keep me living in a state of discomfort.

Often, engaged in debate, I find my palms are sweaty and my voice is shaking. I ask myself, “Who is this person who is speaking so passionately about a subject she barely understands?” Politics has never been my area of expertise. Without Ms. Ellis’s Law & Justice lectures and the catchy songs from Schoolhouse Rock, I would be completely clueless as to how our government functions. But what I’m beginning to understand is that passions arise from unexpected places and often it isn’t until we take a step back that we are able to see the interconnectedness of life events.

Molestation and assault may silence a voice but they don’t kill the message. We go through life trying to communicate, stumbling, falling, longing to be heard. We shout. We cry. We whisper. We are ignored, talked-over, dismissed, misunderstood. For a period of time, it may seem as if we have given up. We go through the motions and conform because we’re tired from the struggle. This has, in our history, shown up as generations of women whose voices were lost amidst the noise of the times. Across the globe today, nations of women oppressed, abused, enslaved, and forgotten. Voices are muffled but the message remains, simmering beneath the surface, waiting. Waiting for the day when the pressure is so intense that the fear of speaking pales in comparison to the fear of remaining silent.

Although on the surface it appears to be sudden, the awakening happens slowly. Whispers begin. Thoughts are shared. Words are overheard that strike a cord in people who previously thought they were alone. One by one communities are formed. Voices joined together create volume and people begin to listen. For those who aren’t accustomed to being heard, the feeling is one of power, validation, and respect. Fears are pushed aside and passion takes over. From quivering voices the message begins to seep out into the universe, starting as a rumble and growing to a roar.

This is where I find myself today, empowered by the strength of other women, no longer sitting quietly by while injustice occurs. We may stumble. We may fall. We might be dismissed, talked-over, and misunderstood but we’ve been here before. We have lived in that space of fear and it has shaped us. Like pressure to coal, we’ve emerged stronger and more brilliant, built for this time.

This time, we will not be ignored. We will cry cleansing tears. We will whisper truth to our babies and shout justice into this troubled world. We will reach deep inside our hearts and feel compassion for those who need it most and having seen the darkness, we will bring the light. We will march, and write, and sing, and we will be heard.

And though we may be reluctant activists, we were made for this. img_4331

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2017/02/to-my-fellow-reluctant-activists-we-were-made-for-this/

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Let us pray.

by DeniseLeave a Comment on Let us pray.

pray-banner

Recently, I read of a group of people who planned to be in Washington DC on inauguration day to pray for the incoming president. I couldn’t help but ask myself exactly what it was they would be praying for: His safety, given his divisive rhetoric? His heart, given his plans regarding human rights? His intellect, given his ignorance of the office he would hold and the many policies he would influence? His soul, given his inability to display modesty or gratitude for his situation?

What would these well-meaning individuals have asked God to do on that fateful day in history? To change a man into someone he is not? To step in and provide some Divine intervention that would save his soul and perhaps also the world as we know it? Many may believe that God chose this man to be our next president and therefore, God most certainly would not leave us in harm’s way.

I, myself, am not a religious person. However, I am a reflective person and as I reflect on the past year I’m reminded of a story about a man who’s house was consumed by a flood. The short version of the story is that the man sat on his rooftop and prayed for God to save him. He prayed as a friend came by in a canoe, a policeman came by in a boat, and a rescue helicopter flew overhead, all offering the man a ride to safety. He prayed and prayed as the flood waters rose until eventually, he drowned. When the man reached the pearly gates, he asked why God had deserted him. He was faithful in his prayer and steadfast in his belief that God would never forsake him. God shook her head and said, “I did not forsake you. I sent a canoe, a boat, and a helicopter. You refused all three.”

If one is to believe that God sent us this president, aren’t we also to believe that she sent the other 19 primary candidates from which to choose? The Bible is filled with stories where believers were tested. Perhaps the story of the 2016 US Presidential election is a modern day story of such a test. I imagine God might have thought this was an easy one for us to pass. After all, she had provided a book with lessons and rules as a guide.

“I’ll give them 17 candidates on one side, a few of them will be so extreme that they can eliminate them right off the bat, but I’ll leave one or two reasonable choices. Then on the other side, I’ll give them a flawed but qualified woman and a jewish guy who’s fighting for all that my son was sent to teach.” 

I imagine as the primaries progressed, God may have started to feel a bit concerned and by the time the GOP debates took place, God was most likely losing faith. Childish insults, rude behavior, false statements, shouting. At one point, in an effort to get attention, one candidate was heard to say, “Can someone attack me please ?” God watched as we officially entered the land of the absurd. Week after week she upped her game but it didn’t work. The more obscene the situation, the more popular the candidate.

The situation wasn’t much better on the DEM side. The choice for the Left was between a kickass woman who refused to play nice and a fatherly old man who fought to feed the poor and tax the rich. I’m certain God felt confident that we could get that one right. Checking in on things daily, she would see massive crowds of people supporting the jewish socialist as he spoke of income equality, human rights, worker’s rights, peace, love, and protecting Mother Earth. I imagine God felt little concern for the outcome of the DEM primaries but just to be safe, she sent that little bird to sit on the podium to seal the deal. #BossMove

Then the primary results began to come in. It was most likely at this time that God started to regret the whole “free will” thing. Realizing what she had to work with in the general election, God stepped up her game yet again. Providing opportunity after opportunity to showcase the difference between the two candidates: hateful rhetoric, Islamophobia, misogyny, mockery, adultery, conceit. Audio and video evidence was released to help us separate real facts from “alternative facts.” At one point, I imagine God shaking her head and considering a googleAd:

7 DEADLY SINS - FREE & EASY ACCESS
www.DonaldTrump.wth 
Pride. Envy. Wrath. Gluttony. Lust. Sloth. Greed.

And then we voted…

At this point, I imagine God cried. And then, like most of us, she took a few days to grieve and collect herself.

What must she be thinking now? I imagine there’s a part of her, like any parent when their child makes a poor choice, that would like to say, “Don’t ask me to fix this. I did my best to guide you toward the path of righteousness but you chose to go a different way. Now you can live with the consequences of your decisions.”

But she won’t.

She’ll listen to every voice and feel the heaviness of every heart. She will inhale a deep breath of compassion and exhale love all over the universe. With unconditional love, God will forgive our arrogance, forget our shameful selfishness, and provide us the opportunity to come together and heal the divisions we allowed to separate us from each other, but she won’t do it for us.

God has provided each of us with everything we need to fix this mess ourselves. We are, after all, each created in God’s own image, each of us a spark of the Divine energy of the Universe blessed with the gift to show love and compassion, but we must wake up and be responsible citizens, not only of this country but of the universe we inhabit. We cannot sit on the rooftop of our ideals praying to God for evidence of why we are right and others are wrong. No, we must take action or we will all soon drown.

 

 

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Civic Ignorance

by DeniseLeave a Comment on Civic Ignorance

Just when we think it can’t get any crazier, when there can’t possibly be another trigger point for him to hit, BAM! There he goes again, even lower than before. This time it’s babies being ripped from a mother’s womb. A ghastly description of what could only be a scene from a low budget horror movie. Facts be damned. He’s gonna say whatever the hell he wants to and, lord help us all, there are people who believe him. People who will take his repeated false statements as fact and repeat them over and over on social media sites, adding graphics, creating memes, and misconstruing the issue to a point that no one knows where the truth lies anymore.

As a country, we’re battle weary. We’ve fought against racism, sexism, xenophobia, misogyny, and bullying. Many of us have stood in disbelief as we watched neighbors and friends step out of the darkness to reveal things about themselves that most of us would prefer not to know. A part of us wanted to stay inside our happy bubble singing LaLaLa and seeing only the good in everyone, normally, focusing on the positive and tuning out the negative. Sadly, “normally” hasn’t been around for a while.

For the past year, we’ve had to speak up for immigrants, gays, Muslims, and refugees. We’ve been called to re-evaluate our views on practically every social issue imaginable: Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Gay Rights, Criminal Justice, Gun Control, Abortion…

To explain why it’s wrong for a country founded by immigrants to discriminate against immigrants felt ludicrous, but we did it. Using words like freedom, opportunity, justice, and inclusion, we reminded folks of what it means to be an American. We attempted to calm the paranoid and bring sanity and compassion back to the conversation. We’ve talked of religious freedom and equal rights. We’ve been reminded to “Love thy neighbor as thy self,” that “Black lives matter,” and that “Love is Love.” We’ve defended religions that were not our own in hopes that the sentiment would be reciprocated and mutual acceptance achieved.

We’ve fought against the language of rape culture. We’ve heard audiotape boasting of sexual assault defended by men and women as “guy talk”, “locker room antics”, and “typical boy behavior”. We’ve been told to get over ourselves and stop pretending to be offended by vulgar words. For days, we fought to be heard. It’s NOT the word “pussy” that upsets us! It’s the act of grabbing a woman ANYWHERE without her consent. Many spoke out, no longer allowing the normalization of unacceptable behavior.

Week after week, issue after issue, we’ve armed ourselves with facts and resolved to do our part to discuss and debate respectfully and thoughtfully. We’ve listened, responded, and when necessary, agreed to disagree. This is how democracy works. But lately, like a toddler whose tantrums have not resulted in the attention he was seeking, the outbursts have reached the level of deplorable and I, for one, have no more patience.

We now have a presidential candidate, civically ignorant, spouting lies and spreading unfounded fear. Using innuendo and rumor as if it were fact, to distort records and manipulate the citizenry. Taking quotes out of context to paint false pictures. And as upset as we should be with this behavior, we should be even more upset with the behavior of those who have allowed this to fester. Those who have laid back and been spoon fed by the media and by the church, taking whatever is offered as the gospel, not questioning or inquiring. Allowing those in power to manipulate emotions and thoughts because it’s easier than thinking for our selves.

“I don’t understand, “ is not an excuse. If an issue is important, seek to understand. Reach out to people who have experience and ask questions. Approach things with an open mind and a caring heart, willing to learn and brave enough to allow a paradigm to shift.

If you read a quote that bothers you, research it. And if you discover the quote was taken out of context, imagine how it might feel to be misquoted yourself. Be grateful you aren’t publicly scrutinized and have compassion for those who are.

If you don’t understand the effects of sexual assault because you’ve never experienced it, don’t judge those who have. Refrain from questioning their motive or behavior. Express gratitude for your fortune and compassion for their struggle.

If you don’t understand the how and the why of abortion because you’ve never known someone who faced that decision, don’t condemn what you don’t know. Express gratitude for your innocence and compassion for their pain.

If you don’t understand why it’s important to acknowledge that Black Lives Matter because you aren’t black, don’t condemn those who are angry and frustrated. Express gratitude for your privilege and compassion for their story.

If you don’t understand why some of us are weary and no longer have patience for the conversation, then you aren’t paying attention and that is the reason for our frustration.

For whatever reason, be it laziness, busyness, or ignorance, if you choose not to do a little research and educate yourself on the issues, please refrain from the conversation. You are only serving to lower the overall competence and intelligence of an already shaky population. Our democracy is in danger and civic ignorance is the cause.

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Love trumps Fear

by DeniseLeave a Comment on Love trumps Fear

Across the globe a plane crashes, families mourn, leaders speak. Questions swirl as answers come in slowly. Countries are angered. Accusations are leveled. Once again our humanity is highlighted as our hearts go out to those we will never know and yet somehow feel akin to.

Across the nation, the climate is contentious as leaders from both political parties ramp up the rhetoric in efforts to energize their base, hoping to garner more support in the days to come. Chosen topics are those that divide us, the extreme on either side becoming the loudest voices and thus, the most likely to be heard.

A presidential candidate stirs up fear with predictions of “the worst depression of our time” and “more terrorist bombings to come. ”The news media circles like buzzards, zoning in on the ugliest, amplifying the effect and serving only to widen the chasm. A state convention filled with passionate citizens is reported as violent and suddenly the face of an entire group is painted as hate filled and ignorant. Idealists pledge commitment to a movement, refusing acceptance of the status quo, and are demonized and disrespected. Votes that have yet to be cast are dismissed as irrelevant by candidates who declare victory before the process is completed. Arrogance in place of humility widens the chasm.

Frustrated, individuals seek those who share their concerns, a sympathetic ear willing to commiserate, to feel even in the slightest way that they are not alone. Emotions intensify and voices are drowned out. Thoughtful arguments are passed over for the more sensational and ridiculous. Soundbytes replace facts. And the chasm widens.

Bombarded by the ugliness and inundated with negativity, a feeling of helplessness begins to seep into the collective consciousness and with it, fear. Groups of people organize in efforts to affect change. Speaking out for the less fortunate, the marginalized, and the minority, hopeful that the power of numbers will create a voice loud enough to be heard over the buzz of mass media and fear mongering politicians. Private businesses boycott against discrimination and citizens protest in larger numbers. Facebook profiles fill with colors representing the country of a downed airliner as individuals seek ways to show solidarity across continents. Airline security lines lengthen and for a day or two, everyone is patient.

Beyond the hysteria of the media and the passion-filled rhetoric of the political arena is where our collective humanity lies. When the veil of difference that divides us is lifted, what remains can serve to bring us together.

Closer to home, a box of doughnuts carried through an airport elicits smiles and spontaneous conversation amongst strangers. Laughter fills the air carried on the aroma of the freshly baked pastries and no one asks for party affiliation or religious beliefs. Jokingly a security guard insists payment in the form of one original glazed before passage is granted. Once onboard, fellow passengers express playful gratitude that someone brought “snacks for everyone.” It matters little if or when the person in the adjoining seat last attended church. No one seems to care how their neighbor is planning to vote or even if they are registered. In this moment at least, any concern about terror attacks, disenfranchised voters, or discriminatory laws are out of mind. The veil that separates has been lifted if only briefly and only love remains. And where there is love, fear cannot dwell.

krispy-kreme-photoPerhaps what the world needs is more doughnuts.