Dear Co-Creator,
Play with me as I process:
Today as I pour my hot cup of tea, I consider my privilege to consider responsibility, obligation, a call to arms in a world continually falling apart each time I open my eyes. I have been a guest in a garden this last Spring growing cut flowers, and a fresh batch of yellow tulips is up today from the soil. Another plant, before it flowered, was thought to be a weed and it turned out to flower rather beautifully. The keeper of the garden tells me he's glad he didn't manage to pull them all out.
Today I feel pulled in so many directions, so many paths forward. The urge to return to my comforts and desire to be Good. To speak and to be silent. To be vulnerable and be hurt. To be silent and be rewarded by a self-perpetuated culture of advantage and complacency. To be clumsy, to save this person and these people. To acknowledge my power afforded by my advantages and so perhaps my responsibility.
I consider what I consider to be "Enough" from me against the backdrop of a crumbling horizon.
The past several months have Deformed me.
I will never be the same.
This is for me to know, and I know this is True.
and
I am the only one with patterns I can control.
So I am responsible to control me by this logic!
If I am not a part of the solution I am part of the problem
(This feels like Dualistic thought. Another example:
If I am not changing the world for the better, I am changing it for the worse.)
Here's a skimmable skippable readable belief I carry around related to Dualistic thought: To call out a thought as dualistic is to unknowingly participate in an agenda. To participate in agenda I do not agree with is to be manipulated. To participate in agenda I believe in is patriotic. To refuse to play the game at all of "With or Against" is to be a coward? Or to be named "other" and shamed fought battled to be control to be fodder or gunpowder? And ultimately unwillingly thrown into the game at the cost of pain, shame, exile to Wilderness.
"If you're not with us, you're against us."
"If you don't play my game it's gonna cost ya."
Opportunity, Reputation. Those who control the resources control the price on not playing the game.
The idea of Power was true on the playground and the idea of Power is true here.
This idea of being classified into compliance makes my hackles go up just to express. I want to pick a side proactively so I don't get lumped into the wrong side? The losing side? Oh to refuse to play! To not choose is to suffer and to choose too late is to choose poorly! The ultimate shame of refusing to play the game of WWII! The price of not playing goes up, up, up. I feel like I can't just "end up" on the good side. I feel like the good side must be chosen and committed to. All goodness seems to have an aspect of commitment. Commit to God. Commit to Loving. To be uncommitted is to be lazy, an adulterer. Duality, hm.
"Can't we just Love?!?!"
No, this, too, is called Spiritual Bypassing.
Unpacking my process is called White Fragility.
Laying these thoughts out in this way is called Gaslighting.
I am Horrible, which is called Self-Pity, a Pity-Party, a defense I use to stealth-cloak myself from a Dualistic occasion, competitive game.
My inner child is here and he is so frustrated. My inner patriot is here. My inner life coach. My inner angry protester. My Special Snowflake. My Alt-Right. My Freedom Left. My inner Moderate. I carry my politics like a sloppy necklace. I am white I am white I am white I am white I am white. I am delicate, willfully ignorant, gaslighting gaslighter, hypocrite preacher. I preach false love in pursuit of God. There is my privilege. To dwell in self-composed righteousness.
Oh, let me mire in my Privilege. Here is my Inheritance I take ownership of, I call on all the work of my ancestors to Claim this Truth of Me:
“I am. There is. That’s it.” says the singular One.
Says God.
Says grace.
Says the wordless Wub of Being.
I use this mantric idea as a rock step in my partner dance of discernment. I throw it all out and I am One and I build again from there. So I am in a partner dance with my little time, but still we dance and so acknowledge the same song. Call the song the mythology of Death.
When CHANGE THE WORLD becomes spoken in the context of the partner dance whose rock step is DEATH, even control of others comes through careful REPOSITIONING of MYSELF, my vantage point, my perspective, the context or frame which surrounds my lens of the world.
A poem:
"I am going to die.
I need to change the world for Everyone!
Everyone is going to die.
I need to change the world to save the world,
The world is dying.
The world will die.
Is that all there is to say
This flickering candle in my chest?"
So I ask, where does this eagerness for control come from? Save the world. To save the world by some loudest and kindest and most holistic agenda? To Control what I may in a Responsible way.
I ask myself, as I stir my hot tea, on what hill will I die with my one life?
I consider my responsibility to this garden.
The time it takes to pull weeds instead of read about the world.
The engagement and attention it takes to notice what plants are asking for.
To study the other caretakers of plants and carry their lessons in the yard.
Because my sense of responsibility is linked very directly with my sense of control, although I have been taught I am in control of my destiny. Work hard, earn reward. If I am rewarded, I have worked hard, I am responsible. If I fail, and I have control, I am “irresponsible”.
If, on the other hand, the work is out of my control, I am not “responsible”. It is unfair to judge me as "Irresponsible" if I had no power, no control. To judge one who is powerless is against the rules of the society I abide by. The weight behind Fairness of a judgment is due to the consequential nature of being named irresponsible.
Irresponsible children lose their privileges.
Irresponsible drivers lose their license.
Irresponsible parents lose their children.
This garden began with the soil (or perhaps the garden began with an idea or intention, if you like!). These pesky weeds with blue flowers grow everywhere. I am too slow to pick them all. How shameful, how irresponsible.
“Responsible”, as a societal label:
To be heralded as responsible is to be in control of what others EXPECT I Should-Be-In-Control-of. The idea of connecting the social Title of "responsible adult" as something I can only receive "Externally" is important.
To be called Responsible, to me, is to be given safe passage through an institution. When one Responsible Person calls Me Responsible, it doesn’t matter if I actually respond to what I have control of. Just like if I get caught speeding it doesn’t mean that I speed all the time. The way I thought it was supposed to work is that To Be Caught Speeding means I must speed often enough to warrant create an unsafe environment.
Some greater statistical analysis can tell me, by way of ticketing, that I am being unsafe. That's what I thought. Some wisdom of past stories, past experiences, higher knowledge of the species can inform my behavior so I do not harm in the way others have mistakenly brought harm.
That was my idea of law and order.
George Floyd
Breonna Taylor
Elijah McCain
You all have died for so long unnamed and I am naming you now to begin to feel what my body has capacity to feel. Still, simply naming is not Enough in my eyes. I invite and so seek the rest of your story and those who have witnessed your lives. Spider Man says I am Responsible so long as I have Power. I have Power so long as I have Breath.
—-
I consider My Privilege in the face of the reformation of “The System” which I name a trade game started years ago. The trade game fought with "off the grid" and the trade game which has wrapped more and more STUFF into the game. Nobody has to play, but there is a COST by those with Power, and the cost of not playing has increasingly become Cold Hungry Torturned Death.
To name "the system” is to name my bias. To name my bias is to out myself in the game, to out myself in the Duality as somebody's "Us" and somebody's "Them".
I know Nothing At All. For now I believe the following:
+ Listening to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color will Save Everyone
+ Every dollar spent or donated is a vote
+ Power Always comes with Responsibility
+ The Path Forward Will Be Hilarious and Nonsensical
+ Everybody is Already Worthy of Love
And so comes Relationship. Ah, sweet holy, a word for another day. My tea is low now, the last bit, the rate I drink my tea ends with this cold, bitter drop. I feel it a waste to throw it out so I drink the tea out of obligation.
The tulips are up and while I gulp the dregs, the tulips are picked by the hand of the garden's keeper. I consider our control and our responsibilities in the garden briefly and I stand up to go inside and clean my mug.
Take it up with me, those who are looking to spar, to sharpen, I have said my piece and I am here to listen.
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