Summertime Anti-Racism BlogPoem

Dear Beloved,

I am doing my absolute best.
I am a woodpile who hears a whispering tale of sparks and fire.

I can only imagine what anybody else is experiencing right now.
I do not know how anybody's experience feels.

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What I’m noticing about myself at this point in my process:

+Today I notice the RELIEF I feel pouring through my Black Lives Matter and Anti-Racism-Education resources, articles, blogs, YouTube videos. I acknowledge my schedule and pressure to align my energy to my priorities. I fear this time to receive and to listen has come at the cost of my own "nothing day" relaxedness and well-being. I do not know what this means, exactly, and still I recognize the sensation of breathing fresh air which has come with my study.
(My most comprehensive resource below:)
https://www.michaelcaloz.com/race-for-white-people-part-1/?fbclid=IwAR1ZdQC2N8XAbJ8lq190Bb-BR98_ImKcH7Leixm31bz6jitwoAuERo5ly2w

+ I build common vocabulary from common ground.

+ When I feel seen and heard, it is easy for me to share and listen.

+I build into my process moments to check in and make space to express discomfort.

+ I know the process I follow to build trust and I know how to make space for that process.

+ I visualize listening as wiggling my headphone wires until the music catches and goes through.

+ The energy that I turn towards listening and acting with the Black Lives Matter movement is harmonious with the environmental movement and so begins with racial justice. I see how they are connected.

I’ve been playing with this idea of:
“How I do anything is how I do everything.”
Dismissing parts within myself is dismissing communities as dismissing aspects of the earth. Viewing productivity and industrialism within myself gives me lenses to view productivity and industrialism in my relationships, my career, and the ways I vote.

My vote is my attention. My vote is my dollar. My vote is my ballot. My vote is my little choices in every day.

Trying to change others is an act of trying to change myself. I invite myself to notice when I take the words of others personally. I am deciding to accept others work to change me as work to change themselves and I hold that so gently because I cannot be changed by them, I, ultimately, must be the one to buy in.

Still this pressure!
What does it look like
Within me
What does an energetic relief valve look like in an online space?
Can this pressure fill balloons?
Can this pressure be a pressure washer?
Can this tension fire arrows?
Can this tension hold a sail?
Can this pressure bring fresh water to freshwater taps in homes and fields?

How do I recognize the language of call in my everyday life?

I am a woodpile surrounded by sparks. I am an oil tanker on a dry hot day on grinding wheels.

The woodpile can burn and it’s a disaster or the woodpile can be chopped and cared for and keep us warm all winter until the summer comes.

So it goes
So it goes
So it is

Riley