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IT IS A TENDER TIME OF YEAR ...
in our corner of the U.S. The end to a season of warmth and light, sputtering out and dispersing like a jet stream in the blue sky. The return to school for children, teachers, and support staff, heart achingly juxtaposed with the reality that students in Gaza have not had access to education for two years. A question that keeps coming to my mind when I contemplate the daily atrocities of the U.S. government and other power structures is: Where are we going?
Often, I feel my chest tightening in response to this question. The discomfort of uncertainty and helplessness trick my heart into feeling squeezed. But this week, it occurred to me that when we close down in response to fear, we are only going in one direction: narrower and narrower, until we are silent, hidden, frozen, barely living. And if fear moves us that way, then the other, opposite direction would be toward openness. What moves us toward openness?
I suppose the answer could be different for everyone. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what helps you, specifically, open your eyes, your petals, your wings. In the meantime, it's important to consider that these processes of opening and closing are happening all the time, all around us. Just when we think we've overcome one fear, or learned how not to close ourselves off in one area, something else comes along to challenge us. There is no completion.
This process of continual return is like language, or breathing - there are always new ways to understand the simplest things. A word, a breath. How many ways can you walk around it, practice it, use it, focus on it?
Fear is also multi-dimensional, and can work on us in ways we don't yet see or understand. I was lucky to have insight from a friend that when one speaks out against abuse of power, and someone else becomes angry in response, that too is about fear. People use anger to attempt to control one another by triggering that fear response...meanwhile the angry person is often in a fear response of their own.
Anger and fear are not going away any time soon. In fact, we need them - at one time or another, amid all the damage they might do, they can also help us survive. The work is to practice opening yourself up, again and again, in spite of fear and anger, in spite of what humans have built to destroy one another and ourselves. The simple question to ask yourself, when you feel closed down or made smaller by fear, is: What direction are you going? Take one step toward opening this week, and we'll be right there with you.
In solidarity,
Dor + Tay
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