A Most Beautiful Choice

The following is a part of response in a conversation about being part of cultivating both personal and collective well-being during times of crisis and stress. 

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It's been really rough for most of us for quite a while - both personally and collectively. From what I know, I think the way you are handling everything is quite incredible. These aren't the conditions that support a thriving, healthy, flourishing human life and society.

Without assuming why therapy was not useful for you, a really common experience is when a therapist (or an entire modality) assumes that our societies and communities are healthy. Therapy then aims to help us fit into that society, thinking that this outcome would support our wellbeing. But the impact is often a pressure to accommodate injustice and oppression. In many cases, anxiety and depression are responses to the oppressive conditions in society (such as racism, gender and sexuality antagonisms, and their intersections). If we are paying attention, personally and collectively, these responses can let us know that something is wrong.

To make all these things that wound and hurt us a thing of the past

I wrote this reflection as part of an online conversation. It is lightly edited. 

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P*, you shared that “the woke movement is dividing people everywhere - this is an embarrassing movement, but at the same time how can we fight it?  How do we take action against it?”

 

I don’t know your experience, but I can say that this is certainly not the case in my own experience. Especially for those of us who belong to multiple marginalized communities, there has never been a time when these deep, painful, cruel divisions did not exist. We have inherited and then lived with these divisions our whole lives, born the crushing terror, despair, and cruelty of them in our bodies, hearts, and minds. Maybe you have known this experience, too? 

 

Whatever the case, the divisions we are seeing now are not the first fractures; they are not cracks along the surface. These fissures are manifesting from deep below, erupting from ancient wounds that have long gone unhealed. It is our collective failure to tend to this woundedness, and not the woundedness itself, that is the root of the problem. 

A Brief Meditation on Impermanence, Grief, and What is Possible

Everything is impermanent, inconstant, and subject to change.
 
That’s hard truth, because the world can be shaped in ways that harm and hurt, and it can happen by degrees.
 
So we grieve a world that has made oppression, hatred, injustice, and inequality feel so utterly normal.
 

(Still) Learning to Tell a Story

I am currently in a time of transition. While I have never been particularly sentimental, a big part of my life has been taken up with reflective practice. So recently, I’ve been looking back as a way of looking forward, thinking about and learning from the last years. In particular, I've been spending time looking at writings from another recent time of transition, in 2015-2016. It has been nice to reconnect with aspirations and convictions I named then. For instance, it remains most important to me that we, as individuals and as communities, care for one another and our world. My reflective practices have value inasmuch as they integrate inner and outer transformation. I am interested in how cultural and religious beliefs and institutions help or hinder the development of social and ecological justice and lasting peace, and what we can learn from each other. I aspire to be open-hearted and willing to encounter truth and wisdom in each person and experience I meet, in resistance to the violent patriarchal, racist, capitalist fragmentation of our world and psyches, and to do this in community. 

The Limits of Shame

        Last June, I was participating in a workshop dedicated to racial justice and wholeness, especially designed for white folks. During a discussion session, one participant recommended harnessing the power of shame to move us in the direction of justice. For proof of the effectiveness of this approach, he mentioned a study on anti-cigarette smoking campaigns, and that the only effective campaigns were those that utilized shame. It felt like quite the leap to me to move from an anti-smoking campaign to anti-racist work, but, even if that application could be justified, I felt immediately curious and suspicious of how he was framing the data. 

“Our Humble Return”: Knowing our Capacities, Boundaries, and Aspirations

I’ve spent a significant amount of my life supporting human beings navigate through and heal from difficult and distressing experiences: as a minister, mediator, conflict coach, peer counselor, support group facilitator, educator, and friend. And after spending tens of thousands of hours over decades of listening, I can wholeheartedly confirm what you already know: having healthy relationships with healthy boundaries in our unhealthy society is hard work. 

        One of my favorite descriptions of boundaries comes from Dr. Helena Liu: “the framework in which we take responsibility for our own emotions and actions and relinquish responsibility for the emotions and actions of others. They are fundamental to leading healthy and happy lives.” Importantly, Liu notes that these are living spaces, “dynamic and flexible”; the more in-tune we are to our needs and circumstances, the more we can customize our boundaries to the moment. At certain times in our lives, or in certain relationships, we may relax or strengthen our boundaries. In other words, and if I may borrow from a well-known observance about the Sabbath, boundaries are made for human wellbeing; humans are not made for boundaries.  

Empty Promises: From Consumerism to Community

I grew up in a working class family, with an emphasis on community and helping each other during times of need. Those of you who have listened to my reflections in the past know that these experiences were far from perfect, especially when it came to understanding and resisting oppressive systems, from racism to misogyny. Despite these limitations, it was still in my working class family that I received the first tools for deciphering this mess of injustice and oppression that we’ve collectively come to accept as normal. My father especially extolled the importance of labor and unions, as well as studying and understanding history. And even the conservative religious community that hurt and alienated me so thoroughly, also gave me a lens to understand justice, peace, and a vision of healthy, happy society beyond the long reach of exploitation, violence, and inequality.