What’s that like for you 24 years after what we thought was our 911 call?
I know you’re tired, maybe even feeling worn out, or worse yet, wrung out. Nobody wants to be reminded about September 11, 2001. I know. I know. 24 years of Love in Action can be exhausting. I feel it too. But I’ve come to know that fatigue and grief, just like joy and enthusiasm, are part of this choppy, sloppy human soup we’re all in together. Sometimes we need a break. And sometimes we need to break out those special spoons, the ones with the extra-long handles that encourage us to reach across the table and feed each other. If this is one of those times, I invite you to try this for starters. I don’t know about you, but I needed that!
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“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
—Dalai Lama |
And speaking of sharing time together at the table, I invite you to please take just one short minute & 40 seconds to hear Joy Harjo read her beautiful poem about what really happens at the kitchen table.
For me this has been a week of conversations … starting with an old friend I hadn’t seen in a long while who called to thank me for a ‘thinking of you’ card I’d sent. Jumping right in to set the tone for the conversation they said, “Well, I’ve stopped watching the news. I scan the headlines, but I can’t handle more than that. There’s nothing I can do anyway, so why bother?” I took the hint, bit my tongue hard, poured my tea and opened my ears. We went on to chat about family and friends and how she’s been keeping fresh water out for the birds during our recent heat wave and oh yes, by the way, running errands for her dark-skinned neighbors who are afraid to leave the house. I call that a very real version of Love in Action.
My dear friend Molly … one of my aging rascal sisters who is almost always good for a joke and a hug, led our most recent conversation with “I’m afraid I’m not doing a very good job of balancing the beauty and the brokenness. The sorrow seems just too heavy.” I knew exactly what she meant. I had just a few days earlier lightened my own heaviness by watching a video sent “with hope” by my Quaker friend. Annie. It was a Joanna Macy presentation about the Shambala Warrior Prophecy, which Joanna describes as her “marching orders”. Obviously, it was time now to pass the link on to Molly (and to you, if you wish), for whatever comfort and inspiration it might bring. Here you go.
My oldest grandson, Seth, a GenX critical and creative thinker in his own right, although definitely not a history buff, has encouraged me to pay attention to Joe Rogan and some of his interviewees. He likes Joe for his “willingness to keep an open mind and change it when new information comes along.” An admirable quality indeed! I finally took him up on it when I saw that the T-Team was rumored to be lobbying Rogan to sit down with their guy Todd Blanche(d) for a ‘truth telling’ session. So I agreed to watch a couple of Joe’s sessions, in exchange for a couple of Heather Cox Richardson who happens to be my favorite historian.
My first ‘Experience” was an amazing two-hour conversation with a member of the Texas State House of Representatives, James Talarico, who at 36 (just 3 years older than NYC’s Mamdani) is a Christian Democrat and bible scholar standing up against the Ten Commandments in schools and for reproductive and LGBTQ rights, including same-sex marriage. You might want to check him out. My next encounter was with Roman Yampolskiy, a computer scientist and AI safety researcher with a lot to say about the long-term effects of AI. Seth tells me that he and Isaiah, my oldest great-grandson, have talked about AI’s benefits and abuse potential. I love it … GenX, GenZ, and GenA (for aging rascal) in meaningful conversation. Have you tried it yet? I’d love to know how it goes if you do.
Next came a lovely lunch with my friend, Jean, an avid advocate for Human and Planetary rights, who never seems to tire of showing up on behalf of our environment and the creatures who inhabit it. We talked that day not only about the beauty and the brokenness of the world we live in, but about the value of our Vote and how our personal and tax $$$ get spent. It was later that afternoon that I, along with a whole lot of others, received from Jean the following food for thought.
Hello
As the machinery located on the East Coast shreds the timbers of our democracy and we navigate the splinters of change, occasionally the path reverts to smooth going. When the threat to mail-in voting occurred recently I thought, well, we are on solid ground here in Oregon with our mail-in voting. But today it dawned on me that the feds control the post office.
In the past the post office has organized to accept the increase in mail around elections. This may not happen for the midterm elections.
In a scenario that assumes the post office will be unable to process the volume, what actions are available to ensure that all the ballots are received on time?
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- The ballot boxes; more of them? more staff ?
- Early voting
- Contacting our elections office to raise concerns about post office capacity??
- Rural areas
Conversation Anyone? Let’s start one here. Thoughts & prayers about Love in Action are welcome. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
AND THEN … just for balance came this piece from another of my favorite Aging Rascals, Garrison Keillor, whose cleverness with words occasionally lines up with my own and hits the nail squarely on the head. In his September 1st column, the old guy touches on AI and what future “novel combinations” might look like … He says, for instance, A.I. would enable readers to get multiple novels for the price of one, such as Wuthering Eyre of Gulliver’s Expectations or Beloved Lolita on the Brave New Road, merging the best elements of each novel into a superior amalgamated mélange and save readers an enormous amount of time during which they could take up a program of regular exercise. Then he makes the switch to this …But meanwhile we saw the use of artificial intelligence in last week’s three-hour-fifteen-minute televised Cabinet meeting in which cabinet secretaries Rubio, Bondi, Kennedy, Rollins, Collins, Gabbard, Bessent, Burgum, Vought, McMahon, Hegseth, Noem, et cetera, sat around a long table and showered the boss with lavish compliments of a sort previously paid only to Divine Beings and dictators. They agreed that he was the greatest president in the history of America, without compare, whose perfect wisdom had led our country from the degradation and despair of Bidenism to the peak of such greatness beyond the power of language to describe. Here’s the whole column if you’re interested and in need of a chuckle.
Unfortunately, as is so often the case when it comes to follow-up on school shootings (despite the abundance of thoughts & prayers), when I googled “Current News Updates on Minneapolis School Shooting”, I came up EMPTY. Wait. What? Nothing? Nothing! How can that be? Where is the outrage? Where is the action? Where are the rallies & the protests? Isn’t anybody talking about guns?? Even David Hogg, after his initial smattering of interviews, seems to have gone silent. If I’ve missed something here, please let me know. In the meantime, in case you’re interested, here’s something from Thom Hartmann. A radical idea. not unfamiliar, but definitely unpopular. Maybe it’s time to re-think it.
And what do we hear from teachers? Here’s an offering from Robert Reich that captured my attention, a piece written by a Minneapolis public school teacher named Kathleen West, titled “I’m Having Some Thoughts.”
AND SO, AS W. B. YEATS REMINDS US, WE GO ON … just as we have gone on for centuries when things fall apart, when the centre threatens not to hold and the ceremony of innocence is drowned. WE go slouching, marching, dancing & singing our way ever toward Bethlehem. Armed with our long-handled spoons, may we go on together. Until next time,
Love (in action),
Sulima
P.S. Here’s a poem from my Words That Dance, written in 2002. Perhaps this is a good time to share it.
Halloween Dream 2001
Before I went to bed last night, I wanted
to see the jack-o-lantern moon. But it was
hidden by clouded rain that lulled me instead
into a deep sleep. I dreamed it was September
Eleventh and I heard our President speaking
in a clear, strong voice.We are in the midst of a monumental
tragedy; our hearts broken and bleeding.
No words can describe our pain or our shock.
Yet, our spirit remains strong and we must
prepare, even in our mournful outrage, to
defend our nation against further attack.We will begin as Americans of diverse
cultural and religious history by uniting
in prayer so that together we may survive
the grief of this unfathomable crime as we
take time to seek the guidance necessary
to determine our next right action.This morning I woke up feeling heavy and sad
realizing the speech was only a dream,
wondering how today might be different
if it had been real.
Buying me a an occasional coffee helps me keep these stories coming … and gives me one less reason to cross my fingers when my Social Security payment is due!
