What better foes could we have conjured?
Dear Friend,
I am frightened by what’s happening. I am also starting to feel possibilities. Not for the suffering unspooling around the globe. Not for the suffering of families torn and noble democratic services gutted.
Exciting possibilities arise only because the smoky dream of endless consumption is ending. The fantasy of an infinite unfeeling Earth here to exploit, of animals without souls, and lesser humans made to serve and enrich us, is ending. It has to end!
And suddenly we’re in a battle. It won’t be soft or smooth. What better foe could we have conjured to represent the old ways that must end than these greed-villains? We are not powerless. In fact, the opposite is true.
….If all climate protection measures are revoked, we the people can cease animal agriculture, stop eating meat, and reverse the losses.
….If all public education is defunded, we can create hedge schools as they did in Ireland when the Irish language was banned.
….If SNAP is gutted, we the people can expand the web and feed our neighbors block by block. A third of all good, safe food in this country is thrown away. We can do better starting today.
The painful growing can only be a positive flinging of ourselves toward collective consciousness, collective care, sacred reparations, Earth, and away from individual enrichment, self, white/male supremacy, extraction and all the oppressions it engenders.
Each of us has a role. Do you know what yours is?
If not, listen quietly to your chest. Go somewhere as quiet as you can and hold a shell and grab a tree or a child you love and ask your bones and your ancestors what it is. Find what’s yours to do—it may be surprising. Snails are needed as much as whales. Vaclav Havel showed us that fighters are philosophers. Gaza showed us that people can survive the unimaginable with love and integrity intact, can make a new drawing every day.
Please share anything you feel like putting into words, here, about what your role in this turning is, or what it might be.
xo,
Abriel
Art: The female warrior samurai Lady Hangaku (坂額御前, Hangaku Gozen) in a ca. 1885 woodblock print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡 芳年; a.k.a. Taiso Yoshitoshi 大蘇 芳年; 1839–1892). Public Domain.
Thanks for these inspiring words, Abriel.
To your first point about giving up meat, I've been vegan for over forty years, and love the food I eat. Happy to give anyone tips if they want them. It's very easy once you get the hang of it.
And, I agree, we have to turn our lives into the kind of futures we want, support our communities however we can and do it with joy, which I think comes naturally when we feel connected to each other, earth, communities.
Dear Abe, it’s as though you’ve been preparing for this moment for a long time. You have stepped up in major crises like Katrina as well as everyday ordeals folks are going through. We are all having to become survivalists on behalf of others as well as ourselves, including animal and plant beings, thinking about how to leave smaller footprints and widen our embrace of those who need help. Politics as usual is gone. Time for a reboot. I’m combining my double vocation as poet and journalist to try to shine a light on where we are and on possible ways forward.