Bearing Witness

¡Hola! Everybody...
I am swamped! My vacation begins in two weeks and I can’t wait!

Today, we will be treated to those racially sensitive paragons of paramour from the GOP grilling a Latina on racial sensitivity!

::sounds of crashing glass in the background::

One of them is Jeff Sessions whose stellar record on race includes a black former assistant U.S. attorney’s testimony that Sessions once said he “used to think they [the Klan] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers.” Let’s hear it for a wise Latina woman and hope we get more like her in the near future!

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-=[ Heart in a Heartless world ]=-

I retreated during the 80s, for the most part, from active participation in terms of politics. I viewed Reagan’s rise and the neoconservative onslaught in the same way as Gil Scott-Heron did -- as the coming of Winter in America. A new America was coming, I saw, and it was an America heartless to its core. The 80s saw a rollback on civil rights gains, the decimation of the middle class and labor, and meaner, angrier, and less effective government. The 80s, ironically, were also a time of my personal passage through the heart of darkness. I barely made it through the 80s bereft of everything I held dear.

My journey back to the living was sparked by a response to suffering. First, it was my own personal suffering, but having been granted another go at it, I realized that I could never be truly alive and turn my back on the ills that affect all of us. I believed a collective mindset geared to advantage the advantaged didn’t make sense, and I watched, horrified, as science and works of art were savaged in the name of a vengeful and jealous God.

I find myself fighting against burnout, or struggling against the feeling that it doesn’t make any sense to fight at all. People don’t get it, I think too often. Or, there is too much apathy, people are more interested in the "reality" of TV shows than their own reality. And I sense I am not too far off the mark.

Sometimes -- not too often -- an issue so overtly reprehensible it cannot be successfully spun by a corporate-owned media surfaces and people awaken a little. They become inspired or angered by needless poverty, the arrogance of unchecked power, or at how there are so many who have been forgotten. Great inspirational speeches are offered at huge events, and we speak out, we protest, we rage and we rally.

And then... nothing happens.

Nothing changes; we deflate, feeling powerless, impotent, weak, and sickened by it all. Sometimes it gets so that I can’t stand to read another study, write another opinion, attend another conference, or participate in another panel. I despair... I despair of losing my heart in a heartless world. I think this was part of the elation that accompanied the Obama election. For once many people in this country saw one of the marginalized rise above systemic inequality to the most powerful office in the world and many were heartened. Though I for the most part do not agree with Obama’s politics, I too was heartened. I was able to go to a poll and cast my vote for a fuckin black man! Okay, he’s too centrist, but still: damn!

We don’t need anymore sessions, we know what we need to do. The solutions we need are already here. All that is needed is the courage to stop destroying so many for the sake of ideology. Too often I find myself on the brink of burnout and I find myself back where I started, pulsating with anger and frustration.

But I have learned some valuables lessons in recent years. For one, I’ve learned that burnout can help me keep my fires burning. How? Well, that’s another blog, but it’s all about feeding the demons rather than banishing them to the darkness. Burnout now feeds me instead of the other way around. Secondly, and more importantly, I have learned to bear witness, to stand alongside those enduring great suffering. Sometimes “the work” is to be simply present, listening with an open heart. Listening with the same care a child gives when holding a live and precious egg in its hands...

And I have given up hope for saving the world, or even attempting to change it.

I had to give up. I had to give up in order to discover what I’m really supposed to be doing -- how best to be a part of healing. I had to go beyond hope and fear and break from the shackles of success or failure. I’m learning what right action feels like. Its clarity, its energy. I still get angry, enraged, and frustrated. I try not to be driven by these emotions. I don’t do anything until I go back beyond hope and fear. I bear witness... Then I act judiciously... I hope.

Love,

Eddie