I guess you could say I’m a recovering spiritual ableist. I have always felt led to awaken from the illusion of my separateness, I tend to believe that we are all here to wake up and that we want to do that work. And the spiritual ableist in me thinks everyone should. What’s true is that not everyone wants to, is willing to or sees the benefit of being right here with what’s true and hard.
Saying no is hard. And, regardless of what you think of President Biden’s decision to step out of the race, he did a hard thing in making that call. Meanwhile, people on both sides of the aisle continue to do the easy thing, the thing that will maintain their relative comfort, the thing that will keep them in power or even grow their power-- with limited consideration of the rest of us.
Stick with me here for a little context.
We live in a country where the right to safe, accessible abortion was struck down after almost 50 years, despite the reality that 86% of religiously unaffiliated Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do 71% of Black Protestants, 64% of White nonevangelical Protestants and 59% of Catholics. Any way you slice it, that’s a majority of Americans. "The people" didn't strike down abortion.
Fifty-six percent of Americans wants stricter gun laws (and that number goes up when people have experienced gun violence) and yet, we continue to watch gun control backslide in the hands of our supposed representatives. "The people" are not being heard.
Despite clear data that Medicaid expansion helps not only actual people, but also the all-important economy, our legislators continue to pretend this is a zero-sum game. They’re pouring concrete into the proverbial public pools because they don’t want “them” to have swimming rights. "The people" want care.
We are not living in a representative democracy. We are being held hostage by people who believe deeply in their separateness.
We must not allow this tide of separation and blindness to convince us to buy into the isolation of despair. These sleepwalkers are selling fear and desperation in hopes it will deliver them more power and more control. In hopes they can maintain the illusion.
You and I have a choice. We can be fiercely loving. We can resist by caring for each other. We can engage in this conflict through nurturing, through seeing, through connection with our shared humanity. We can smile. We can think the best of each other. We can open doors and offer hands. We can make meals. Sing songs. Offer water and snacks. We can believe in each others' suffering and we can care about it and feel the rage that is sustained by our love of what we know we can be.
This is not about optimism. Optimism and pessimism are just another limiting binary. A failed, zero-sum perspective. Both seek to stifle the reality of uncertainty while pretending strength. There is no winning. There is only nourishing.
When we know we are not separate, we can admit that we belong to each other and we can make room in our wounded, exhausted hearts for the nourishment of connection. Sustainable transformation happens in and through relationship. And that relationship is nourished by awakened hearts who can be with what’s here. We are one and we are, thankfully, not the same.
None of us knows what the future will hold. That’s not a problem. It is not necessary to have a clear vision to be alive and awake now and for that awakeness to matter. Many Americans (myself included) have little or no experience with first-hand, real, profound, humanitarian struggle or how to address it. Let's take a page from the Indigenous Zapatista/EZLN movement . After centuries of censure, displacement, harm and deep suffering, they demanded the basic things all humans need: work, land, housing, food, health, education, independence, liberty, democracy, justice and peace. One of their many guiding principles was “Asking, we walk.”
Asking, we walk is about now and about truth and about co-creation of something just and nourishing. There’s no waiting until a clear vision emerges. There’s no sense that “when there is unity, we’ll begin.” The time is now and what we know is that here and now can be much better, so we walk and we wonder and we nurture—together.
Welp, I guess my recovery from spiritual ableism isn’t going so well. I’m ok to fall off that wagon. Zainab Amadahy, a mixed-race (African American, Cherokee, Seminole, Portuguese, Amish, Pacific Islander and other trace elements) author, teacher and revolutionary based in what she calls “peri-apocalyptic Toronto,” says it best: “Personally, I want to be nurturing life when I go down in struggle. I want nurturing life to BE my struggle.”
Come. Let us do what we can to nurture life.
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