The Free List :: Vol. 2, No. 1

The Free List :: Vol. 2, No. 1

FACTS ABOUT POWER

ONE


Sometimes I think our surprise at tragedy can actually be very hopeful. When we are surprised, shocked, outraged by the atrocities that occur in our society; under our watch, despite or seemingly in spite of our care, it shows that we are constantly expecting better; of ourselves, our governing bodies, our culture. It shows that we understand our interconnectedness when we feel personally traumatized by another’s trauma or reactivated in our own. It makes visible the invisible tendrils connecting all of our nervous systems together, and the nervous systems of all other creatures and the rooted networks of the earth.


Tragedy cuts through the illusion of separation. It makes indigenous truths visible through the veil. This is a good place to remind us that the word “apocalypse” means ‘to lift the veil’ or ‘to uncover’. I want to know what tragedy helps us see that was previously hidden. I rest in the truth, despite centuries of suppression, repression, oppression, and avoidance, that most of our hearts remain intact.


And they speak.


I am also thinking about Harriet Tubman’s response to this year’s top news stories so far. I see us going to her with cornbread and milk wrapped in a handkerchief to tell her what has happened. I watch her face as we share with her to see if and how it changes. Her face is where we gather next actions.


I meditate with Margaret Garner and wonder if she would be surprised by Uvalde, Buffalo, the Atlanta spa last Spring, etc. We go to her with lavender and rice; when we explain what an “automatic weapon” is, what does she say? “Oh”?


The three enslaved women who were forcibly experimented on by their enslaver; the person credited with inventing modern gynecology: what is it that they feel, know, advise on Dobbs v. Jackson?


Both of those names: Dobbs and Jackson are all over this land. All of the Dobbs dirt roads, the Jackson one-lane streets, backroads that spread through all the towns where someone in all of our families grew up. Where maybe we grew up. We are not separate—the tendrils are the roads, too. The roads map all of our veins.


We are not separate. None of us. Our desire to be so does not make it so. You cannot cancel physics.


TWO


Ask the Grandmother Spirits if they did not show in the dream the medicine that policy cannot touch.


Ask The Grandfathers if they see what is happening and when they show you what to do, do the healing you need to, to believe them.


The Underground Railroad Nouveau is the roots of the trees that have been talking about us. They have been talking about how many of us are listening to them.


I want to be counted among the listening ones

I resolve myself again to my ministry

Which are these words that flow

From a source beyond control


There is no control in Spirit, do what we might to deny it.



THREE


Facts about power


  1. Power is shared
  2. Power is intrinsic to every being in the known world
  3. When we say, “people with power” or “people in power,” we are inherently speaking about ourselves.
  4. In the western mind, there is a conflation between the term “Power” and the term “Control.”
  5. Control is an illusion made real by our shared agreement in its belief.
  6. No one controls my body.
  7. I control no one’s body.
  8. My body’s power cannot infringe on the power of another body’s power.
  9. All that is control is illusion.
  10. Can you imagine a world, can you imagine a life that is detached from power games and seeking to control illusions which can never be secured?
  11. Some would argue it is impossible to give up the power game

They would argue the freedom rests in the relentless chase

They turn down their beds, exhausted from the daily monsters which take from their spirits, their hearts.

12. Power is not in the monster’s mouth where we can get lost,

Barreling in its throat for our comfort.

13. When we are exhausted from making the monster wrong, we remember our comfort does not rest in the duality of “right” and “wrong,” but in the Third Way. When we are tired, we remember we cannot dream, we cannot hear the facts buried in the earth and over our heads; moving between us like silk in the morning.

14. I/We/You are not a supplement for an empty mind waiting to imagine Us for sport, waiting to eat our reactions for lunch.

15. I/We/You are not a disease.

16. I/We/You are the Dream and the Dreamer

17. Awaken