i will meet you there
and, still, the voices rose from the pile of ash and stone. i could hear them echo across the valley ... carried by the wind. i could feel them in my lungs as they struggled for the breath to be expressed - how they longed to be heard - and how these footsteps carefully followed the path that would bring them home.
lately, i've been triggered - tripping and falling ... a lot!
the words that have been spilling into our social consciousness have distracted my mind, constricted my heart, bullied and shamed my child, and enslaved my soul.
i've always been intrigued by words, by all they point to - all they say, all they paint... the inextricable history they carry and the emotions they reveal -- how we are naked in them.
and, although they're inspired by such personal experience and meaning, we, as a collective, have agreed to the empower them - to have a hold over us as a whole.
this power is real; it's very real. and, it's deep - deep in our d.n.a kinda' deep. i know this with all my being.
still, knowing it is not enough - it's continuously changing ... there's always 'more'. and, without leaning into the 'more', we can easily be swept into the current of emotion and confusion and fear that's left our collective consciousness red hot, ungrounded - cut off from the root!
not only have we lost our way, the language that connects us has become so polarized, so ambiguous, so foreign - so ungraspable and charged - that the "many words [have] led [us] to exhaustion".
it all seems so hard.
it's hard to listen to what others are saying while my own internal narrative is screaming to be heard and to be right.
it's hard to see another's perspective when i am defending my identity.
that's what i'm feeling.
i see myself pushing this all away - the news, twitter, facebook ... all the social commentary and rage - not avoiding, rather, recognizing that being too close to this is arousing a fear in me that just isn't useful; this emotion clouds my judgment and this story keeps me separate from the world; it's dissolving the clarity of the ultimate truth of this moment and it's holding me back.
so i practice.
i sit. i watch. i investigate and i write.
with practice, i create space between it and me so i can see exactly what my gut and intuition are really pointing to - that place that's free from right and wrong -- that's where the word begins and this is the way that leads us through landslides and altitudes of emotion into the open field of our humanity. this is how our voice is carried. this is home.
so, my brothers and sisters, how can we tap into the larger story - the one of brotherhood, cooperation, celebration, responsibility and relationship?
we shift out of our personal perspective and start asking more questions - questions whose answers serve more than ourselves:
what can we learn from watching what is unfolding in our country? how can we seize that opportunity to bring us closer to a unified voice? what must we let go of in order to rise through the toxic drag of personal identity? what are our words - personal and collective - pointing to and where do we want to be?
ask the questions. listen for the answers.
sit. watch. investigate.
this is the way.
breathe. let go. shift.
and, i will meet you there.
** For more information on the way:: NonViolent Communication , Tao te ching, by Lao Tzu.