OnLine With Zoe

Not on my Behalf

I realize I am the whitest woman you know.  Not in terms of my cultural expression or my demonstrated beliefs but between the hair and zero sun, come on, yes I know.  From in here, the extraordinary privilege I have, awarded at birth, I am an extra double dip pure vanilla cone.  But it does not evoke anything but shame when a white supremacist uses me as a reason to shoot, kill or, even, breathe.  Scout got that message and so do I.  Tom Robinson wanted nothing to do with Miss Mayella and, be it foolish or wise, I sorta walk around with that idea in my head in our non-fiction world.  I was 12 when that book came out and I crawled right up into it as if it was scripture. 

Last night I challenged myself to find the nearest AME Church and go to their prayer vigil.  I say challenge because I needed to make room in my head and heart that I might be unwelcome.  Frankly, I felt that I could be unwelcome for many reasons, not just being white when the shooter claimed he was killing on my behalf but also because I will never know the deep pain of being African American in the U.S.  

It is staggering how wrong I was.  I was invited to pray for the AME Congregation in South Carolina, to pray to be able to forgive, to pray for strength, to pray for peace in the streets of my new city.  A woman preached who said that God knew in advance this was going to happen; it was only a surprise to us.  My hand was held in a circle of songs.  I was hugged at least a dozen times.  I was given what I wanted to give but had no way. 

It is a personal miracle I am claiming for myself that my home is surrounded by mocking birds.  They lift me 24 hours a day.  As the story goes, they do not harm another living creature.  But, like Atticus, let us shoot the fucking rabid dog - the maniacal bigotry and hatred it represents and bury it with the last confederate flag.  

My own father died when I was eight.  You can’t imagine how much I pretended it was me in that rocking chair in the arms of Atticus.     

The Joy of Serialization

Admittedly I began writing in serial format out of impatience.  I wanted to begin ASAP.  I want the reader engaged ASAP.  My mind, most minds, work in serialized form.  We collect information and it keeps collecting and then crystallizes ~ something I call the Diamond Process.  We certainly don’t wait for an entire life to be lived before we can learn from it.  We prioritize, arrange by topic and love to wrap our minds around a single expanding idea.

A few readers have written me to point out that I have left things out of Alice Paul’s chronological life.  It never interested me to write a biography of Miss Alice Paul.  I want to use her lessons, her strategy and, truly most important, her NEVER waning dedication to a singular issue.  From her first visit to a Settlement House, this banker’s daughter decided that constitutional equality was the only lasting, full answer.  No matter how the question was posed or discovered, Miss Paul would not step one toe beyond her mission.  That interests me.   

Of course no biography has come even near to knowing her.  After more than two years in Alice Paul submersion, I feel qualified to say that the best information is 1) the interview with Amelia Fry, 2) articles and things that pop up from google alerts, 3) interviews with women who knew her, and 4) mad curiosity.  Susan Ware may not like her, people definitely found her to be stern, I found her to be the pinnacle of etiquette and tenacity.  I adore her.   Do not misunderstand, as I have written, she was often very unlikable.  I have never held back from digging beyond the hat and fur.  Test your love with inquiry or it is not real. 

What I find so disturbing, so frustrating, so maddening can be illustrated with comparing any decent bibliography of hers with any of her fellow student, Mohandas Gandhi.  There are countless books on the lessons and strategies of Gandhi and zero on Alice Paul.  There are books about Gandhi’s hybrid faith of Islam and Hindu but none on the Mindful Enlightenment of Miss Paul’s Quakerism.  In other words, there is an inherent sexism that shouts from my two principle library collections.  Of course, the fact that they both were taught by Mrs. Pankhurst is almost unknown. 

Serialization allows me to pick a subject and dig deeply.  First I built a foundation simply so I would know where to look and see who knows what.  You need to separate the light bearing jewels from the muddy lop-sided opinions.  That took a lot of reading and a lot of aggravation.  Miss Catt did all she could to bury the light.  Mrs. Belmont wielded her check book like a cattle prod.  Some authors have no interest in what Miss Paul did after August 26, 1920.  The NWP Board of Directors voted 25 / 0 to not financially assist her when she reached her 90’s.  To know her fully, you need a wide lens.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, (Herland free online) Alexander Dumas, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dickens all wrote in serial format.  I am not comparing my writing to theirs in any way.  I am admiring the writing process.  I have already discovered the meditative and prayerful reading process of Lectio Divina.  Now I can apply it to non-linear topical writing.  It is the form I prefer ~ the essay but with a central character whom I admire more everyday.  And, there is the added bonus of bridging her strategy and inspiration to current day activism.  

I spent a month reading, thinking and writing on:

1)     Activists' inspiring relationships
2)     Actvists' core
3)     Use of the public sphere
4)     Breaking convention

Now I get to spend a month on Silence, an asset Miss Paul used so very wisely.  Something the Women in Black and Standing Man used.  Zen Buddhists master.  Musicians treasure by surrounding it with notes.  Life is episodic, sitting in the pickling juice.  I get to sit in the light, wait for what surfaces and write the next chapter. 

Oscars and Pie

Is it too soon to move from re-act to retro-spect?  I have to admit most of my insights occur in a rearview mirror but the optimal distance is usually more than a couple of weeks.  It can take years to collect succinct or defensible responses.  Nonetheless, I am going to risk it today, show my hand and hope for the best. 

If you are a feminist or interested in feminism, Oscar night 2015 was volatile, exciting, best water cooler talk in a long time. That said, it begs the question what did it mean to everyone else?

In the pie chart of American women, I live in the red slice.  Most of the people I know live in the red slice.  We are cool.  We are hot.  We are hip.  We have read Freire, Alinsky, hooks, Hill Collins, Crenshaw.  We tweet and post and follow Laurie Penny, Amanda Levitt, Roxane Gay, Ultraviolet, A is For, and hundreds of peeps or orgs who agree with us.  We retweet and use hashtags (though not as effectively as ISIS).  We work on checking our isms, our privilege, our ever-widening inclusion and our revulsion over inner circle royalty.  We are pro plus sizes, support public breast feeding and fight like hell to come out ~ as queer, having an abortion, in recovery.  We do all we can to protest inequality, demand justice and stand in solidarity.  It’s a lot but it’s who we are. 

Once a week or less I shop at a big neighborhood grocery store.  In twelve years, my favorite checker, Sue always asks me the same two questions.  “How’s Grace?”  She’s fine.  “What did you do this weekend?”  One weekend I told her about going to Dallas.  I hosted an ERA Café Conversation and Gloria Steinem was at the same table.  I asked her if she knew who Gloria Steinem was.  “No, who is she?”  I asked if she had heard of Ms. Magazine.  “No.”  I asked if she knew what the ERA is.  “No, What is it?”  But you can be sure my checker knew what fair wages means. 

Sue has no idea what is intersectionality or white privilege or why immigration is a family issue.  She does not know what the old Jim Crow is about, let alone the new Jim Crow.  She knows about a zillion morphing prices for as many products on hundreds of shelves on dozens of aisles.  She knows the mad hours she and her husband work to keep their children, grandchildren and dog, Emmie safe and well.  She knows her feet hurt and retirement is many years off. 

Sue is not in the red section of the pie chart.  She doesn’t know that there is a matrix of domination, an inseparable intersection of all oppressions, a few men own dam near everything, black water is coming out of California faucets and abortion rights are the lynchpin of female autonomy.  She doesn’t know that I live and love in the red section of the pie chart.  She doesn’t know about the chart, the pie or the red slice.

Sue didn’t see Boyhood.  She has no idea who the Arquette Family is but she did see the Oscars.  She saw a best actress winner say something about her own life; about equal wages.  She saw a woman over 40, in a nice, relatively kind of plain dress, wearing glasses, talk about her life.  She saw women in the audience leap to their feet in support.  I am certain Sue knows they are all rich beyond belief.  They have more money than they could ever need and she saw one of them spent her sliver of time to talk about equal wages.  And, now she knows that even among well paid Americans, men and women are paid unequally. 

Sue doesn’t know what was said backstage, about the call for Gays and Blacks to back the fair wage movement.  The phrase, Equal means Equal is all new.  It was an outrage to those who live in the red slice.  It was a slap in the face for all those who work in the red slice.  It set the social justice movement back decades as tweeted and posted by the red slice residents.  But that night, someone at the Oscars said, women should be paid equally.  And that’s enough for Sue.  And I am grateful to Patricia because Sue’s feet hurt and she rings up my groceries and always asks, “How’s Grace?” 

I love writing, thinking and living in the red slice.  It is home to me.  And one of my concerns is full equality for all the pie people.  I want fair wages and don’t need everyone to convert to the red slice.  Forgive me if I don’t say it well.  I know better. 

 

A Downpour of Information

Turning 66 next week I have to admit I am more and more vigilant calculating the loss of nouns, proper names, pointers to original sources. I measure my internal database simplify daily without my consent. I had thought it would be a simplification of drawing informed conclusions (wisdom) but then I grew up.  It is not consolidation and distillation. It is recognizing that multiple information streams, background media, torrential facts, wide angle lenses have to be honed; honed in direct ratio to the importance of the flagged destination.

What a week.  Ferguson took me over.  I had four+ media streams going 15 hours a day.  To have that many opinions pouring through began as interesting but what came into focus was that none of the sources were telling the whole story.  Preferring Amy Goodman did not erase the need for mainstream news if I wanted to see what mainstream people were accepting as truth.  Knowing what happened in real time through activists broadcasting on amateur streams was red hot but lost the wide angle shot of the White House, Lt. Russell Honore, sources of humvees and the rich context of Dred Scott being buried just off Florissant Road.  My drive became a personal challenge to know what is fully happening but as Bilbo Baggins told us, one thought pushes out another.

I just wanted to hang on as if it would lead to righting the wrong.  It felt like if I took it all in, I could earn witnessing righting the wrong.  A terrible hope, an activist's hope, a Divine Discontent.

I had a little talk with myself and decided to take a few hours off and watch a movie I had waited a long time to see, Captivated, The Trials of Pamela Smart.  It was sitting on my TIVO.  And I would be able to see footage of one of my most revered friends, Dr. Eleanor Pam, whom I hadn’t seen in a long time.  It turned out to be 90 minutes demonstrating the major importance of getting the whole story.  It is urgent, it is ethical, it is required of mindful people who seek justice. 

The principle character in the movie is television itself.  It is shown in all types and places from prison to kitchens, black & white, with dials and rabbit ears.  It is both a player and a filter which begs the question what is the role of the viewer.  Moreover, is there a responsibility to the viewer?  One man who did not think so was Robert Spencer, a slick shyster reporter of the Smart case who should have been working for Sterling Cooper.

What has television done to us?  I watched Anita Hill and OJ. I knew who was victim and killer.  But what happened to me from the couch to the fridge.  Susan Sontag would ask what genuine human pain can squeeze through that lens into a human heart.  Four boys, celebrity seeking girl wearing a wire, a fist full of men scrambling to make a living on the stage of legal proceedings; all at what cost to a woman in prison for the rest of her life.  It may sound biblical, mythical, Shakespearean but there is a live human being lost in the glamor machine of Nicole Kidman and Helen Hunt.  Even the female novelist whose book was to be the first movie, “ripped from the headlines,” stated no regard for the truth.  Joyce Maynard, what happened to you?  And what did you do to truth seekers?   What are you doing to right this wrong and get Pamela Smart out of prison?   Juicy, salacious, perfect for Lifetime Television and poison for truth seekers.

Real people handed their costumes, given their roles, placed in the key light, tasked with selling something every 12 minutes while the audience dashes to the bathroom or grabs a beer.  Humanity as sport.  Angry young Black people caught on Florissant between two tanks.  Pamela Smart in prison without parole while the two who killed Greg Smart will be out in 2015.  What can I do to not only stay afloat in this torrential downpour of information but to be vigilant with my mind and protect my heart.

As Murrow warns,

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it's nothing but wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.  Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, "When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.

You Decide Now What the Future Will Believe

I have been reading about the nature of writing history.  I don’t mean writing a book but in creating what the future generation will know about what people before them did.  In that knowing, they build their footprint.  I don’t want to get too fancy here but what Miss Catt and Miss Paul set on the river of time for us to know creates who we are today.  Only visionaries and ice cutters imagine beyond the givens but even they breathe within certain boundaries.   

A lot is being written criticizing elitist books in the TLGBQ world – Boise and Becker for starters.  And many flip out over black-tie, $500 plate award dinners celebrating people who never held a sign or walked on pavement.  I agree and now I see that future generations will only have these points of view represented.  In twenty years, when students read about how gender equality happened, it will appear that politicians, legislators, wealthy organizations and shiny famous people did it all. 

Here is the deal.  You can change that.  You can write this history.  You can write a history that actually expresses the equality that is being born right now.  If every organization, every community TLGBQ Center, every College and University Center had their own awards, their own dinners, bestow honors which DEMONSTRATE what you want to be history. 

If you want greater diversity to be your pen-stroke, then honor a diverse group of people.  You are not limited by needing a bestselling published book about grassroots activism.  It can be done in other ways.  Think about what you want people to believe about this time and make that the banner, the footprint, the celebration.  Who made all this happen and who do you want the class of 2050 to know as the activists of the turn of the century.

Alice Paul ~ Claiming Power, new book reviewed

I began making serious inquiry about Miss Paul in 1980.  She was my touchstone for my 37 day fast for the ERA in 1982.  It was because of her, we drafted legal papers making certain the state could not force feed us.  Her friend, Doris Stevens’ book, Jailed for Freedom was our primary reference.  My interest in Miss Paul never waned and, in 2012, I set out to read contiguously everything I had access to - calling it AP immersion.  Since that time, I have read 40+ books, 100+ articles and interviewed 10 women who knew her.  The most enchanting source was the November, 1972 taped interview by Amelia Fry.  I carefully read every word in the 664 page transcript.  I bought CDs of the first two hours of the interview just so I could hear her voice and I grieved that Amelia Fry passed on before completing her book on Alice Paul.

One day I got wind that the work was going to be completed by American / Women’s Studies scholar, J.D. Zahniser.  I pre-ordered it instantly and waited six months.  It was published Tuesday, June 3, 2014.  It arrived Wednesday, June 4, 2014.  I collected my favorite reading tools; felt tip pens, color tabs, magnifying glass and notebook.  The scripted order of my adventure; copyright, index, footnotes, bibliography, acknowledgements, introduction, chapter one. FORCE FIELD - DO NOT INTERRUPT ME.

Page after page, line after line.  Sheer perfection.  The backstory, the reason, the lineage, the culture.  Her letters, her family, her home, her schools.  Even her hats!  It was all there, explained as no other book came near.  Her first friendships that lasted a lifetime; Lavinia Dock, Rheta Dorr, Maud Younger, Elsie Hill.  I knew each and every one mentioned but never embraced with this depth.  Every question filled in as never before.  Miss Paul’s letters lavishly quoted, letting us all inside her thinking.  Bicycle through France, study in Germany, first apartment, encountering her icon - Christabel and the portentous meeting of Miss Lucy Burns.  From Gandhi to all the Pankhursts.  From Alva Belmont to Doris Stevens to Dorothy Day to Rose Winslow to Jeanette Rankin and the squirrely Mr. Wilson.  From biology to economics to social work to quintessential leadership – disappearing just when the applause begins.  From WSPU to NAWSA to CC to CU to NWP.  From Paulsdale to Lafayette Square.  And the steadfast architecture of Hicksite Quakers; Forward Into Light. 

If you want to know Miss Alice Stokes Paul, the Quaker genius who masterminded the American Suffrage victory, this is the book. Finally you can follow the unfolding of her inspiration, her deep understanding of power and get inside of the political complexity of the “First Wave.”  So much here to find for the first time and find familiar.  Within it all; Miss Alice one step ahead, widening her domain, examining her motivations but always the Equality of Women.            

Of course I have to rate 5 stars.  It is the best and I have read them all. 

 There are three things I wish were different. 

1)     I wish for 100 more photos. There are a few, some I have never seen, but it is not enough. 

2)     I wish more was said about Miss Paul or AP (as Miss Paul often signed) believing the vote was one of many steps on the path to full, global equality.  Her vision was for all women, for all time. 

3)     I am bereft that this book ends in 1923.  Alice Paul Claiming Power is more than worthy and brilliant which is why I wanted it to cover more than 35 of her 92 years.  Her last 57 years is distilled in a four page epilogue.  I will always long for such a wonderful book to include Miss Paul going to Geneva, founding the World Women’s Party, her resistance efforts during the war, the maddening journey with the ERA, her closing years with her greedy nephew and her rescue by the Jews she hid 30 years before.   

 Let there be no mistake, I will always look for that full life biography.  Miss Paul did not vaporize with the success of the suffrage campaign.  She cannot be reduced to this ten year segment.  In fact, to the activist, her longevity with sustained purpose is her greatest legacy.  I love Miss Paul.  I am so grateful for this book.  I have to stop now and read it all over again.

#bringbackourhumanity

Driving to and from LA in Obama traffic, there was a lot of time to think.  The violent kidnapping of Nigerian students and selling them is such an extreme lesson.  I ask myself constantly what is the lesson. 

Twitter #bringbackourgirls hit a million in three weeks.  The USA sends support. The best outcome will be photos flooding the web of these young women being returned to their families, maybe posed with their armed rescuers.  Worse will be photos of some barbarous bloodbath of the kidnappers. 

From this point to that, there are hashtags and protests and information traveling at the speed of light.  What is the message, what is actually happening.  And when the resolution is made public, the hashtags and furor will be retired with a global exhale. We will move on to the next flashbang.

Fundamentally.  What is happening fundamentally?  How many females were kidnapped for profit from that day to this?  How many are working day and night to destroy education for girls, advancement for women, full discovery of the female spirit?  This fire cannot be extinguished one ember at a time. 

Dan Sterling may be another icon of humans who think other humans are commodities, as he brags that he gave the players money and nice homes.  Are we assuaged if Black people buy the Clippers so we can feel liberated from this singular transgression.  What is the full and lasting response? 

Our species is in grave danger.  We have to teach ourselves that humans cannot own one another.  We have to want more than photo-op solutions with shallow celebrations.  This is BIG and requires a big mind to evolve, to solve, realize our spirit.  #connectthedots  #bringbackourspirit

Earning Forgiveness

Today I read a very interesting post by Mark Surman, the Executive Director at Mozilla.  Actually, the comments were the most interesting.  I find it complicated to sort out the forces at play here.  And internet neutrality is in the mix too.  Mark both defended the mindful unity of the diverse Mozillians and the leadership of CEO Brendan Eich.  For those who don’t know, Eich donated 1K to the Yes on 8 campaign.  Mark wrote about something all of us know first hand, many times we are called to get along with people who do not agree with us.  The comments cover the whole pallet of options though I have to remark that it was, by and large, an articulate river – which is a real cut above most comment mudslides.

It has all set me thinking about forgiveness.  What does it look like and what is forgiven?  I have never been in a Hobby Lobby or Walmart.  I have never eaten at Chik-fil-a.  I love my iphone, RuPaul makes me laugh and I do not shop at American Apparel.  If I can afford it, I always chose union; even blew such a gasket that one organization I belong to changed their conference hotel.  The idea that I am boycotting Arizona is really an option as if there was a family funeral there I would be going.  Somehow I have developed an ornate mental system about what is approval, disapproval, deal breaker, assuager, fixer, etc. 

The question on my mind today is have I created a way for the offender to change teams?   Once the money was donated, the odious action occurred, the public statement was made, are they banished forever?  Can they ever cross over?  Now that Dan Cathy said his corp won’t make any more anti-LGBT donations, can I buy some waffle fries?  As profoundly upset as I have been with Obama about Marriage Equality, is all that over since he evolved, told the DOJ to implement the SCOTUS decision and welcomes same-sex couples to events?  But what about no EO over ENDA?  And another EO to stop the deportations.  Is he on my team now?  I think chances are pretty good that the CEO of most corporations is not on my team.  PUT DOWN THOSE BRAWNY TOWELS. 

It takes a lot of energy to discover, remember and sustain the list of offenders.  It would take a database to track who is right or wrong on every issue.  You would have to create a method to grade the level of offense and measure the scope of offenders.  So why do any of it?  I do it because it feels good to demonstrate my interior beliefs.  Even when no one is looking, there is something wholesome and conscious about managing my participation. 

But when I dig deep, I have to admit a few things:

• Most of this is luxury.  The fact that I have access to information, so many choices and optional actions is a first world privilege.
• Yes, Margaret Mead, one person can make a difference which is realized as the crowd collects around it’s wisdom.
• Have I structured this so the offender can reconsider, make amends, save face, and change their position?  What do I require of them to build my trust and create an agreement?  

This last one was one of Gandhi’s principle recommendations.  If you draw the line of what is right and what is wrong, you have to provide a two-way bridge.  I recommend a lot of signage and a welcoming committee on the side I am cheering for. 

UPDATE  April 3, 2014

Today Brendan Eich stepped down.  There was so much fury about this that I wonder about all the threads reaching out to businesses and society in general.  What was the lesson and who will listen?  I do believe there is a better way when the offender is surrounded with a diverse community, is at ease around those whom he fears.  I would prefer that he change.  I would prefer that change became attractive.  Thats a lesson we can all live with.  

As an equality activist, it seems to me that the real win here would have been for Brendan to change, to make amends and become a champion.  It would have been good for him, good for queers, good for straights and really good as an example of how to demnstrate change.  

Fast for Families ~ Beginning Third Week

http://fast4families.org/

Every eating day, the body has a big task.  It is the most sophisticated food processor imaginable.  Blood rushes, the brain signals, the muscles squeeze and churn.  There is food to be deconstructed, transformed and mostly sloughed.  It is a very full time job.  In fact, every moment while this complex task is happening, it is a challenge to think, to compute, to read, to collect ones thoughts; as evidenced after lunch at work.

Fasting is the most counter-intuitive, unnatural, stern, delicate thing one can do to their body. It is a slow and painful pulling the plug on your food processor.  Headaches begin shouting, where is my food?  (loudly for sugar eaters).  The whole body is slowly and unwillingly going into stasis.  It is literally pulling away down from its primary activity.

But as the processing of food decreases many, many, many things escalate.  By day 12, you can hear as never before.  You can smell a pickle, a tic-tac, dirty sox and, mostly, bad breath as never before.  The feel of your blanket is articulated; scratchy or soft.  And feeling is now far beyond fingertips; as reception is amplified through one’s entire body and some radiating distance around it.  Clumsy, shrill, insensitive actions are now razors that cannot be explained, as even explaining it is too hard.  Such a statement, any self-serving statement is too painful to one’s conscience.

That is all that is left now - the body has fallen asleep and the spirit is fully awake.  Possibly one’s spirit is always as awake but the shouter, the stumbler, the thinker, the food processor is now asleep.  Tread softly around fasters, not just because they hear and feel as never before but because they are awake. 

  SIGN THE PETITION 

Your Next Brave Move

Recently there have been some shocking and extreme expressions of passion, compassion, and empathy in the media’s reporting about activists.  I am always shocked that others are shocked as I find the extremism predictable, understandable and appropriate.  Admittedly, it is my interest.  I pay attention to this certain type of person.  They are everywhere around the world. 

Jumping right to an extreme, last week, Russian Pyotr Pavlenshy sat naked in front of Lenin’s Mausoleum and nailed his scrotum to the ground.  In a prior statement, he said he was protesting the “police state.”  He did it on Russia’s Police Day which is a national holiday.  In 2012, standing in front of Kazan Cathedral, he sewed his lips together in solidarity with Pussy Riot.  Again, he wrote an advance explanation that Pussy Riot's protest in the bascillica was a reenactment of Jesus scourging of the money-changers out of the temple.  An interesting footnote is that when examined by psychiatrists, he was issued a “clean bill of mental health.”  Hear, Hear.  

Posting the photo of Pyotr on my facebook page and responding to a comment, I wrote that this form of action is a relative of cutting.  It is a collecting force that demands to be released.  Instead or (or maybe in addition to) pent up inner feelings that bring someone to cutting, this is a release of total frustration over social injustice.  Media has identified Pyotr as a performance artist.  I suppose that label gives it a distance, an eccentricity.  Though I would disagree wholeheartedly. 

Activists survey social conditions, take it in and devise a plan which demonstrates, with precision, their next brave move.  Dreamers stand to say, I am undocumented.  Veterans cuff themselves to the Commander in Chiefs HG (the White House fence).  Russian queers publicly kiss.  Voters flood the Austin capitol in support of Wendy Davis’ filibuster.  Fasters in Gitmo.   A Tibetan monk self-immolates.  They have had enough.  They have reached the limit.

But do not think that such photograph-able grand actions are any different from the sixth grader standing in the hallway, refusing to bully.  The family member at Thanksgiving dinner stating clearly, “that was not funny.”  The stranger speaking up when witnessing harassment.  The next brave move is the move that presents itself in the context of life.  It is not always on a grand scale, going viral, on Huffpo. 

All of these actions are symptoms of a terrible dis-ease known as Divine Discontent.  Whether one believes in god or not.  These are the actions of a watchful mind, an open heart, an examined conscience.  These are the ones who have found resolve and once in gear, cannot turn it off.  They stand in determination.  Touch softly, hold them in esteem.  They are made of the same fabric as saints.  They have a burning desire to live with purpose – to know no meaningless breath, to wake every day as a warrior in battle.

Turkey’s #standingman

So don’t say that you do not understand.  You most likely do.  If you ever have seen an injustice and had to take a deep breath, leap into the fray, take a chance that no one will agree AND did it anyway; YOU UNDERSTAND.  I am so glad you do.