Reflections from MHIT and RID

It’s been a powerful couple of weeks. 

Vibrant and vital disruptions.  Our sometimes-volcanic communications leave a great impression on me.  New earth being created, old earth being consumed in its delivery and new soil material laid down for hopefully new growth, new life. There is the pain of the battle when it becomes diminishing of others, in the reflections of it in our own pools of light and dark internally, our own growth and change and awakening.

It’s like looking at a photograph of lava flowing into the ocean, the huge cloud of steam, and moving closer to the picture, I see it is actually a mosaic of millions of tiny photographs of faces and flowers and moments in peoples’ lives….all those faces, all that detail.  My head and heart spin…

I see the grace so many have held and acted with for so long, often in the face of daily slights and larger injustices; I see the love and caring – valuing of self, language, community, freedom, life force.  Wisdom watchers.  So much grace, tolerance, faith.

Will the message be lost in translation?  Will the language we use vacuum freedom’s air out of the chamber of communication? Behind the vitality of anger, the boldness, the vulnerability, the putting forth the powerful and true, the wounds and passions long held in check, is the humanity. Riding through the eruptions is my new sport and adventure.  Privilege and naiveté have given me ‘safe harbour’ and shielded me for so long.  The timing is vital for a commitment, as a wounded warrior, to being intact while being open.

I hope for a translation of this into my heart and daily actions, in a way that understands and acts upon change (sometimes, only once the fog or confusion or that special ‘burn’ of a new edge of growth clears). I appreciate that this is not hatred of who I am.

This is the gift of honesty, the courage to put it out there for reflection and action, that when I am of the group who have been and are the oppressors, or whose actions and values have compromised others’, despite my best intentions, I must ‘stand with the accused’ and watch for what is needed, ask, and hold onto my own reactions and defenses until I understand.  Put aside the protections I use even without thinking. 

And, ask for what I need, to prevent my own diminishment and preserve the opportunity to stay in the conversation. 

I work for, hope for, a translation to healing in which we can have and hold and connect with each other in our deepest humanity.  It’s bound to be tumultuously critical when basic life rights are at stake. We’ll need the diversity of all our perspectives and cultural / community wealth and wisdom to create this change – perspectives which have been excluded in creating the systems which now are breaking down to make room for the new or re-created.  Co-creation. 

May I continue to make room for this and hold the space through the tumult of new growth with my own grace, courage, introspection, dialogue and continued deepening of comprehending, taking to heart, and learning to translate into whole communication, connection (past my own awkwardness) and into engagement in the life of all of us as people, languages and communities who truly impact each other.  Stay in the conversation.

Will you join me?   #doable #RID2013 @streetleverage  @HeartOfInterp #vibrantdisruptions

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