Out Beyond...
I hope this finds you well!
Here's what's been rambling and roaming through me these days...
This quote:
"Out beyond right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field, I'll meet you there."--Rumi
Not that I am there, in that field all the time, or even a lot.
Just that it feels important in my heart, mind, body and spirit.
The “field” being an essential ingredient for human healing.
And right now we seem to need all the help we can get.
For instance, a few weeks ago I worked with a father and adult daughter.
They have struggled to be in a relationship that isn’t mired in a lot of pain and confusion.
As we sat outside in the sun, next to my tiny blossoming garden, this is what transpired.
They both want to communicate differently.
They both want the daughter to have a life that works for her.
That said--they both have parts of themselves that show up in the relationship that cause blow ups.
He acts out of parental fear and she out of unhealed family wounds.
They were able to acknowledge those parts.
This wasn’t easy.
But they did it.
Each of them.
And there was a moment when compassion flowed between them.
We paused for that moment to grow.
This was the opening to nurture the field.
A seed sown.
We then crafted a plan to water that field.
To plant new flowers.
To tend to the weeds.
It’s a journey.
It will likely have it’s ups and downs, and for this moment they committed to creating a new field. Yay them.
Like these two courageous humans it seems I/we may need to navigate towards this field.
A fresh framework of:
I/we need to acknowledge that either/or is not a choice.
That having two sides means someone loses.
That sovereignty and collective care can live together.
That aspiring to be democratic includes liberty And justice.
AND perhaps we need to add a third quality like compassion, forgiveness, or love?
Because it seems like that is part of the rub--justice or liberty, either/or, right/wrong.
I am diligently practicing stepping out of the binary---
One camp or the other.
Out of any one truth and into---
The murky middle.
The instability of a ground that doesn’t know its there yet in the big world.
The---I love you, I don’t agree, and nothing needs to change, and perhaps everything does.
That feels raw and exposed and full of potential.
I want to be clear, I am not saying that some human behavior is not mired in harm.
And that I/we can and ought to take action to mitigate that.
I am saying it’s looking to me like many of us are contributing to that harm because we are locked into our beliefs of what is true, what is fact and what is not, who is right and who is wrong. And when I am living there, what I know about myself is, I have lost the capacity to see the other person or person’s humanity, and their divinity, and most likely my own at the same time.
Which does not create a field beyond---what we are living in---!!
I am not asking you to agree with me.
I am asking you to sense the energy that you are feeling right now and ask yourself is that the energy I/we need to grow a world that works for all?
If the answer is humm, no, maybe, or yes (haha) here are some resources I have found helpful, and turn to again and again.
They are mostly books because I am primarily a reader.
These two books that take us to the murky middle of politics with resources and practices galore:
Parker Palmers Healing the Heart of Democracy
Van Jones Beyond the Messy Truth
For those of you who want to stretch out of the political and into a more indigenous perspective:
SandTalk by Tyson Yunkaporta
This beautiful panel of humans.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
These two books are about doing the personal transformation to support self and world:
Deep Liberation by Langston Kahn
Grounded By Erin Yu Juin McMorrow
That’s probably enough!
The Field out beyond right doing and wrongdoing lives in most of us, buried under a whole heck of a lot of western civilization conditioning----and I am hopeful I/we can commit to growing that field.
This is hard work. Deep work. Important work.
It takes time and commitment and attention and intention.
I/We need to drop into our hearts to feel our human and more than human connection.
Questions. Reach out. Drop in. Pause.
Thank you for reading.
You matter,
Carol
P.S. I get that the I/we might feel confusing or redundant and at this point I am exploring helping myself hold both--writing it supports that.