Image description: Yellow leaves scattered on a dark surface. Some of them form the shape of a heart. Photo credit: Roman Kraft on Unsplash
On the morning of Saturday, November 7, I was at a rally in downtown Boston that focused on local problems, with my partner and her sister. A few speakers into the program, news spread among the crowd that the media had called the presidential election for Biden. A wave of relief swept over me along with a surge of joy, and so much gratitude for all who had worked to make this happen.
But it quickly became clear that the speakers were not going to pause the program to facilitate a few minutes of collective celebration. While we were in full support of the messages of the rally, in that moment we recognized that we wanted to express our relief and happiness rather than our anger and demands.
So we went in search of a celebration. We walked around the mostly empty streets with our signs from the fabulous Favianna Rodriguez, exchanging smiles and celebratory words with a few people. Someone in a car flipped us off. Eventually we made our own party. We got in our cars, blasted some music, and drove around honking and waving our signs. Some people waved and hollered back; some people looked at us like we were crazy.
I choose joy.
I recognize complexity.
I reject the binary.
I honor the work of the thousands of people who organized, turned folks out to vote, and made sure polling places were safe, accessible, and free.
I sing the praises of the Black women and other women of color who led this work—famous and not, like Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, Nelini Stamp, Greisa Martinez Rosas, Nsé Ufot, and Stacey Abrams—because they know that voting is one important tactic in a whole range of strategies for survival and transformation.
I recognize the barriers that had to be broken in order to elect a Black, South Asian American woman as vice president.
I know representation is not the answer to ending white supremacy.
I appreciate the sharp, smart analysis of the ways that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ policies, ideologies, and actions have deeply harmed Black communities and other communities. (I am indebted to subscriber Alli for bringing Harris’ record of harm to my attention after I wrote this post over the summer.)
I feel grief that we had to choose between a truly horrendous administration and one that will also be horrendous in many ways, and will require tremendous pressuring to advance the kind of transformation we need.
I am beyond thrilled that the current occupant of the White House will no longer be able to wield the kind of power he has had for the last four years.
I am keeping a cautious eye on the situation to make sure democratic institutions and processes hold through January 20.
I am grateful for all the people in Michigan, Wisconsin, and other parts of the country who have and are continuing to show up and put pressure on election officials and legislators to make sure the will of the people is heeded.
I am scared and angry that more than 70 million people in this country voted to keep Trump in office.
I am trying to hold the whole of it.
~~~
We have all seen how social media flattens discourse. How it turns conversations into arguments over black and white, yes or no, good and evil. How it encourages binary thinking.
I saw a flurry of critiques on progressive social media on that Saturday in early November, chastising those of us who were celebrating for not understanding how bad Biden is and how horrible the down-ballot results were. The implicit message: You’re either a dumb liberal or a smart progressive.
Binaries provide the illusion of safety and order. They provide shortcuts in thinking and ways of being. They split the world up into us and them, and that feels like safety. Binary thinking upholds white supremacy; it underlies colonialism and imperialism.
If you live under the illusion of the gender binary and someone looks like a woman to you, then there’s a whole set of assumptions and ways of being that you can project onto them. If you know that gender is not a binary, not even a spectrum, but a constellation, then you can’t assume anything. You have to see the person for who they are—a whole, beautiful complex person. It’s more work for sure. And it’s work that makes us more whole ourselves.
Thankfully, in addition to the binary-driven critiques, there were also lots of nuanced and loving responses. They emphasized our ability to hold complexity. They reminded us that we can hold multiple truths. (And as I put the links in this paragraph, I realized most of the responses that spoke to me came from Black women and nonbinary organizers, thinkers, and writers I follow. I am recognizing and grateful for their wisdom and generosity.)
These responses made me think about what it means to be whole—or to move toward wholeness—in this world that tries its hardest to break us into a million scattered pieces.
~~~
What strange creatures we humans are, evolved to destroy the world and ourselves.
How do we evolve beyond this moment of fracture and destruction? And I don’t mean only the U.S. political moment. I mean all of it: How all around the world there is political turmoil, war, authoritarianism, the continued destruction of Indigenous people, their lands, and their culture. How we continue headlong into climate catastrophe. How people around the world feel increasingly isolated and alone.
I find it so hard to imagine that we can evolve at the pace and scale we need to. And, I also believe that it’s possible. Things can change suddenly, swiftly. Because things are always changing. That is the one constant of our lives. Nothing stays the same. As Octavia E. Butler now famously wrote in The Parable of the Sower:
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.
But-and-also, there’s an underlying truth, or reality, that doesn’t change—a truth that is constant, enduring, complete. I understand this truth as profound love for life: the fabric of the universe created from the weft of love and the weave of life. I believe that even in the hardest of external circumstances, all of us have the ability to touch—even for just a moment—the powerful love that keeps us breathing, keeps us choosing life.
Everything changes. And the profound love that is the fabric of the universe stays constant.
I try to hold both of these seemingly contradictory beliefs in my body, in my mind. I think this might be one way we evolve.
~~~
I walk along a path next to the Neponset river in the cold, late November afternoon. A storm has passed, and I turn my face to the sun. The maple and oak trees above me shine their bare branches—so different from the lush green canopy I walked under just a few months ago.
But I realize that the essence of these trees is the same as they were in the summer. I stop and put my hand on an oak. I recognize that its beauty and aliveness haven’t changed.
It is the same tree. Even as it sheds its leaves and sends its energy to its roots, even as it rests throughout the winter, and then, in the spring, sends out tender shoots and slim branches. Even as buds become leaves, shiny and green at first and then deep, dark green. Even as those leaves turn orange, yellow, brown, and fall along with its acorns to scatter on the ground.
It’s always the same oak, year after year, throughout its cycle of growth, death, rebirth. And it is always changing.
It is whole and complete—and not just as an individual tree but as a community, connected by its roots to all the other oak trees in the area. They reach out to each other, under the cement and concrete, across water and sewer lines, under my house and my neighbors'. They find each other. They connect, they communicate, they keep each other safe. They choose life. They embody love.
Prompting
To be done separately or together:
Tarot prompt
Take out the Wheel of Fortune, the Tower, the Sun, and the World. Arrange them in an order/formation that makes sense to you. Meditate on what these cards bring individually and in relationship to each other.
Writing prompt
Write a poem/story/essay that holds two contradictory ideas simultaneously, but doesn’t name the ideas. Include:
A sound
A description of physicality
An animal
A death
A breath
A gap, a leap, or a hole
A whole
Engaging
After months of meaning to pick it up, I finally finished Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings, and it is powerful, searing, and necessary. I deeply appreciate her work in unpacking and exploring race and racism from an Asian American, specifically Korean American, perspective.
In trying to understand how there was an uptick in people of color voting for Trump, I tuned into this episode of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Intersectionality Matters podcast, released before the election. I found it a riveting, hour-long discussion between six feminist Black men.
I discovered the Resistance Revival Chorus during one of The Frontline calls, and have been listening to them on repeat.
This post is in conversation with and written in parallel with Rev. Mariama White-Hammond’s November reflections on divine love.
Community/Announcements
Thanks to those of you who passed along the job description for the fundraising and social media organizer position. I’m excited to be delving into the next phase of planning for a new kind of book launch. I’ve posted a little description of how I’m thinking about it here. Stay tuned for more!
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