Beloved Community – let kindness win

Our collective history is filled with violence. When white settlers arrived on these shores they carried with them vestiges of what had been done to them. They brought persecution, conquering, and a kind of capitalism that requires a lower rung. Class struggle, theft of land, and when all else failed, the ultimate silencing of people who deemed to be different, or were different by design. The attempted cover-ups and twisting of history are not new. They’re simply now on steroids.

We refuse to believe what we know to be true: that we live on stolen land, that enslaved and impoverished people built this country and that the cowardice displayed from Congress to ICE is nothing more than a last-ditch effort to keep the LIE afloat.

When I drive through rural towns and see confederate flags, I want to yell, “Wisconsin was a Union state”. But I’m really thinking: “Your ignorance is showing”. And ignorance is more than not knowing history. The kind of ignorance we deal with today is deeper. We’ve lost a sense of self. We’ve lost human dignity. And unless and until we rediscover it within ourselves, we’ll never see it in the “other”.

We’ve lost our sense of belonging to something greater. In doing so we cling to whatever flag suites us, whatever belief empowers us, or so we think. External power is an empty game, when you are hollow inside. That’s why it never works. People will be martyred and treated inhumanely, but power must succumb to benevolence, if only when we take our last breath. Recognizing our mutual humanity, acknowledging our history and refusing to carry it on are the solutions available to us.

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Listen to my conversation with Fatemeh Jamalpour on her new book For the Sun After Long Nights. For The Sun After Long Nights by two acclaimed Iranian female journalists, depicts the oppression of ethnic minorities and particularly of women since the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom Movement. It was an honor to be given a glimpse into the courage and deep love of their homeland and their sisterhood. Co-authored by Nilo Tabrizy. It will also air on WDRT, Wednesday, Sept 10 at 5 pm CST.

And if you are in the area: On Sunday, Sept 21 from noon to 5pm we will host Reclaiming Peace: A Community Celebration at Echo Valley Farm

You are not rudderless. You have the capacity to determine the course of your life. You may not be able to influence circumstances that occur, but you can choose how you will respond to them.

In this moment, we can do well to be touched again “by the better angels of our nature”, as Lincoln once penned.* The order of the day is to resist the cruel and power wielding nature of man and return again to our capacity to be human. We’ve witnessed the upsurge of violence and hatred, but we have yet to extol and promote the power of benevolence and goodwill.

We have succumbed, by default and by choice, to the most egregious calamities both to the earth and to one another. We have, by default or by choice, handed our power to the ignorant and the arrogant and we will now collectively suffer the consequences of our inaction.

And what would it look like to return again to our humanity? Foremost, it would mean that a majority of us would reclaim our rudders, or better to say our moral compass. It would mean we would take time to discover in silence and in the reckoning of our own being, what is most important to us.

What we may find are common threads that run throughout humanity – our desire to live in peace, to respect and be respected, and to know the capacity of the earth to care for us and to feed us. Certainly, we would understand and cultivate dignity.

There is no dignity in being rudderless. There is no dignity in allowing suffering. There is no dignity in following inhumanity to its end. Your moral compass knows this. Take it out, dust it off and let’s begin again.

*From Lincoln’s inaugural address, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Presidential Actions after 1 week in office. – Many are being contested in courts and some have already been rescinded due to public outcry. Refuse to be victims.

Let’s Celebrate! Diversity Equity and Inclusion