Desperate

Because we cannot go on like this much longer.

We each must find the

Courage to transcend this madness.

How are we going to make the leap across the divide between us?

Elected officials are NOT the answer; they have never been.

You doubt this,

But if they were, if anyone was coming to save us,

We would not know such division, pain, and fractured-ness.

This exhausting circle dance that keeps us stuck

We elect one and then the other one.

Feeling like the winner and then the loser

Switching places every few years.

Not changing the view

Just fickle moods of momentary victory or loss
Deepening the divide between us
Making the leap to connect more frightening, risky, less likely.

We have to do this.

Not one of us; all of us.

How are we going to re-design, re-invent, re-create

Our systems to tolerate change?

How are we going to create social, economic, political systems

That support change and transitions toward something new?

Can we find a way to

Elevate and value this kind of change?

We are so very stuck in-between

Wedged into our own shadow of righteousness

In the limbo between the old and

What is to be.

Resisting like hell, clinging to the decay

Of what has been dying or dead for too long.

What no longer serves and must be allowed to fall

Or when it falls, because it is going to, it will takes us down too.

Peel back your fingers, let go

Participate, leap into the Uncertain, Ambiguous Storm of Change
Or that something else is not going to be of our own design
And may be the end of us all.

This is Unsustainable.

Stop being led from the outside!

Stop putting your lives in the hands of a few

Who also do not know the answer.

I do not know the answers.

Right now, none of us do on our own.

This is going to take a lot of work

From every single one of us.

Remember who you are and why you are here,

Even against the grain

Of our particular flavor of American culture

That does not make remembering easy to do.

Turn off the news channel.

Yes, that one.

Turn them all off.

Stop reading the headlines.

Get off Facebook and Twitter.

Stop repeating the sound bites and memes

That support your opinion and secure your status, and keep you from

The change you are capable of making.

Stop spouting propaganda that only serves

To demonize other people, opinions, and voices and

Ultimately undermines the very foundation of our shared humanity,

Who we are and why we are here.

Stop staring at what is

Comfortably in front of your face.

Get off the sidelines

—cheering or jeering, blaming, or shaming.

Remove your fingers from the

Holes in the dam.
Stop trying to save or revive what is already gone.
There is no going Back. Back is gone forever, not returning.

With both hands free,

Grieve the death of the life you once knew.

Feel sorrow for the eyes that did not see

What was happening for so many, to Us All.

Go sit in nature by yourself,

With yourself,

For longer than you think you can

Stand yourself.

Then, stay there for a while longer.

Listen, just listen

—not to the righteousness still echoing in your head,

Protecting what is yours, screaming out in fear

That you might lose some status or power in this world.

This is what happens at first,

When you stay long enough, fear and aloneness surface

The entrenchment of those voices seem like they will never stop

Playing the spinning record in your mind.

Stay longer, and allow the voices

That hate and fear change

To grow tired,

And fall quiet.

Wait for The Voice you have not heard from

For far too long,

Or from which you may have only heard whispers.

Wait for it to grow louder than all the rest.

The Voice you have not valued as the beacon of Light that it is,

You have not honored or paid attention to often enough.

This is the voice that will help you remember

Who you are, why you are here.

That Voice,

The one you call Soul or Conscience or God,

That is the voice that already knows

What is happening, now, is not okay.

Listen to what makes you uncomfortable

So you can do what is hard.

That is change calling to you

Inviting you into your own transformation.

Be with that discomfort and pain for as long as it takes.

Trust what you feel

Your body, the house of your Soul

Will not lie to you.

Now that you have addressed

Your own deep pain

Of disconnection from your own Soul

You are starting to see the way through.

Look now, with your new eyes

Beyond yourself

To the edges of this world

Where poverty, abuse, and violence live.

This new way of seeing belongs to you

Stand next to those whose voices

Need to be heard so they do not have to bear the pain alone.

You will See.

Pain is pain. Hard is Hard.

Rage, anger, tears, violence toward self or others,
Grief looks a lot of ways.
Being seen and heard heals.

It is uncomfortable to see it now, isn’t it?

Now that you can feel it with them, the pain you share.

In touch with your own goodness,

You know we are not meant to grieve alone.

When you witness grief, terror, trauma exposed,

You know someone’s soul has been denied, ignored, mistreated.

Regardless of skin color, gender, orientation, legal, or social status

These are human beings who are hurting.

It has always been there in the periphery,

But now you can look into the margins fully,

Step into that revealing space of experience with an empathic heart.

Look longer than you think your heart can bear it.

Look into the eyes of children

Separated from their parents
Living in concentration camps
At the border of the “land of the free” and Mexico.

Look, See, Feel

With all of them.

You will hear the call to do better,

To do the right thing.

Stand in the margins, widening your view, a panorama

Shadows of neighborhoods that have caused you to lock your doors

When you have found yourself there

Driving through.

Stop the car.

Look at the dilapidated housing, unsheltered, hungry

Public schools not equal to where your children attend.

Look and feel the lives of Others.

You do not know

What you do not know.

But now, you can choose to glimpse another person’s plight

With your heart.

You can do this.

I believe we are all capable of doing this hard thing.

Do something that your soul cries out for you to do

Before it is too late, before your time is over.

Listen to that knowing voice inside of you

the one that cannot stand with the lies anymore

The lies that have only made us blind, deaf, dumb, and our lives

Temporarily comfortable at the expense of humanity.

I appeal to your better nature, your voice, soul and conscience

The pain and discomfort you are feeling belongs to you.

It is a gift if you follow it, a way forward

Toward transformation, toward a new way of being.

I am not asking you to do anything

I have not done myself.

I ask of you what I am willing to do

Again, and again.

Break traditions (and habits and addictions)

That serve to keep us asleep to the pain

It will be uncomfortable, lonely, unfamiliar, —names will change

At times, it will be scary, a landscape unrecognizable.

Leave the mess that does not belong to you, that you called care

You have cleaned up for too long for capable beings

Leave their mess in your wake along with compassion and hope

It is their path forward, their pain, if they choose to claim and follow it.

We can only Transform self, and serve as a companion to others.

Do something different--radically different.

Change your mind

From the experience of seeing from

The vantage point of another.

Change your mind

Again, and again, know something new about yourself
See with new eyes
Real Possibility feels really good.

And

Do not stop

Keep changing

There is no finish line.

There is no getting there

There is only Here.

This is not a one time thing, it is a way of being

Or perish now.

This is our calling, right now, in this time,

To be courageous in the face of what feels hard

Do something

Soul-Full.

Your only work to do is to follow your own pain,

Stand with others in the darkness who are ready to follow theirs.

You are Ready,

This is who you have always been.

Desperately Seeking the Storms of Change