November 3, 2020

Well here we are. And we wait to see who we declare ourselves to be as a people, as a nation. Yet regardless the outcome of this election, the path forward calls for healing and reconciliation. Because regardless the outcome of this election, we are a nation deeply divided and polarized. Yes. There will be obstacles in our path.

As chilling as is the prospect of a continuation of the current administration, there is another obstacle I find even more chilling. It’s what got us to this polarized place. And we are complicit, albeit unwittingly. It’s time to get our wits about us.

Dennis and I recently watched A Social Dilemma. It was beyond sobering and I highly recommend it. As Netflix says about it, This documentary-drama explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations. It features former executives from Google, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Each and every one responsible for creating the social media landscape. Each and everyone now raising the alarm over what it has become.

The dangerous impact is the tracking of every move we make on any of these platforms and using and selling that information to corporations and organizations who want to shift and shape our perspectives to their agenda whether that is selling us stuff or a political ideology. What’s most relevant to our current political and cultural polarization is the use of this information to feed us information specifically tailored to our personal and cultural beliefs and profiles. So we see vastly different information from one another. Those on the left get the narrative of the left. Those on the right get the narrative of the right. The result is that we are not working with the same information, but information that selectively reinforces our world view.

These executives are very clear that this has been at play in this election cycle. The polarization increases and the chasm gets deeper and wider. The outcome of this election will not change that.

Of course current executives in each of these social media platforms dispute this perspective. As they would. Their fortunes, their vast fortunes, are tied to this commercialization and commodification of us not as consumers but as products.

Grim. Yes. But only if we are not aware. Because only from a place of awareness we are able to understand and navigate this chasm. Only from a place of awareness can we be more discerning about our engagement with social media. And only through awareness and discernment will we be able to step around this obstacle in our path and come together around what we hold in common to begin healing and reconciliation. 

The way forward, the only way forward, is in crossing the chasm.

Beannacht,
Judith – judith@stonefires.com

Note: The film offers several ways to mitigate the social media impact. We have now turned off several of our notifications in Facebook, including the marketplace notification.

November 2, 2020

An awakening to new possibilities, a new start.
Time to emerge and take the first step.

A dear friend was meditating on the election and drew this card from Jane Brideson’s wonderful new oracle deck. First Shoots. 

“May it be so,” my friend said. Indeed there is great hope and possibility in this and we need a new start.

There is such polarization and anger. And we need a new start.

We need a new start across this nation but the first shoots must take root in us. In our families and friends and communities.

A friend in Ireland just sent a piece and the timing was perfect to include here. A House Called Tomorrow by Alberto Ríos. For indeed, the bad do not win, not finally, no matter how loud they are.

You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen—
You are a hundred wild centuries

And fifteen, bringing with you
In every breath and in every step

Everyone who has come before you,
All the yous that you have been,

The mothers of your mother,
The fathers of your father.

If someone in your family tree was trouble,
A hundred were not:

The bad do not win—not finally,
No matter how loud they are.

We simply would not be here
If that were so.

You are made, fundamentally, from the good.
With this knowledge, you never march alone.

You are the breaking news of the century.
You are the good who has come forward

Through it all, even if so many days
Feel otherwise. But think:

When you as a child learned to speak,
It’s not that you didn’t know words—

It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.

From those centuries we human beings bring with us
The simple solutions and songs,

The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies
All in service to a simple idea:

That we can make a house called tomorrow.
What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day,

Is ourselves. And that’s all we need
To start. That’s everything we require to keep going.

Look back only for as long as you must,
Then go forward into the history you will make.

Be good, then better. Write books. Cure disease.
Make us proud. Make yourself proud.

And those who came before you? When you hear thunder,
Hear it as their applause.

So we nurture those new shoots. And we listen for the thunder.

Beannacht,
Judith – judith@stonefires.com

November 1, 2020

Sugar and spice
and everything nice.
That’s what little girls
are made of.

Is there a woman in our culture for whom this was not a cornerstone of cultural conditioning? The seeds were planted early and the roots are deep. And then layers got added.

We were told that nice has no place for anger. And we believed it. Even when we choose a spiritual life journey we are told that somehow we are supposed to rise above this most basic and intrinsic human emotion. Just breathe and smile and meditate.

So it’s really no surprise that anger, and indeed rage, is currently a huge issue for so many of my spiritual sisters. Within this time of conflict and polarization, we believe we are not supposed to be angry, let alone enraged. Yet in these times, how could we not be?

In my Crone book, I wrote about this. I was writing for my elder sisters, but it applies to all of us.

It’s easy and certainly most comfortable to consider those times when we are filled with the energies of love, joy, peace, generosity, courage, determination, and compassion. But there is as much power in the energies of anger, fear, pain, and even grief. For within our lives and life experiences these energies forged a strength in us and they are essential warp threads for weaving wisdom. 

Anger. Our anger becomes an expression of moral outrage directed at injustice. We find the courage to reclaim our moral authority and we trust our intuition to be a discerning guide in expressing our rage. In our anger we become outraged and outrageous.

We are awash in injustice. Our rage is not only totally appropriate, it is essential. It is time to be outraged and outrageous. It is time to claim our moral authority.

A friend asked me what the ancestors say about rage. An excellent question. Of course the only requisite for being an ancestor is being dead. And there are many who inflicted injustice and harm on others. Those are not the ancestors I work with. But from those I do work with there is wise counsel.

Rage. The most important thing is not that we have rage but what we do with it. And what we do with it, how we express it, must be rooted in service to the greater good. We are but one strand in the great web of life, a part of the great harmony of all life. And our actions must reflect that spiritual knowing and grounding. Yes. Our ancestors had rage. But they worked with their rage as a tool for mending rents in the web and resolving discord in the harmony. In this, their rage was a source of power. Their counsel? To embrace our rage as empowerment. Sacred empowerment.

Rage is a natural and needed response to much of what is unfolding in our nation and around the world. It is for us to pick up the tools to mend the hoop. It is for us to step into our sacred empowerment. It is time to rage on.

Beannacht,
Judith – judith@stonefires.com