All Souls

Community ritual is a pretty powerful thing. Community rituals give us an opportunity to come together and share about how something means to you. Over the past month I have had the honor to participate in a lot of community ritual. A wedding, Dias de los Muertes, and the All Souls Procession have all fallen in the last 31 days. It was a fascinating experience to design a wedding ceremony that reflected both me and my partner. To not feel pressured by tradition, but to acknowledge its role and to examine if any pieces fit us. We ended up with the most non-traditional ceremony I’ve ever witnessed, but the response from our very traditional Grandparents down to our friends was the same. Everyone was overwhelmed with emotion and reflected the beauty we shared right back to us. My Grandma later asked why we exchanged books, but didn’t even seem worried about the lack of exchanging rings.
Dias de los Muertes came and as I set up my altar I knew that people all over the city and world were also remembering their loved ones who passed. Technically I celebrated by myself, but even driving around the city seeing altars and the colorfully decorated cemetery I knew I was part of a ritual that allowed a community to grieve, celebrate and take time to remember.
It seems like the common theme of community ritual is the act of “showing up”. Thousands of people turned out for the All Souls Procession last night. It was an opportunity for people to share what death meant to them, to remember, to let go of the past. Death is political, it can feel silent and still, it rattles us to our core and that was all reflected in the procession. Anyone could be part of the procession and everyone took part even if they were watching on the sidelines. Hundreds of people marched through the city made up as skeletons, giant puppets, or on stilts. There was a lone saxophone player, every kind of drums imaginable, a mariachi band and bagpipe players. There were groups of people who created symbols of many people’s death. There was a giant twirling world for women who had died of breast cancer. There were kites with writing, sharing stories of the L, G, B, T folks who had passed. Hundreds of paper butterflies from strings for those who have died in the desert, altars and banners for those who had died in the war, a giant oil slicked crane on wheels for all the animals that died in the B.P. oil spill. Death is also personal and hundreds of people carried signs with pictures of loved ones, dragged behind them simple to elaborate altars with flowers, candles, giant paper-mâché creations or simply marched down the street. There were babies in strollers and Nanas using wheelchairs in the procession. Everyone was expressing their story of death. Those of us on the sidelines were oddly quiet for a scene that to an outsider looked like a parade. We witnessed what we did not have the words or creativity to share. We clapped when something hit home. We added our items and intentions written on slips of paper to the massive bowl that is set on fire at the finale performance at the end of the procession.
Many Mouths One Stomach sponsors the All Souls Procession. From their website they say, “Many Mouths One Stomach (MMOS) is a Tucson-based collective of artists, teachers and community activists who come together with the intent to create, inspire, manifest and perpetuate modern festal culture. “Festal Culture” is the expression and fulfillment of core human needs through public celebration, ceremony, and ritual. The All Souls Procession is an event that was created to serve the public need to mourn, reflect, and celebrate the universal experience of Death, through their ancestors, loved ones and the living. Our events establish a legacy that reclaims public space through art and blurs the line between participant and observer, ritual and performance. Together with our commitment to education, outreach, and collaboration, MMOS stewards a vision wherein the creative act becomes a mode of living.”
……And that it did. For me community ritual at its heart is a chance for renewal. Being able to come together with people who I live near to share about something, that experience is what makes me feel like I live in a community. I need that expression, that chance to listen, the ability to learn and grow. It gives us a different kind of path then just talking or debating to examine some issue or change which affects us all.

Choice?

So last week was a stressful day. I was proud of myself though, most days I exercised and meditated which is sometimes hard to get both done consistently. When meditating, as hard as I would try to clear my mind, I found my mind kept going back to work. Did I email this person, oh, that needs to get done, did this person do that….Did I mention I work from home?
I’ve talked to several folks who work full time from home about the challenges and benefits. It’s great to wear whatever you want and difficult to have work staring you in the face on weekends. My ability to manage many projects at once and to focus intensely for hours makes me an ideal person to work from home. Yet, for me having such easy access to work whenever my obsessive need to worry (or need to control) hits definitely falls into the “challenges” category. I can become consumed and usually give all of my energy to work tasks and have no energy left, usually kicking off my cycle of not taking care of my spiritual, emotional and physical needs.
I enjoy managing big projects and getting tasks done, but I’ve been trying to figure out where the balance is between working frantically because overwhelmed and making a choice to do something. And what about making a choice purely to meet others expectation? Where does intuition fit in? How do we listen to our intuition?

A beginning that is a long time coming

So most afternoons last week at 6pm I looked at the clock, took a deep breathe and tried to wrap up what I could in terms of tasks for work, ending with another, 9, 10, 11 or 12 hour day. I work long hours during the week ending up collapsing on the weekend. The weekend then is spent journaling, reading books about taking time for my life and creating lists on how I will NOT do this intensely unhealthy schedule again next week.

It is a cycle that I have been going through for literally years. Intermixed with all this I’ve had a deep knowing that I need to move past my anxiety and fear of…(well there’s a long list). Needless to say this pattern didn’t just pop up in my life, but has come out in many different ways. Often I circle between frenzied bouts of trying to figure out some kind of reasonable system for what I think I should do, with bouts of depression at not feeling like I’m able to control my life.

And while I’ve been on this path I’ve noticed I am not alone. Many folks I know and love struggle with this too. It doesn’t seem to matter much if we work for the government, a non-profit or the private sector, many of us feel buried by our work.
I have noticed though that folks working in non-profits often have the stage set for this to be an issue. Many of us are PASSIONATE about what we do. Non-profits as they grow are trying to do more and more with less and less. And I’ve realized as I’ve struggled with my work’s expectations, that it is one thing to do self care when life is reasonable and another thing to do self care when life is unreasonable.
And where does choice fit into this all?

I look forward to exploring this over the next few weeks as I make time to blog and process…

Staying Present

Its fall! Seeing trees change color, loose their leaves, for a girl from the desert, it’s incredibly amazing. My partner and I took a drive last weekend to actually go and see all this beauty. I took pics to send back to my family and we had a great time getting lost in the trees. It was great to do something to celebrate. I’m all about reclaiming this time of year in a positive way. One of my best friends passed away this month 4 years ago and I’m not lost on the irony of how close his passing is to Dias de Los Muertes. I scheduled some time with a massage therapist on the day of his passing to help me relax and stay grounded. It was a good session and she told me afterward that she kept getting during the session was that there was an intense need for me to stay in the present.

Staying in the present is hard for me to get my mind around. I’m a “big picture” kind of person and am always thinking about the next steps, what happened in the past, etc. I honestly am not sure I have any real idea on what “staying in the present” means.

So, I do what I always do when I can’t figure something out – I go see what others have figured out. I went to a bookstore and skimmed through a book called, “Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life". It was kinda over my head, the author was analyzing and I think conducting a bunch of scientific studies on being in the “present”, but one thing that struck me was --- to pay attention to where you put your attention. In other words, we sometimes put our attention on things that we have no control over instead of on what we are currently doing. If I am interpreting the book right, it seems that we often hoard our energy of attention because we think there is only so much, but there is a difference between giving something attention and curiosity versus obsessing over our interpretations of that thing (or comment, or email, etc) that often takes much more energy then something like curiosity which actually can give you energy.

This point really made me stop, cause I am nothing but obsessive sometimes and often leave myself exhausted at the end of a work day from giving all of my attention to things that I probably didn’t have to spend time “interpreting” and could have just taken them as is. I’ll be trying this next week to pay attention to what I am giving my attention to and how it affects me.

On self care, activism and creativity

I’ve been thinking a lot of the concept of “doing my own work” in terms of my responsibility to push myself to learn and grow and become a more intentional ally to other communities that I may not personally identify with. I have been thinking about how this important work that is essential to my being the kind of person I want to be, how that fits in with self care.

So much of learning about other communities’ history and values has been born out of so much pain, and pain is important. It is important that people can be real with their pain in a safe space. That others can witness the pain and hear it, feel it, not turn away. Yet, as activists seeking to take care of ourselves, how do we make space for this pain and yet not get stuck there? It is so important to me to figure out real ways we can be FOR being more human (compassionate and respectful) towards each other, in community.

I had the privilege to watch a clip of an interview of Buffy Sainte-Marie on Democracy Now. Buffy is an activist who totally seemed to be coming from a place of self care – choosing to do things that make her happy and including activism in that. I loved what she had to say about being an artist. That writing curriculum, songs or painting pictures all came from the same place inside. That the kid in her never got shut down and she can find her fun/work from this place.
It was to me very beautiful.
I put myself out as a poet, an artist, but not often as a singer, and I LOVE to sing. I wonder if the songs I have inside, that I always considered too tender to share, if writing them down, learning about what they have to say, going deeper, all while making space to hear other people’s truth, is actually a way to “do my own work” in a way that makes me happy?

Can creativity be serious and deep? Can it push us to new levels of understanding? Maybe it’s the only thing that ever has….

“And as an artist, sometimes you can artfully say something in a three-minute song that it would take somebody else a 400-page book to write.” - Buffy Sainte-Marie

Noticing the storm

I know it when I feel it. That blood boiling point. That point when I’ve been working with out a break and I get that email or phone call that just pushes my buttons. I think for most people they either start snapping at everyone that comes along past this point or they take a break.
I have this weird response where I instantly feel myself leaving my body and I concentrate on what I’m doing even harder. I do this, burning through ten times the energy just to keep going. When I’m under stress I often end days so exhausted I sit not moving in front of the TV or I sit in front of the TV and cry.

So, big moment yesterday that when I started feeling this way I took my lunch break (YAY). I did some adapted yoga. I meditated. And I kept getting this image in my mind of a desert storm. Sitting in the desert seeing a violent storm move in is intimidating and scary. But it’s not something you can control.

I think sometimes stress is a misguided need for control. Working in social justice we live our lives trying to “affect change” in the world. But creating change is a thin line away from trying to control. Ideally it’s about modeling behavior, getting investment from others, creating a loving and supportive space. It’s about respect, challenge and hope, not about force.
There’s this great book called, Practicing Peace in Times of War by by Pema Chödrön that I originally got thinking it would have good action strategies. It turned out to be all about how to REALLY notice the emotional reactions with in yourself. To REALLY feel them. To pay attention to them. And by honoring them we create peace within ourselves. Therefore creating peace in the world.

Self Care, A Begining

Self care. So I have been trying to figure out what self care means for me for literally the last 4 years. I have made hundreds of lists, read self-help books about re-prioritizing your time and have created a ton of plans on how to make this happen in “real life” for myself.
Needless to say, I’m still on the journey.

I have been so interested in general to examine how folks who work in social justice movement which are often understaffed and underpaid, how to make balancing self care with life a reality.
So I’ve decided to make this topic a theme for my blog. Hopefully it will start conversations and help folks make connections on this topic/issue for themselves.

As an activist (and admittedly an over-achiever, trying to “do it all” kind of person) I’ve really connected with the Tao Te Ching in terms of guidance on leadership and letting go. There are a lot of translations of the Tao Te Ching and the translations vary a lot. From what I’ve read, the “Tao” is often interpreted as “the way”. I like a description I read comparing the Tao with water. That is flows into the lowest points of the valley, gives many things but does not have expectations, finds the way of least resistance but doesn’t “give up” or not flow…
For more see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao
On that note, I’ll leave you today with this quote, “Emptied of desire, we see the mystery; filled with desire, we see the manifestation of things.”
#1 Tao Te Ching (translated Sam Hamill)