We are the Center, and the Center Will Hold

I'm trying to force myself to go to the March, but so strongly compelled to stay here and write...and have my excuses lined up for why I can't go into those huge crowds. I don't want to indulge my excuses, but maybe I can write and then go. Or get started and then finish after what will surely be inspiring.

I know that whenever I force myself out of the cave, I gain things I didn't know I wanted. When I stay in, I'm not contributing, and I know how good it feels to be contributing. Reposting things on Facebook does not satisfy deep down, particularly when I know my reach on there is so tiny as to be insignificant. My reach in a huge crowd will also be insignificant, but at least I will open myself to seeing others and what they are doing and saying, people who are far more courageous than I.

I spent a lot of my twenties and thirties protesting. I was somewhat fearless back then and allowed some damage to accrue...damage that has come back to haunt me again and again. But when I hear people's stories and see how they have transcended theirs---because we all get damaged---I know I can do better. I can speak louder and work harder to armor myself. I do not want to be a fearful old woman, beaten down by thoughtless people who probably don't even know they are toxic. I want to be one of the ones to shift that damage back and force the change that will stop it from spreading.

I've been reading back in the Saturday Market archives, randomly, as I try to organize the ones I have. Lotte saved every newspaper article and mention of the Markets and I have done that too. Hers are mostly mounted in albums, yellowing and with her notations. Mine are piled up and not organized so that anyone else could benefit. Reading back over only the last decade of what the Markets have been through is incredible. I was there, and it's far too much to keep in operating memory. Yet we have to carry the stories forward so we know who we are and how we got to today.

It's easy to see how people have forgotten even the recent past in politics and government, and how impossible it is to keep perspective with so much new information. That is no doubt part of the current strategy of bombarding us with misinformation to keep us confused and shut down. Even I hear myself asking "What is the point?" and feeling hopeless and lost. I know better! There has always been a point, and it might even be the same point: to make our lives better. To limit suffering and help all of us move in a healthy and life-affirming direction. To live well. To be happy, and see joy in the world around us. Simple things, simple goals, but constantly thwarted.

I can't afford, for my own peace and happiness, to get crumbly. The things I have fought for, stuck my neck out for, haven't been accomplished yet. I don't get to stop working. Since I do have access to history, and I can recognize patterns, that's part of my job. Since I have words, I must use them. I can't keep quiet. None of us should, since it is taking all of the effort we can collectively apply to even hold the center.

But the center is holding. We own the center. The center is in our chests, our hearts, and our minds, and we know what is right because it resonates there. That song "Shed a Little Light," so eloquently describes how we go to the well on the hill, how we feel the rightness of what we are filled with, and how we hold that as sacred vessels of life. It sounds religious but only in the greater sense of reverence for life. The life of our planet. That is what we are holding dear. You and I will come and go, leave our bodies and our boxes of newspapers behind. We will not finish our work.

But that's not the nature of our work. It isn't one task that can be completed. That's one thing that makes it so hard, so discouraging. We don't see the effects. But that's one reason I have to go today, as fearful as I am of my little emotions. I remember at a protest years ago, the biggest lesson I learned was just from watching a young man speak to counter a confused section of the crowd when an argument developed with a Republican supporter. (Remember we have been fighting this Republican mindset since Nixon. Reagan. Bush senior, and W. This stuff is not new, just much more depraved and thinly disguised this time around, and crass. Low.)

This young man just spoke loudly with some advice to basically ignore the troll and not get engaged in his power game, to not let him take our power from us. As I remember it he was also a Dad, with young children. He wasn't saying a simple message about peace, he was drilling down into the practice of it. He was giving us a way through our next few minutes, a new way at that moment. It was what we needed. He responded to our need, leading from the center. He was within us, and the truth and how he spoke it was the balm on the troubled waters that kept us flowing.

The days of bad dads and powerful men doing the wrong thing are waning. The patriarchy is desperately struggling for control, and we are denying them what they have felt so entitled to. They are still winning and taking all the gold, over and over, but we are winning too. We are winning a thousand, a million small battles each and every day that will swing that pendulum and swing it hard.

We are winning. That is why we keep working through the discouragement. Some parts of what we are trying to save will indeed be saved. I can't say I am thrilled about the future, and the struggles still to come, but I do feel proud of how hard we have collectively worked. Pitching in works. Bringing skills works. Gathering to feel the hunger and break the bread and pass it around works.

Sure, it hurts. I'm accessing deep feelings today, which also happens to be my son's birthday. In 1990 I was laboring hard, long hours of trying to open, trying to do the first letting go of an unimaginable amount of letting go that I would have to learn to do with my son. He was born in the evening, after more than a day of that altered state that was so terrifying and also so simple and direct. Nothing else mattered. I was visualizing myself as an elephant. The task and my body were huge. I felt gravity, and waves, and immeasurable natural forces. And with a lot of help, we accomplished our goals.

We set out together on his life. He's taken it well in hand and he's doing well. He learned what I was able to set before him and many more things I wasn't. He has a fine mind and body and has only begun to accomplish all the things of his life, many of which I will not get to see or even hear about. He's a man now. But he isn't part of the patriarchy. He's a good man.

He's more than I thought I would be able to give the world. My heart wanted to keep him inside, all to myself, but that isn't how life works. We have to open. We are compelled to open. We must BE open.

So I will open the door and go downtown. I can stick to the fringes if I have to. I will take cash and I will give it where cash is needed. I might chant and I hope I'll sing. I will do my tiny part, add my tiny voice, and try as hard as I can to stay open as long as I can.

And for my reward I will pick up a library book written by a friend of mine and read one of his fine short stories, and I will go to my grocery store where I have been a loyal customer for forty years and more, and buy something for myself. Something healthy, or not. And then I will come home and get out an album of baby pictures my Mom returned to me, an album about my son that I wrote a lot of little stories in. I'll go back to that proud and focused self who was able to keep a child safe for long enough for him to grow up. I'll laugh at my naivete and unevolved cultural politics and remember those days before the internet and before decades of therapy, back when I thought pretty well of what I had done and what I was doing.

It was okay that I was naive. It was okay that I set aside what would have prevented me from leaping and created that child. It was the most brave and foolish thing I have ever done. I didn't know how much of what I got from the well was going to go into that part of my life, and how satisfying it would be. I only knew that childbirth was a miracle, and I wanted to participate in a miracle.

So Happy Birthday John, and thank you for the miracles. Thank you for your patience while I learned so many things, and your abilities as a teacher with such a complicated class. Thank you for allowing me to ground myself in your mere existence, from that egg that came from my grandmothers, was grown in me when I was in my own Mom, that was grown in her, and all the way back. We brought forward Life that we knew nothing about and are not here to fathom. We are part of Mystery.

It is not about me, and most definitely not about my little insecurities and weaknesses. Today is not about my comfort levels and my thoughts and plans. It's about Life and the Well, and where Hope comes from. It will come. It keeps coming. We keep working. We keep winning. The prize is within.

Be open.