I am just returning from a weekend of taking a very needed break. Jaime and I got to see Mockingjay Part One, Interstellar, and visit the Museum of New York where we went to a gallery on the history of NYC activism and a very emotional exhibit: that had to do with the Holocaust. Click link below for more on it. Apparently by around 1930, 1 in 4 in people living in NYC was a Jewish immigrant (given that Jews make up less than 3% of the US population, thats pretty insane), many from Poland. A lot of Jewish Polish immigrants in NYC took trips back to their Polish hometowns during the 1920s and 30s. With them, they brought memories, money for old relatives, and often the first ever home video cameras. With those cameras, they recorded the sites and people in their Jewish hometowns in Poland. Many of them grew emotional, missing home. Many of them used the footage as a way to fundraise for the people living in poverty back home. But none of them knew that in a short period of time, 9 out of 10 of the people they met on their trips back Poland, 9 out 10 of the people they filmed would be brutally murdered in the Holocaust. Today, I stood and watched old home videos of happy children and families....video that Ive never seen before of Jews in Europe before the Holocaust. I stood and cried as I watched the happy teenage boys rough housing and the children smiling, tender old women smiling sheepishly at the camera, fathers laughing so hard to see that they were being filmed. And tears came down my cheeks as I knew that these people had no idea that the apocalypse was so close. An evil fire so deep and so fast that it would become known as the Holocaust. It would likely kill them and everyone they loved. Ive seen movies about Polish Jews pre-Holocaust. But this was actual footage of the real people. And Im completely overwhelmed. Perhaps if I could find greater spiritual alignment, I could feel less anger. Less rage. Perhaps I could feel less broken. But I do. Ive been haunted by the Holocaust since we were first taught about it in elementary school and Hebrew School and since my mom and I would just watch movie after movie together, about the Holocaust. My obsession with the Holocaust is one of the things that drives me to social action. Perhaps its a key reason why Im different on military intervention than so many on the left: they grew up watching movies about the Vietnam War. I grew up watching movies about the Holocaust. But more to the point: its hard to know what to do with these feelings. Eventually they hide to a place where there are no feelings. Just numbness. Dying before death. No feelings. A little closet I can hide in so I dont need to feel the pain of the world. I was so excited when my colleagues came up with the hashtag, #MyHungerGames - a chance for people to tell their stories about economic hardship. These stories are heartbreaking. For me, part of their purpose is to remind us, on a deep emotional level that politics is not a game. That politics is personal. That cultural messages around minimum wage, social safety nets, the rights and responsibilities of corporations: that these things have consequences. They are real. They are alive. And we have a role to play in shaping them. But another part of me is concerned. What do we do with these feelings? Some people say we should direct them toward hope. Let me say this: I know as an activist and a leader towards a movement that portends to create a higher sense of civic imagination, that I should be a hope junkie and a hope dealer. But Im so tired of dealing hope and feeling it. If humanity had a heart, and I believe it does, then that heart is broken. If humanitys soul had a body...and I believe it does, than that body would be bleeding internally and externally. If the soul of humankind had a psyche with memories stored in a collective unconscious that effect EVERYTHING that we do....and I believe that such a collective human psyche exists....then humanity is struggling with serious PTSD. The cries of babies unanswered 500 years ago still need to be sung to sleep. The cries of a disoriented child within the dark, shadowy corridors of my own unconscious, still need a lullaby. Still need to be held and loved and appreciated and transformed. There is much work to be done to trigger a great healing and transformation of the human species. For that to take place, we need spaces for stories. But we also need places for crying. For sorrow. Children laugh so much because they cry so much. I feel the most joy after a good cry. Will humanity cry? Will we come together as a humanity and let the tears flood? Crying with the Jews whose images I saw today on old footage in Poland? Crying with the activists throughout New York City history as they worked for what they felt would be a better world? Crying with every person who has so far written a #MyHungerGames story or who will or who wont but has a story. This is not simply about emotional mobilization to effect political change. This is about opening our hearts and minds and spirits to a great recognition that must take place. Not fixing all of the problems and pain within our Greater Humanity. As the great Joanna Macy says, sit with that pain. Know that you cant fix that pain for you are not that powerful. But you can BE WITH IT. So many people make the mistake of thinking we can fix the pain. We cant. But we can be with it. And thats what gives me the hope that Im supposed to be dealing out as a movement leader. There is hope in love. And there is love in sitting with the 10,000 contradictions of the human soul and smiling gently, with love, crying and laughing. Mourning and being silly with the human spirit itself. To do this, we must continue telling our stories. Which is why, Im ultimately so heartened and amazed by the people who writing #MyHungerGames. Thank you to every single person. And thank you to the child that lives within your heart. And from a place far deeper than myself, thank you so deeply for being part of this incredible experiment that is you within a failsafe system that is our infinite interconnectedness. Thank you. Bless you. Bless us. Not only we who live now but we who live for all time. All whose animated bodies have been here at some point - there spirits are still here. As are the spirits of our unborn great great great grandchildren. And as we sit with the past, mourning, and as we sit with the present, mourning....we in turn present a deeper world for those future great great great grandchildren. One that has been kissed and loved and played with by the hands of humans who took on the role of mother and father and older sibling for humanity. Ones who stood up and volunteered themselves as tributes. To change the way the games of this world are played. If you are reading this, you are one of those heroic people who will usher in a renewed world. Whether or not you know it. Thank you.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 02:10:00 +0000
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