What follows is a letter I wrote recently to a member of one of my spiritual communities, Kol Zimra (Voice of Song). We are students of contemporary Jewish mystic Rabbi Shefa Gold. Our primary shared practice is chant: melodic repetition of sacred Hebrew phrases from scripture and liturgy. I had sent a brief letter to the entire community (there are 75-100 of us spread across North America, and beyond!), with the intention of inspiring, educating, and gathering energy for the Occupy Wall Street movement. An email response from one of my companions sent me deeply musing into the nature of my own current activism: why I am so powerfully drawn to this movement now and how I find my footing within it. I wanted to respond in a thoughtful, personal way to a woman who had reached out to me personally and thoughtfully.
I share the letter here for your reflection.
October 24, 2011
Dear Chava—
Thanks for writing in response to my recent call to the Kol Zimra community about the Occupy Wall Street movement. I experience your willingness to say exactly where and how you are in relationship to this movement as an expression of health and a gesture of growth. How can we grow, how can we break into the new, except by being fully in our own ground, honoring the truth of our present experience? So thank you. I receive your letter in a large and welcome wave of empowerment, to borrow your phrase. I smile in gratitude.
Of Occupy Wall Street and the sympathetic encampments sprouting up throughout the nation and world, you write: “In so many ways the…Movement makes sense and it scares me in a very profound way that I have yet to understand. I am not sure why it makes me feel vulnerable; I keep hoping for empowerment in waves, but at the same time I am struggling…” Then you write of your fears that the movement may turn violent, that it may end in frustration, that the costs may be more than the benefits.
When we set out on a journey, do we ever know what will actually come of it? We have a destination, and a way that we want to travel, and so we head out…with hope and expectancy, but, hopefully, without attachment to the particular expectations we’ve conjured….It’s tricky work, clarifying intention, disentangling from expectation… but it’s what we must do, no? It makes for a happier journey. And of course we are vulnerable, so vulnerable at all times…not surprising at all that you experience this truth, since you are human and willing to be awake in your human condition! Again, thank you.
Of the consensus process that seems to be the chosen way of the Occupy encampments, you write eloquently about your own experience. To quote you directly:
1. The process is amazing, invigorating, and exciting.
2. The process is tedious.
3. Success doesn't often happen; people are rarely happy with the outcome, but they find peace within the storm until the process begins again and it always begins again and again.
I am intrigued by the finding of peace within what can be the storm of consensual politics. I imagine that peace is the peace of the process itself, the rightness, the justice, of honoring every voice and finding from that the movement right for the whole group at any given time. It’s messy, but right, because moving within that process we embody the essential connection of part to whole. We lose the myth of our isolation. This is good for us, and way down deep, we know it.
As for me, I want to respond in kind to your message. I want to tell you how and where I am right now in this movement. It may be different from what you imagine about me, and I want to be clear, transparent, as you are. It’s true—I am full of hope now. I think it is precisely because of the willingness of so many to put themselves, like you, in an honest place, a place of struggle and uncertainty, and to simply, or perhaps not so simply, be there—to occupy their place, as it were, speaking and learning together, trying something different, together. That most of the impetus comes from the young seems right, as they are the ones who will bear us, must bear us, into a new way of being in this world. That we baby boomers and other older folk are finding ways to support, teach, donate, spread the word and in many ways back up the young without dominating, seems also right to me, just right. It is this sense of rightness about the timing, the place and the process of the Occupy Movement, along with an equally powerful sense of wrongness about the overwhelming concentration of wealth and power in our country and the world that move me to take each small action that I take. Or perhaps “ripeness” is a better word: I have a deeply felt sense that history is ripe for a movement of masses of people speaking and embodying the truth of our experience, our desire to work together and care for one another, to say “yes” to Us, “no” to division, isolation and exploitation.
So I go with that felt sense. I move with it day by day, asking of myself each day what are the right actions for me, today? This morning, for instance, I am writing this to you. I want to live in a world of creative collaboration and mutual honor. I want to challenge the prevailing ways of separation and individualism. How can I help from where I am today? The answers are different, depending on the day.
Mostly what I am doing these days is communicating, spreading the word in various ways. Since I have the gift of language, I write and speak with the intention of gathering support for this movement that I sense is ripe for our time. I pay attention, mostly through my progressive facebook friends and sites I’ve “liked” and through internet communities like Daily Kos. When I have the time, I read blogs and catch some of the videos of live action at the various camps. I share what I sense is important to share, using my gut for this kind of knowledge. I don’t have the time or the mind to read and absorb all, so I scan feelingly over the territory, like moving over a Ouija board. And most importantly, I talk to family, friends and folks I meet at the counters and cash registers in the course of my life. I place an Occupy Together poster in my porch window with the biggest, boldest letters: THEY WERE BAILED OUT, WE WERE SOLD OUT, an important truth to keep visible at all times now, I do believe. I pay attention to what the members of my progressive synagogue, Mishkan Shalom, are doing to support the movement. I share what I am doing and I look for ways we can help each other.
I have been down to Occupy Philadelphia once, exploring, listening and talking with folks at the various stations. I made a few made donations, wandered around, said “thank you for being here” many times. I gave some books to the library, some lentils to the food tent…small things, but what I felt was right for me at the time. This week I intend to sit in on a “general assembly” in the evening to observe the Philadelphia process first hand. We’ll see where that takes me…
Oh, and I chant. Last week I sent a message, a spark, in hopes of pulling together a shared kavannah (intention) amongst my dearest spiritual companions, Kol Zimra. I got a few nibbles, privately. Then a little later Pesach (global justice activist and mystic-warrior-for-justice Paul Zeitz joined me with a clearer call, then again an even clearer one, with an image for our visualizations: Pesach suggested bringing justice-energy up from the earth through the Washington Monument, sending it out beyond the beyond for re-charging, and returning to the earth to charge the souls of those calling for justice here on the ground. Our teacher Shefa joined in support and with refinements to the practice. Then I added my voice again, suggesting a particular chant, from the prophet Isaiah 60:1:
Arise and shine for your light has come, and the glory of God is upon you.
Your voice came in then, Chava, to say you have been chanting the same chant. So it’s happening. As each of our voices chimes in with the thought that is right for us at the time, something is being created: a joint spiritual practice to support monumental political change. Those who sense this practice is right for them will join us, and we will magnify our individual intentions by joining together. This may turn out to be the most important action I take to support the change I believe can come, will come, is coming. I don’t know. I just take the actions that are right for me on any given day.
There is one other kind of action I take. I write poems. That is to say, I write down words that come to me, words that insist on themselves, in the quiet spaces between busy times. I listen carefully over and over to make sure I am getting the messages right. When they make a good sound, a rich and resonant sound, when they reverberate in my bones and I want to say them over and over, I call them a poem and try to find the people who need to hear and feel them. That is my life’s work. I am still learning how to do it.
Here is one poem that came to me in the very beginning of the Zucotti Park Occupation, as I was becoming aware that something big was beginning. I was honored to offer the poem then for my Mishkan Shalom congregation on the morning of Yom Kippur, in the midst of the Amidah (standing prayer), when each of us as individuals, in community, stands before the One-that-Calls-Us-Into-Being. Poetry says what I’ve been trying to say probably more, and better. But then we must use many voices, and try many ways, to come into our fullness.
Shalom, dear Chava. I’ll leave you with the poem, and once again, with gratitude for your presence.
Panim el Panim (Face to Face)
Don’t take yourself out of the conversation.
Look. Your absence
leaves a hole
nothing can fill.
This is why the earth is troubled.
Too many absences—
bodies, souls
failing to show up
where they are needed, voices
held back from the song, the one
that wants us to sing it.
A great change is in the winds—
take it in.
You don’t need to be everywhere,
only somewhere, choosing
your sounds, your cadence
allowing the space between
your thoughts to ripple, soothe
the circle of breathers,
birthers, standers, speakers,
the ones, choosing and chosen,
who will bear us, bring us
whole and holy into our
full life, the life
we are almost living.
Yes, there is a world that is coming.
We must be here to meet it.
Don’t leave a shadow, a trace
where your true face
needs to be.
Turn this way. See what you see.
© 2011 by Susan Windle
Postscript for Daily Kos readers and others: If you’d like to join in a practice of chanting the words form Isaiah 60 in support of a major cultural shift toward justice now, please do. Here is a link to the
Hebrew words and the melody by Rabbi Shefa Gold. Or you may chant, pray, meditate, visualize in any language or way that feels right for you.
Arise, and shine, for our light has come. The Glory of God is upon us.
The Hebrew word for “glory” (k’vod) can also be translated as “honor.” Today, I am drawn to the idea that the Honor of God is upon us. This is an honorable movement. God knows, the business practices that got us here are not. And
we know.
Many blessings!
Susan Windle