Six Voices That Are Changing Me.
/When I sit to write.
I picture you opening this up.
I wonder how it will touch you.
I like to bring a smile to people’s hearts.
To question our conditioned ways of being.
To lean into the unknown darkness and light.
To wander and be lost and wonder as a way forward.
As I reflect on 2021 I am most grateful to the voices that are changing me.
Moving me out of binary thinking into my body, into greater connection with an understanding of our inter-beingness with the whole living world, and the importance of consciousness change as well as action.
It’s slow-- this changing my conditioned responses to life.
This unraveling the stories that were woven in me since I was a wee one.
All the modern educational systems etc.
These six voices have helped me lose my way.
It's uncomfortable and feels oh so necessary.
And as I’ve said in the past few newsletters, so much bound in the listening bodies we exist in.
Before birth. In the womb we listened and it’s with us even when we sleep.
We are, and become what we take in.
Some of these aren't new as of 2021. A few have been friends for awhile!
These first three voices are frontiers way beyond/before western, modern, science based thinking.
Writings by Bayo Afomolafe. I heard him speak at a conference with the Othering and Belonging Institute and then again with IDHA this past weekend. He said things I wanted to carry with me. These: ”Become water, travel, lose our way together. To become fugitives. What is health when healing becomes sick."--and a whole lot more! He’s speaking from a way of being that is ancient, future, unfamiliar and makes me pause. Bewildered and alive. If you want to get out of the boxes, if you want to be stretched from where you believe things live to another place --this is a voice that may help you.
“May this decade bring more than just solutions, more than just a future - may it bring words we don't know yet, and temporalities we have not yet inhabited. May we be slower than speed could calculate, and swifter than the pull of the gravity of words can incarcerate. And may we be visited so thoroughly, and met in wild places so overwhelmingly, that we are left undone. Ready for composting. Ready for the impossible. Welcome to the decade of the fugitive.” --Bayo Afomolafe
Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta. His writing makes my head hurt, in a good way. Irreverent, revealing, simple and complex. He has me unraveling and reweaving as I read. Slowly.
“Understanding your own culture and the ways it interacts with others, particularly the power dynamics of it, is far more appreciated. My reading of Germane Greer when I was a young lad was a lot more conducive to forming relationships with European females than my reading of Dante was--and that was more about my understanding of my male privilege and controlling its excess than being an export on women's literature or issues. This kind of cultural humility is a useful exercise in understanding your role as an agent of sustainability in a complex system. It is difficult to relinquish the illusions of power and delusions of exceptionalism that come with privilege. But it is strangely liberating to realise your true status as a node in a single network. There is honour to be found in this role, and a certain dignified agency. You won't be swallowed up by a hive mind or individuality--you will retain your autonomy while simultaneously being profoundly interdependent and connected.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. This book. I really don’t have words to describe the journey Alexis takes you on. Just take it. Don’t think. Experience her words. Let them wash over you. Don’t go fast with it if you can help it.
“May you study the pink of yourself. Know yourself riverine and coast. May you taste the fresh and the saltwater of yourself and know what only you can know. May you live in the mouth of the river, meeting place of the tides, may all blessings flow through you.”
― Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This is one you may know about. The book and Robin Wall Kimmerer are in the world in a bigger way the past few years. This is a teacher and teachings we can all breathe into. Wisdom, truth, and beauty flow on the pages.
“Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Being Salmon, Being Human by Martin Lee Mueller. Martin is a phenomenologist (among other things). I am fascinated by that. He gives us the opportunity to see life through a salmon’s journey and he peels back Descarte and friends in a very fascinating way. A thread of explanation about how we got where we are. And more.
“Here is a philosopher who has learned to think not only with his head but with his whole body. A keenly aware human animal, Martin Mueller dreams himself salmon flesh. Gill slits open along his neck as he glides between mountain streams and the broad ocean currents. His scales glint and ripple in the moonlight, their reflections posing ever more penetrating questions for our species. This is a game-changing culture-shifting book, ethical and eloquent, opening the way toward a more mature natural science—one that’s oriented by our own creaturely participation and rapport with the rest of the biosphere.”—David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal; director, Alliance for Wild Ethics
Yearning for the Wind by Tom Cowan
I found this book in a little library on Lopez Island this summer. Walking along a tall evergreen lined road, it was a roadside attraction. I’ve been carrying this one almost everywhere I go. What’s woven in his words. I’ve found an even deeper connection with the more than human world!
“Yes, there is always a great and terrible crashing when any tree falls, for no tree falls that does not fall within my soul.”
― Tom Cowan, Yearning for the Wind
All my love to you and yours and ours,
Carol