Another week of the Festival of the Phoenix has come to an end. When I named these weeks, I was thinking mostly about my journey after the policy last year. I had no idea how this was all going to go down and how fitting the titles would be for the country and not just for me and a few of my friends who know what a broken shelf is.
Wednesday I had named New Ash Wednesday. Fitting post election day, as it was a day for looking at the ashes and destruction around you, and finding hope that we can rise again from the ashes, renewed and strengthened.
So what is a broken shelf?
A shelf is a metaphorical place you put things you are uncomfortable with, you can't find answers to, or that are problems you just don't know how or don't want to face and deal with. A shelf breaks when the weight of the things upon it an no longer be ignored. My religious shelf broke last year after the policy was leaked. It was the thing that made me face all the questions of my religion and spirituality that I had avoided all my life. It was followed by deep soul searching, questioning, looking for answers, and becoming comfortable with not knowing them all, going forward in life still searching and looking with a moral compass guiding me through the unknown.
Americas shelf broke after the election this week. Any time a shelf breaks things are messy and hard and there is tension, and its overwhelming and confusing, and often times frightening. But, it is often the beginning of a journey to a better place. First though, one must wade through the wreckage, and decide how to rebuild and move forward. As a nation, our shelf has definitely broken, and the wreckage is still being evaluated. We have problems we can no longer ignore. Questions we have to ask ourselves about our identity.
The shelf is broken, its not going to hold those problems any more. We have reached a point we have to deal with them, we cannot just continue to ignore them and hope they will go away. Until we can do that we will continue to have a very big destructive mess. There are some things I'm not sure we can fix, so this isn't going to be easy. But step 1 is acknowledging the problems and the broken shelf we can no longer put them on. And that is what all the protests, hate crimes, and hoopla have been about this week- we have problems, we have no shelf to put them on. Now we need Ideas, and empathy, and hearing each other, but we also still can't expect that in doing that the other side is just going to go back to being a problem on our shelf. The shelf is no more.
And so we begin the second week of the Phoenix Festival. Following the week of the Broken Shelf is the week of The Divine Self. This week is about looking within ourselves, finding faith, hope, healing, finding the goodness inside and bringing that goodness to the world. It is about love and kindness, to you and your imperfections and then sharing that same kindness with the world.
often, people that are very hard and judgmental of themselves are also very hard and judgmental of everyone else. If we are to listen, have empathy, rebuild, end the destruction, we must be kind to ourselves. we must also recognize our potential to do and be more than what we have been and what we have become. Then we must strive toward that divinity, toward the most universal human principle in spirituality- love one another. You cannot love another more than you love your self, so after this really difficult week we have all been through, lets take this week, lets center, lets breathe, lets do some self care, some community care, lets be kind, we all have the seed of divinity within us, even your enemies.
"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you " but also don't be a door step, your voice and your piece of our problem wont go just go away either so we need to hash this out. lets show each other some kindness, lets treat each other as we wish to be treated, and lets treat ourselves as we wish someone would treat those in our lives we love most, and lets see what we can do to take care of each other. And please please do not be dismissive of peoples fears. I promise you some of us have real threats to our ability to live, love, work and safely exist in the results of this election, and telling us we are making it up, doesn't make us feel any safer or better about how easy to ignore our safety and our lives often are. Your economic issues and your other worries and fears shouldn't be dismissed either. Right now our shelf is broken and everything is clearly not ok. its ok to say its not ok, Its ok to protest and make your voice heard. We can't keep pretending it is ok, but we can hope that eventually it will be ok. For reals. not pretendsies.
May we all rise from the ashes of our lives more beautiful, strong, and wise than ever before.
Wednesday I had named New Ash Wednesday. Fitting post election day, as it was a day for looking at the ashes and destruction around you, and finding hope that we can rise again from the ashes, renewed and strengthened.
So what is a broken shelf?
A shelf is a metaphorical place you put things you are uncomfortable with, you can't find answers to, or that are problems you just don't know how or don't want to face and deal with. A shelf breaks when the weight of the things upon it an no longer be ignored. My religious shelf broke last year after the policy was leaked. It was the thing that made me face all the questions of my religion and spirituality that I had avoided all my life. It was followed by deep soul searching, questioning, looking for answers, and becoming comfortable with not knowing them all, going forward in life still searching and looking with a moral compass guiding me through the unknown.
Americas shelf broke after the election this week. Any time a shelf breaks things are messy and hard and there is tension, and its overwhelming and confusing, and often times frightening. But, it is often the beginning of a journey to a better place. First though, one must wade through the wreckage, and decide how to rebuild and move forward. As a nation, our shelf has definitely broken, and the wreckage is still being evaluated. We have problems we can no longer ignore. Questions we have to ask ourselves about our identity.
The shelf is broken, its not going to hold those problems any more. We have reached a point we have to deal with them, we cannot just continue to ignore them and hope they will go away. Until we can do that we will continue to have a very big destructive mess. There are some things I'm not sure we can fix, so this isn't going to be easy. But step 1 is acknowledging the problems and the broken shelf we can no longer put them on. And that is what all the protests, hate crimes, and hoopla have been about this week- we have problems, we have no shelf to put them on. Now we need Ideas, and empathy, and hearing each other, but we also still can't expect that in doing that the other side is just going to go back to being a problem on our shelf. The shelf is no more.
And so we begin the second week of the Phoenix Festival. Following the week of the Broken Shelf is the week of The Divine Self. This week is about looking within ourselves, finding faith, hope, healing, finding the goodness inside and bringing that goodness to the world. It is about love and kindness, to you and your imperfections and then sharing that same kindness with the world.
often, people that are very hard and judgmental of themselves are also very hard and judgmental of everyone else. If we are to listen, have empathy, rebuild, end the destruction, we must be kind to ourselves. we must also recognize our potential to do and be more than what we have been and what we have become. Then we must strive toward that divinity, toward the most universal human principle in spirituality- love one another. You cannot love another more than you love your self, so after this really difficult week we have all been through, lets take this week, lets center, lets breathe, lets do some self care, some community care, lets be kind, we all have the seed of divinity within us, even your enemies.
"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you " but also don't be a door step, your voice and your piece of our problem wont go just go away either so we need to hash this out. lets show each other some kindness, lets treat each other as we wish to be treated, and lets treat ourselves as we wish someone would treat those in our lives we love most, and lets see what we can do to take care of each other. And please please do not be dismissive of peoples fears. I promise you some of us have real threats to our ability to live, love, work and safely exist in the results of this election, and telling us we are making it up, doesn't make us feel any safer or better about how easy to ignore our safety and our lives often are. Your economic issues and your other worries and fears shouldn't be dismissed either. Right now our shelf is broken and everything is clearly not ok. its ok to say its not ok, Its ok to protest and make your voice heard. We can't keep pretending it is ok, but we can hope that eventually it will be ok. For reals. not pretendsies.
May we all rise from the ashes of our lives more beautiful, strong, and wise than ever before.
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