catharine I just feel the need to make a post to acknowledge a whole lot of things that I can’t write about, this is me writing a post that acknowledges- everything in my heart, my conscience. Everything I’m facing, everything I’m grieving, seeking to mend and improve on. Shame I deserve, faith I need. A vision that is forming for the life I want to live.
I’d also like to take a moment to acknowledge the horrors of current events. I truly and literally do not even know where to begin with them, cannot even begin. Someday in here I might… be able to. It’s beyond the ability of my body to cope with, verbally, at this moment. One thing I know is that compassion and love are the only way through, and they are the first things to go, when fear seeks to rule, and we have to fight that personally and societally. We have to keep being brave, keep being courageous, keep shing light everywhere that is dark, and not neglect those in our neighborhoods and circles who need us. As responsibility for safety shifts off of the government and onto us as individuals, it does do something to a people. As bad as it is, there is also independence that can come as a result of loss of faith in government, and identity of a nation can become about something greater than nationalism, and something people feel pride about that isn’t aspirational, but more like a dream they are personally keeping alive. It doesn’t mean what’s happening isn’t bad; it’s hope that we’ll triumph and end up with something better than where this started- where our bombs were conflated with love and “God.” Maybe on the other side of this we’ll be a more mature country, and able to make better decisions, with values that come from thinking about who is at risk, who we know that will be affected, rather than principles that might be far removed from anything real.
