Elk Herd in the Neighborhood
The nonviolent person does not seek an impossible compromise with the times, nor a prior, intemperate synthesis for the times. The nonviolent person sees life in terms of a choice toward change, involving a re-ordering of life. Daniel Berrigan
This quote popped into my box (thank you once again Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service for your Daily Inspiration!). It seems apropos for this time of war – yet another war that makes no sense. War has never been the answer. It never will.
I’ve been thinking about borders. How is that we humans are so preoccupied with borders? What in our story of separation has us believe that they are real? On some level we know they are not, but borders and ‘we/they’ have been ingrained in us as important to our identity. What if we reframe our identity to Earthlings? Gaians? Heck, even Humans!
Early this morning Zadie Byrd and I make the 60-mile journey to the vet (her eye irritation hasn’t eased since surgery two weeks ago). We crossed the Rio Grande River at a point that was once the western boundary of the Republic of Texas, reminding me that borders are mutable. Countries come. Countries go. I wonder what quality of life we could create if we gave up the idea of maintaining and expanding borders. Of pivoting from the constraints of borders and defending them to creating community with one another and with Nature.
For surely Nature and the planet do not give one whit about the artificial lines we humans draw on maps and then defend at the cost of unfathomable life, limb, and treasure. Astronauts who have spent time in space speak of a deepened understanding and appreciation that we all share this planet as they look down at ‘home’. How might we take up that perspective?
How might we re-order life around sharing our planet home and its bounty rather than the continuing the historical practice of mine/yours? Win/loose? Bad/good? Haven’t we suffered the trauma of this approach sufficiently to genuinely want to end violence?
How might we re-order life to care for our planet home, shifting the use of our treasure to help her restore from our abuse? What if the trillions of dollars spent on so-called ‘defense’ were re-allocated to support life in all its forms?
While my heart aches for the trauma of all who are in the path of the war in Ukraine, I’m putting my attention not on who will be the victor. For in war, any victory is temporary. Rather I’m asking deeply, how do we re-order life, individually and collectively, to end these cycles of violence? What thinking do I need to shift? What beliefs do I need to challenge? What choices toward change can I make?
If your thinking and sensing is moving in this direction, here are a couple essays that I’ve found helpfully thought-provoking this week:
· Charles Eisenstein’s The Field of Peace (click here)
· George Lakey’s article The Dangerous Assumption that Violence Keeps Us Safe (click here)
And, I leave you with these words of wisdom from Thay: The individual has to wake up to the fact that violence cannot end violence; that only understanding and compassion can neutralize violence, because with the practice of loving speech and compassionate listening we can begin to understand people and help people to remove the wrong perceptions in them, because these wrong perceptions are at the foundation of their anger, their fear, their violence, their hate. —Thich Nhat Hanh
Rocks are different on the west side of the valley …