Remembrance

Ask why. Ask what. Ask how.

I talk about cultivating belonging with my work as an artist and as an Executive Director of a community-based learning institute. Belonging is a feeling we desire. A feeling which many of us don’t experience in our places, with one another, or with ourselves. What does belonging even mean? Interestingly the first definition dings the capitalism bell as it is "to be the property of," but the other definition is "to be a member of." And "long" means extending far, distant, from the root. It is fair to say we begin belonging, born and connected to our ancient human roots on earth, but there is an idea or action that disconnects or dismembers us from this universal root. Any thoughts about the idea or action that cuts us from our roots?

Native Americans called colonists "Long Knives"

One lifetime is very short and it is seemingly impossible to create the changes we want in the systems we were born into. But I believe we can make some moves to break this corrupt capitalist castle that ensnares and dismembers us from our roots of belonging. We can disrupt the systems of oppression that disconnect us by stepping out where we can.

Our first move is slowing down, producing less, and seeking remembrance.

Ask why. Ask what. Ask how.

When I ask these questions I recognize my life is full of things and activities I don't know much about. For example, I am drinking coffee this morning with milk. I do not know where the beans are from, how they were grown, or how they traveled to the store where I purchased them. I have no idea if the milk came from one cow or is a mix of milk from many cows. I don't know how the milk is pasteurized. I don't even know what life is like for the cows, farmers, or drivers who helped bring the milk to the store. I don't know how the milk container was made or how it will decompose. I am hungry. I might eat an egg. I don't know why I eat eggs, let alone in the morning, other than I grew up eating eggs for breakfast. Each morning I wake up and begin participating in a world without understanding or consciousness. This lack of consciousness keeps me looped in consumption patterns that don’t always align with my values.

As a child I was taught to love animals. I was taught to not hurt animals. I was never taught about animal slaughter. I ate animals cut into nondescript pink shapes wrapped in plastic found lined on market shelves. I was taught that God loved all creatures, but animals might not go to heaven. I was taught I wouldn't go to heaven if I was bad and hurt God's beloved. I wasn't taught that plastic would pollute the earth, but I wasn't taught what we did before there was plastic. Plastic was a contemporary form replacing something that we had forgotten.

One day my fourteen-year-old son wondered why we (meaning old people) put phones up to our ears and talked out loud. Teens hold their phones in their hands to talk. I realized that we old people continue an embodied habit related to older models, our bodies carrying forward patterns that no longer fit the contemporary without realizing it.

I was taught punishment was a sign of care and love as a child. I was taught pain from the hands of my parents would keep me safe. I was taught that I was asking for trouble if I wore a short skirt. I was taught it wasn't wise to be in the woods. I was taught to always ask, "How can I help?” if I wanted to be invited back. I was taught how to survive versus that I belonged.

I experience a day's activity as a series of nonsequiturs. Bricks of nonsense stacked on top of one another. That is how I see the systems we participate in willingly and unwillingly. Society (the one I live in) is a doomed bricolage castle built in an ever-increasing hurry made of materials and ideas that no one understands or remembers the how and why's of. We don’t stop to ask why we are doing what we are doing. Instead we keep stacking muck on broken bones in our grind culture.

At my work, our organization's mission is to know, love, and serve our places through knowing, loving, and serving ourselves, one another, and the earth. I am in my mid-forties and only now beginning to know and love myself. I was on a capitalist treadmill lashed by patriarchy and much more, a treadmill I was placed into without knowing once upon a time there was another way. As I learn more about myself and how to love myself, I am inclined to share my skills, talents, and gifts authentically to serve more good. This movement is reciprocal, generating a sense of wholeness and belonging. As I feel more full of this good, I don't need or desire as much.

The hunger to belong is lessened when we feel remembered, and our consumption shifts. With this gesture, capitalism may falter, and gift economies may flourish.

Our first move is slowing down, producing less, and seeking remembrance.

Ask why. Ask what. Ask how.

Remember our innate belonging.

Give ourselves our love.

Share the overflow of gifts we each have.

Care for one another and the earth.

Repeat.

It seems simple by pen. Let's try.

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