A sketch of sadness, meaning this is a rough draft of my misunderstanding.
I don't understand why we relegate beings to belonging to set geographies. I don't understand why some places and some people are sacred, and others are not.
I don't understand why we persecute, kill, imprison, uproot, and bar beings; we, the dominant, more privileged ones, determine to belong or not belong.
Have you seen Stateless?
I watched the series this week. A Series based on true events regarding a refugee detention center. I can think of nothing else.
Except.
It made me think about Internal Family Systems (IFS), the concept of no bad parts of self, and a poem by Thick Nhat Hanh found in the handbook of IFS.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the 12-year-old-refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.
It made me think about where I am now as I write this, at my mother's house, my childhood home on Martha's Vineyard. A home being sold soon, meaning I will be displaced from this place. A home on an Island that has changed dramatically from when I was a child. A place whose culture is shifting. As my mother says, the "Islanders are leaving or have left," and who's left? The influx of Brazilian immigrants, four families to a house, the world's wealthiest 1% one-family to a twenty-room empty house, and the valiant Wampanoag who have survived 35,000+ years of living here despite being pushed to the edge by the Colonists. Forefathers. Who are the Islanders?
It made me think of today's news: 600+ dead Israelis killed by Hamas and the growing number of dead Palestinian pedestrians killed by Israelis this Sunday. And the NY Times story which asked: Should Children Join the Killing in New Zealand’s War on Invasive Species? Who determines nativity?
It made me think of an Instagram post I saw recently for an invitation to the public to work with a conservationist to remove "invasive plants" on a property owned by a White foundation that runs an indigenous-led organization. The language was shifty. Shifting away from problematic words like invasive. Instead, "Visitors were tasked with removing introduced species.” Who's doing the introducing?
It made me think of the headline of the boy who committed terrorism by cutting down a sacred tree. Aren't all trees sacred?
If you scramble the word sacred you will get scared.