sea, sea puede

The Courage Campaign folks have made a video out of the “don’t divorce us/our friends” images they collected this winter. It’s good. Like Milk, it comfortably normalizes the conversation - “Hey, these are real people wanting simple things.” And I think they articulate a significant piece of the picture.

But neither Milk nor Fidelity carries the punch I feel - and maybe that’s intentional, but perhaps risky too? Or maybe we just need a continuum of voices, from measured and simple to the heart-and-soul-tearing “this is how it really feels.”

We are, I think, trying to make the conversation accessible and non-threatening to straight people — too much pain and honesty unsettles folks, and can make them run. But somehow we also need to communicate the depth of what’s at stake here. Fidelity and Milk are good steps. But I think that there are other steps too, that will require soul-bearing outside of the community as well as in.

And, I think that ultimately, the community has to become everybody. Yes, I really do believe we need to queer the world, in the sense of opening freedoms and possibilities to all folks, not just those who feel far enough along a continuum that they have no choice. When the conversation becomes a question not just of whether two girls or two guys should be able to marry, but one of compassion for and the integrity of love - for all that the heart loves - then we humans can effect the sea change that will be the measure of true equality and peace.

From midnight to this morning, I received about a dozen emails advertising sales of the day. These were from organizations who also have stores (National Geographic, Smithsonian, National Wildlife Federation, The Nature Conservancy) and from a few good retailers (Gaelsong, Barefoot Books), plus a couple of utilitarian entries (printer paper).

Having waded through my email, I turned to the news. In Long Island today, a man was trampled to death in a Black Friday rush at a suburban Walmart. People were so crazed for “door buster” deals that they literally busted those doors, and broke apart life for the temporary worker who was doing maintenance at the store.

If I had planned to buy anything online today, that would have settled me against it.

America is in a deep recession. We are profoundly in debt, wildly out of whack with our environment, our wealth is concentrated into a very small avaricious class, and we don’t have enough time to be with our families, to be ourselves.

Everyone one of us needs to join in reconceptualizing economics. We need to start thinking very differently about life, physical things, human objects, the earth, time. We have to stop thinking of ourselves as WD-40, spraying ourselves onto the machine as grease for the gears of a bullish Wall Street.

We have gotten so far from our food that we don’t know how to assess if there is enough to go around. That ought to be each community’s most basic comprehension — where do we get our water, where do we get our food, and is there enough to support and sustain our small bioregion through the long winter, and the rest of the year?

In reality, we have little, because we don’t know how to feed ourselves. We may have stuff, but you can’t eat stuff. And so we wax and wane with the GDP and economic fluctuations of big business and banks, because we have tied our very survival (food and drink and safety) to elements that are not only outside of our control, they are entirely outside of our sight range.

I invite us all to make today a Green Friday, or a Harvest Friday. To make a tiny step today, and then tomorrow, and the next day, on knowing local water, food and habitat. To understand a little bit more about our specific community - in its human and non-human, structural and transient elements.

To get a little closer to comprehending what gives us life, right here, now and tomorrow.

Thanksgiving.  It’s a national holiday.  As such, it’s also a fantastical reconstruction of reality that ignores both the actual condition of the settling European invaders and the genocide they carried out against America’s indigenous nations.

But giving thanks is a groovy thing.  It lifts our hearts, inspires us to positive action, soothes and nurtures our souls.  And having a time for families and friends to come together, and away from the American work-monster machine, is incredibly important.

Should we celebrate Thanksgiving at all?  Should we simply give thanks in other times?  How do we teach an accurate history without making Thanksgiving a “time to be sorry for Indians”?  (For though we should feel grief, it is frighteningly easy to pity and then dismiss, either ourselves or each other.)

How do we preserve for ourselves a time for families, against the growing corpocracy and its gross redistribution of wealth (wealth in time as well as in material good)?

How could a community – a town, a school, a family – celebrate or honor Thanksgiving in such a way that it could be a positive experience for all included?  Can it be a time of making amends?  Or is it too easy to marginalize the non-standard celebrations, while simultaneously including them in the gloss of “everyone celebrating Thanksgiving”?

Unless we are actually obstructing false histories of Thanksgiving, then won’t our non-standard celebrations simply fade into (and thus support) the bigger package?

How do we give thanks without hurting what matters to us?

According to the Times-Standard (Eureka, CA), the City of Rancho Cucamonga, CA asked billboard company General Outdoor to remove a Freedom From Religion Foundation sign which read “Imagine No Religion.” And, they did indeed take it down.

How odd. Who would the sign have hurt? I find the FFRF focus peculiar, but some of their quotables are great conversation-starters.