"We need to step into the calm eye of the storm, and steer by the stars, to imagine in rich detail, the biggest, most delicious, satisfying, inclusive future that we can, a great flowering of human potential and wellbeing, project our hearts and minds into that future, and then spend our lives walking toward it, and each time the weather…
"We need to step into the calm eye of the storm, and steer by the stars, to imagine in rich detail, the biggest, most delicious, satisfying, inclusive future that we can, a great flowering of human potential and wellbeing, project our hearts and minds into that future, and then spend our lives walking toward it, and each time the weather buffets us, wait for a glimpse of sky, find that bright point of light, and adjust our course.
"Don’t waver. Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth Into the throat with which you sing. Escalate your dreams. Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way. Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd Over the grim fog of exhaustion, and keep walking."
I am in charge of a polling place on Tuesday, one I’ve never been to, across town. That means up at 5 a.m. and after polls close at 8, tally, record, break down equipment, drive it to Election Commission, return my coworker (must be one of each party) back across town, then drive home. All this to say I’ll miss the minute-by-minute play calling, thank God, and even the early coverage. I’ll hope my minuscule efforts in the grand scheme of Election Day, along with those of all other ppl of good will, sway the universe.
I too am a poll worker. I've never been nervous about working elections, but this time, I am a little. One thing our group does is when a first time voter comes in, we clap and cheer and let them know that what they are doing is something wonderful! That generally gets everyone to smile! Here's to a happy ending on Tuesday!
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! It is an effort, and service you are stepping up to that is appreciated. My deep wish is that it goes smoothly and without incident for you.
I’m sure they would be grateful for that gesture. Sometimes ppl just say “thank you for what you are doing” and even that goes a long way. But treats! In the afternoon slump! 💙
MLMinet, MAJOR blessings and prayers going out for you and all poll workers. You are our patriotic neighbors, risking it all. Not evil conspirators....Thank You!
Wow, TC. That is truly perfect for my state of mind adjustment this morning. Am printing this out as a daily reminder in how to navigate each day, each moment. Much gratitude to wake up and read this before starting my day, my week.
It is also something I will pass to a few friends who are facing dealing with cancer surgeries. "Steering by the stars" is the inward journey of not losing our way, no matter what happens.
May we all "escalate our dreams and find that bright point of light." Millions of "points of light," if shown together as One, can pierce through the dark ones' alleys and constant chaos. Shine your lights very brightly! We are forging ahead on a new path, a new wave, undergirded by all who shone their lights ahead of us. We just might be participating in one of America's greatest moments of finding her internal powers. I counted on that when I kissed and released my Ballot of Fierce Love off at the Town Hall last week. Cowabunga! Surf's up!
Morning, Pensa. You have got to watch this one. Politics Girl, Leigh McGowan, is posting almost every day.
This one I call Gremlins and the Arizona election. I’ve kept my eye on who I believe is Trump’s choice for heir apparent. At very least….a call girl for VP.
As always, Thank You Christine for posting Politics Girl. I’m especially impressed by Leigh’s succinct take on the political character of Kari Lake. She is a replicant of maga body fluid: slick, sassy, reality-tv-ready, big-time-wrestling preening. While Hobbs is a dedicated public servant with a resume of unsexy, hard-work, public-good accomplishments. The citizens of AZ are being offered a choice: The Show, or The Worker?
Oh, that was great, Christine! Thanks. Some mornings it is hard to listen to Leigh because she speaks so fast and I cannot keep up with her. Had my coffee at 3:30 and I was right with her this morning!! Thanks so much for drawing my attention to her. Unita!
Thanks for this Politics Girl episode speech on Kari Lake - a vital message that nails it on the head. I wish I could donate to a fund that would put that video on air in Arizona for every sports event in the next few days... because without its reasoning, actually, for the very reason it warns us about, Kari will win on her looks and acting skills...
TC, Until I reached your comment this morning there was darkness, darkness, darkness. The sky above me was filled with thick bands of dark clouds. Today's Letter opened with House Republicans 1050-page “report” promising us endless investigations and ended with Musk's 'mass layoffs ' cutting teams '.., dedicated to fighting election disinformation and communicating with campaign staff..'. MORE DARKNESS! Then there was you, emitting a shaft of LIGHT with a quote by Aurrora Levins Morales. Thank you, TC. I am following your lead:
'Only people who understand and practice interdependence are capable of making good ecological decisions, therefore, anything that threatens human interdependence is also an ecological threat...We have the creativity and intelligence to solve the problems we face, but the vast majority of human ingenuity is tied up in fighting to survive oppression. That creativity is the single most essential natural resource on earth. The work of social justice is to free it.'
'MY NAME IS AURORA LEVINS MORALES'
'I'm a writer, an artist, a historian, a teacher and mentor. I'm a also an activist, a healer, a revolutionary. I tell stories with medicinal powers. Herbalists who collect wild plants to make medicine call it wildcrafting. I wildcraft the details of the world, of history, of people's lives, and concentrate them through art in order to shift consciousness, to change how we think about ourselves, each other and the world. The stories we tell about our lives shape what we're able to imagine, and what we can imagine determines what we can do. My job is to change the stories we tell and help us imagine a world where greed has no power, the earth is cherished and all people get to live safe and satisfying lives. Because once we truly imagine it, the pull to create it becomes irresistible. '
TY, Fern. One of the things I love about LFAA is the resourceful community, members who bring along fascinating and creative people, ideas and actions. You and TC "teamed up" today!!!
Carol, have you sold your house and about to take a longed for trip? I got the drift of the sliver you noted on TC's, TAFM newsletter. Please elaborate. Your headline called for more.
LOL....don't I wish, though we are working toward a plan to split our time between FL ( my roots), Boston ( John's roots) and Ireland (my doctorate home for 10 years)!! No, I was just saying that I have been so discouraged about the prospect of tfg running again that I was mentally preparing for our becoming political refugees and had discussed it with my hubby. I simply cannot do another four years of tfg and even wonder whether I can stomach his campaigning. It is visceral with me! (But don`t want to leave the grandboys either!) TC's uncharacteristically upbeat post jolted me out of it. Hope he is right!!
i do believe we all share your position, Carol . TC said what we all needed to read. just listened to Bernie address students in Ann Arbor... we can do this!!
We recognized that TC was moved to the degree that he shared a section of AURORA LEVINS MORALES' poem without any further comment. I was also grateful because he prompted me to know more about her.
So many of us share your feelings. All the more reason to do what enriches us and find the wisdom here and beyond our borders. Salud, Carol.
P.S. My daughter-in-law is from Puerto Rico, and speaks so lovingly of her grandparent's farm there. She is also a poet. She works for a farm foundation here in the states. I will share this with her, and I expect she will have more insights for me. Thank You.
TCinLA, we need to be aware of the similarity of our current white “Christian” nationalism to this: “German Christians (German: Deutsche Christen) were a pressure group and a movement within the German Evangelical Church that existed between 1932 and 1945, aligned towards the antisemitic, racist and Führerprinzip ideological principles of Nazism with the goal to align German Protestantism as a whole towards those principles. Their advocacy of these principles led to a schism within 23 of the initially 28 regional church bodies (Landeskirchen) in Germany and the attendant foundation of the opposing Confessing Church in 1934.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Christians_(movement)
This was the response: “The Barmen Declaration or the Theological Declaration of Barmen 1934 (German: Die Barmer Theologische Erklärung) was a document adopted by Christians in Nazi Germany who opposed the German Christian movement. In the view of the delegates to the Synod that met in the city of Wuppertal-Barmen in May 1934, the German Christians had corrupted church government by making it subservient to the state and had introduced Nazi ideology into the German Protestant churches that contradicted the Christian gospel.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barmen_Declaration
Yes, I just order a biography of Bonhoeffer, by Metaxas. My husband was in a church group eight years ago that studied the Barmen Declaration, but he is a solid supporter of tfg. I’m hoping that having the Bonhoeffer book around will start a discussion, tho he is very defensive (I read him the last two paragraphs of this newsletter and he got upset that I was attacking Musk, and he doesn’t even use Twitter. I do.). I was a good GOP wife until I went to work at a high-poverty (95% FRL) K-5 school as their librarian. I could see that all the claims of the GOP had done nothing for my 500 kids and their hard working parents. And when dt came down that brass escalator, I was done with the GOPigs.
Even when HCR's piece for the day contains daunting news, it still comforts me to read her; I am really grateful for her intellect, research, knowledge, and writing. And, today, TCinLA, I am grateful for the quote you have shared.
Or, as Abraham Lincoln said in his First Inaugural Address during another ominous period in our history, 'The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.'
I’ve read through the comments and there are many good ones. But I’m going with TC’s visualization. Don’t waiver. GOOD will prevail. I’ve done what I can do. Now it’s time to believe. Michael Moore insists it will be a blue tsunami. He predicted tfg would win in 2016 when no one else could imagine how that could happen. “We need to step into the calm eye of the storm, and steer by the stars...” Thank you, TC.
I needed this. I woke up dreaming of the possibility of all those bills created by the House, which have been languishing in the Senate, finally being approved and sent to President Biden. Just think: the voting rights bill, the protection of women's reproductive rights...all sorts of "good stuff" for AMERICANS.
It is after all the truth that will set us free from the cancer that eats at our democracy and humanity. Currently Diogenes with his lamp is still looking for an honest man among the politicians, dare I say it, on the Extreme right.
Entranced by that word and the meaning behind it. It's perfect. I have been pondering my own version of it, and how I might be able to make it happen. Now, at least, I have the perfect name for it, though my version will, of necessity be different from Auroras. She will be my guide as I feel my way toward this.
In one month I will be 80 years old. I am rather surprised by that, and baffled about how it comes about without one really noticing. But here I am. At the beginning of another adventure, about which I have no idea yet. But it will come.
"We need to step into the calm eye of the storm, and steer by the stars, to imagine in rich detail, the biggest, most delicious, satisfying, inclusive future that we can, a great flowering of human potential and wellbeing, project our hearts and minds into that future, and then spend our lives walking toward it, and each time the weather buffets us, wait for a glimpse of sky, find that bright point of light, and adjust our course.
"Don’t waver. Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth Into the throat with which you sing. Escalate your dreams. Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way. Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd Over the grim fog of exhaustion, and keep walking."
Aurrora Levins Morales (via Dahlia Lithwick)
I am in charge of a polling place on Tuesday, one I’ve never been to, across town. That means up at 5 a.m. and after polls close at 8, tally, record, break down equipment, drive it to Election Commission, return my coworker (must be one of each party) back across town, then drive home. All this to say I’ll miss the minute-by-minute play calling, thank God, and even the early coverage. I’ll hope my minuscule efforts in the grand scheme of Election Day, along with those of all other ppl of good will, sway the universe.
I too am a poll worker. I've never been nervous about working elections, but this time, I am a little. One thing our group does is when a first time voter comes in, we clap and cheer and let them know that what they are doing is something wonderful! That generally gets everyone to smile! Here's to a happy ending on Tuesday!
Thank You for Your Service LCT!!
Thank you so much for your service to your community and our country. God be your shield and grant you peace of mind.
You are like a firefighter, police officer, or member of the armed forces. And I thank you for your service to our democratic republic.
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! It is an effort, and service you are stepping up to that is appreciated. My deep wish is that it goes smoothly and without incident for you.
Thank you. You and other poll workers will be in my thoughts as I hang out outside polls.
Peace.
I had not idea! Should we be running cookies and coffee to you folks???
I’m sure they would be grateful for that gesture. Sometimes ppl just say “thank you for what you are doing” and even that goes a long way. But treats! In the afternoon slump! 💙
MLMinet, MAJOR blessings and prayers going out for you and all poll workers. You are our patriotic neighbors, risking it all. Not evil conspirators....Thank You!
❤️💙
Thank you for doing that!
That’s not a minuscule effort! Thank you.
Thank you for your community service. Poll workers are so important to our democracy.
Thank You For Your Service ML!!
Wow, TC. That is truly perfect for my state of mind adjustment this morning. Am printing this out as a daily reminder in how to navigate each day, each moment. Much gratitude to wake up and read this before starting my day, my week.
It is also something I will pass to a few friends who are facing dealing with cancer surgeries. "Steering by the stars" is the inward journey of not losing our way, no matter what happens.
May we all "escalate our dreams and find that bright point of light." Millions of "points of light," if shown together as One, can pierce through the dark ones' alleys and constant chaos. Shine your lights very brightly! We are forging ahead on a new path, a new wave, undergirded by all who shone their lights ahead of us. We just might be participating in one of America's greatest moments of finding her internal powers. I counted on that when I kissed and released my Ballot of Fierce Love off at the Town Hall last week. Cowabunga! Surf's up!
Morning, Pensa. You have got to watch this one. Politics Girl, Leigh McGowan, is posting almost every day.
This one I call Gremlins and the Arizona election. I’ve kept my eye on who I believe is Trump’s choice for heir apparent. At very least….a call girl for VP.
https://youtu.be/f_kR3EwZtY0
Unita ! 🗽
As always, Thank You Christine for posting Politics Girl. I’m especially impressed by Leigh’s succinct take on the political character of Kari Lake. She is a replicant of maga body fluid: slick, sassy, reality-tv-ready, big-time-wrestling preening. While Hobbs is a dedicated public servant with a resume of unsexy, hard-work, public-good accomplishments. The citizens of AZ are being offered a choice: The Show, or The Worker?
Oh, that was great, Christine! Thanks. Some mornings it is hard to listen to Leigh because she speaks so fast and I cannot keep up with her. Had my coffee at 3:30 and I was right with her this morning!! Thanks so much for drawing my attention to her. Unita!
Thanks for this Politics Girl episode speech on Kari Lake - a vital message that nails it on the head. I wish I could donate to a fund that would put that video on air in Arizona for every sports event in the next few days... because without its reasoning, actually, for the very reason it warns us about, Kari will win on her looks and acting skills...
Christine, I watched it last night when it popped into my FB feed and it was a good one! Leigh has been on fire lately.
I love Politics Girl.
Hoo boy that was good! Does Politics Girl live in AZ?
Thanks Christine for this link. She is fantastic. Too bad not enough people hear what she has to say.
She's always ALWAYS a shot in the arm.
Christine, that PG was sizzlin'. I hope that Arizona does not go for Lake.
Yes, sizzlin'!!
She's brilliant.
Nails it, once again.
Right On!!! Thanks Christine! Shared.
TC, Until I reached your comment this morning there was darkness, darkness, darkness. The sky above me was filled with thick bands of dark clouds. Today's Letter opened with House Republicans 1050-page “report” promising us endless investigations and ended with Musk's 'mass layoffs ' cutting teams '.., dedicated to fighting election disinformation and communicating with campaign staff..'. MORE DARKNESS! Then there was you, emitting a shaft of LIGHT with a quote by Aurrora Levins Morales. Thank you, TC. I am following your lead:
'Only people who understand and practice interdependence are capable of making good ecological decisions, therefore, anything that threatens human interdependence is also an ecological threat...We have the creativity and intelligence to solve the problems we face, but the vast majority of human ingenuity is tied up in fighting to survive oppression. That creativity is the single most essential natural resource on earth. The work of social justice is to free it.'
'MY NAME IS AURORA LEVINS MORALES'
'I'm a writer, an artist, a historian, a teacher and mentor. I'm a also an activist, a healer, a revolutionary. I tell stories with medicinal powers. Herbalists who collect wild plants to make medicine call it wildcrafting. I wildcraft the details of the world, of history, of people's lives, and concentrate them through art in order to shift consciousness, to change how we think about ourselves, each other and the world. The stories we tell about our lives shape what we're able to imagine, and what we can imagine determines what we can do. My job is to change the stories we tell and help us imagine a world where greed has no power, the earth is cherished and all people get to live safe and satisfying lives. Because once we truly imagine it, the pull to create it becomes irresistible. '
http://www.auroralevinsmorales.com/
http://www.auroralevinsmorales.com/about-me.html
TY, Fern. One of the things I love about LFAA is the resourceful community, members who bring along fascinating and creative people, ideas and actions. You and TC "teamed up" today!!!
Carol, have you sold your house and about to take a longed for trip? I got the drift of the sliver you noted on TC's, TAFM newsletter. Please elaborate. Your headline called for more.
LOL....don't I wish, though we are working toward a plan to split our time between FL ( my roots), Boston ( John's roots) and Ireland (my doctorate home for 10 years)!! No, I was just saying that I have been so discouraged about the prospect of tfg running again that I was mentally preparing for our becoming political refugees and had discussed it with my hubby. I simply cannot do another four years of tfg and even wonder whether I can stomach his campaigning. It is visceral with me! (But don`t want to leave the grandboys either!) TC's uncharacteristically upbeat post jolted me out of it. Hope he is right!!
i do believe we all share your position, Carol . TC said what we all needed to read. just listened to Bernie address students in Ann Arbor... we can do this!!
Thanks, Suz-an. This LFAA is a lifeboat group!!!
We recognized that TC was moved to the degree that he shared a section of AURORA LEVINS MORALES' poem without any further comment. I was also grateful because he prompted me to know more about her.
So many of us share your feelings. All the more reason to do what enriches us and find the wisdom here and beyond our borders. Salud, Carol.
Thank you, Fern.
WOW! Thanks Fern.
MaryPat, You're shining with the sun that finally came out. I am grateful to TC this morning. He and aurora levins morales brought the light.
P.S. My daughter-in-law is from Puerto Rico, and speaks so lovingly of her grandparent's farm there. She is also a poet. She works for a farm foundation here in the states. I will share this with her, and I expect she will have more insights for me. Thank You.
MaryPat, please share her poetry if she agrees -- maybe for a post when Heather has a short greeting and a photograph. 🌱 Planting 'interdependence'!
TCinLA, we need to be aware of the similarity of our current white “Christian” nationalism to this: “German Christians (German: Deutsche Christen) were a pressure group and a movement within the German Evangelical Church that existed between 1932 and 1945, aligned towards the antisemitic, racist and Führerprinzip ideological principles of Nazism with the goal to align German Protestantism as a whole towards those principles. Their advocacy of these principles led to a schism within 23 of the initially 28 regional church bodies (Landeskirchen) in Germany and the attendant foundation of the opposing Confessing Church in 1934.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Christians_(movement)
This was the response: “The Barmen Declaration or the Theological Declaration of Barmen 1934 (German: Die Barmer Theologische Erklärung) was a document adopted by Christians in Nazi Germany who opposed the German Christian movement. In the view of the delegates to the Synod that met in the city of Wuppertal-Barmen in May 1934, the German Christians had corrupted church government by making it subservient to the state and had introduced Nazi ideology into the German Protestant churches that contradicted the Christian gospel.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barmen_Declaration
Please check out the life and death of a true Christian:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost of Disipleship by
Yes, I just order a biography of Bonhoeffer, by Metaxas. My husband was in a church group eight years ago that studied the Barmen Declaration, but he is a solid supporter of tfg. I’m hoping that having the Bonhoeffer book around will start a discussion, tho he is very defensive (I read him the last two paragraphs of this newsletter and he got upset that I was attacking Musk, and he doesn’t even use Twitter. I do.). I was a good GOP wife until I went to work at a high-poverty (95% FRL) K-5 school as their librarian. I could see that all the claims of the GOP had done nothing for my 500 kids and their hard working parents. And when dt came down that brass escalator, I was done with the GOPigs.
Sounds like you had the best kind of epiphany—a powerful, right-in-front-of-you one.
for sure!!!!!!!!!!
K
except please don't insult pigs... thanks!
You’re right - mea culpa…
Even when HCR's piece for the day contains daunting news, it still comforts me to read her; I am really grateful for her intellect, research, knowledge, and writing. And, today, TCinLA, I am grateful for the quote you have shared.
Or, as Abraham Lincoln said in his First Inaugural Address during another ominous period in our history, 'The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.'
For complete poem, go to: http://www.auroralevinsmorales.com/blog/vahavta
Additionally: https://kehillasynagogue.org/tai-a-yom-kippur-sermon-by-aurora-levins-morales/
"Another world is possible.
imagine winning. This is your sacred task.
This is your power. Imagine
every detail of winning, the exact smell of the summer streets
in which no one has been shot, the muscles you have never
unclenched from worry, gone soft as newborn skin,
the sparkling taste of food when we know
that no one on earth is hungry, that the beggars are fed,
that the old man under the bridge and the woman
wrapping herself in thin sheets in the back seat of a car,
and the children who suck on stones,
nest under a flock of roofs that keep multiplying their shelter.
Lean with all your being towards that day
when the poor of the world shake down a rain of good fortune
out of the heavy clouds, and justice rolls down like waters.
Love and the Light have no opposite.
Unita! Hold hands! 🗽
Sort of speechless, what a vision…
Pretty powerful, hunh!
I’ve read through the comments and there are many good ones. But I’m going with TC’s visualization. Don’t waiver. GOOD will prevail. I’ve done what I can do. Now it’s time to believe. Michael Moore insists it will be a blue tsunami. He predicted tfg would win in 2016 when no one else could imagine how that could happen. “We need to step into the calm eye of the storm, and steer by the stars...” Thank you, TC.
and Michael Moore
I find this conversation nourishing. Thank you all.
Nourishing. Exactly the right word.
Yes! Nourishing--such a good word!
I needed this. I woke up dreaming of the possibility of all those bills created by the House, which have been languishing in the Senate, finally being approved and sent to President Biden. Just think: the voting rights bill, the protection of women's reproductive rights...all sorts of "good stuff" for AMERICANS.
Wow TC 🤩 such positivity from you this morning! I immediately feel more hopeful and energized. Thank you for sharing! 🙏🙏
It is after all the truth that will set us free from the cancer that eats at our democracy and humanity. Currently Diogenes with his lamp is still looking for an honest man among the politicians, dare I say it, on the Extreme right.
"...burn clear as a starry drinking gourd..."
Amazing quote. Thank you.
Amazing, beautiful quote. Inspiring and hope building! Who is Aurora Levins Morales?
Ned L - "Who is Aurora Levins Morales?"
http://www.auroralevinsmorales.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_Levins_Morales
"Rematriation" That is a hell of a concept!
Entranced by that word and the meaning behind it. It's perfect. I have been pondering my own version of it, and how I might be able to make it happen. Now, at least, I have the perfect name for it, though my version will, of necessity be different from Auroras. She will be my guide as I feel my way toward this.
In one month I will be 80 years old. I am rather surprised by that, and baffled about how it comes about without one really noticing. But here I am. At the beginning of another adventure, about which I have no idea yet. But it will come.