Can You Hear Me Now

Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, or economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice. One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.

Dr. Martin Luther King

Growing up with a loud and nearly always angry father, I learned to push my own anger deep within me. I have strong memories of Mom saying, “Don’t rile him up” every time Dad set his sights on one of my siblings or me. She knew all too well the outcome of my father’s outbursts and did whatever she could to keep him calm and us compliant. Sadly, keeping Dad calm was an impossible task, but like the definition of insanity, she kept at it nonetheless hoping for a different outcome.

I practiced anger avoidance well into my adult life and although I am doing much better now at expressing my ire, it’s still a work in progress. I am quite good at the happy emotions, but too much of that leads to unhealthy places — resentment and entitlement to name two big ones. A balanced emotional life requires that I welcome every feeling I encounter.

That doesn’t mean I should be like Dad and perpetually live in anger and act out in rage. I simply need to let the anger in, feel it, and then send it on its way. My new emotional mantra can be summed up as this:

Hello. What’s on your mind? Goodbye.

I still don’t enjoy being angry, but that’s not the goal. The goal is to immerse myself in the moment and work through whatever is thrown my way. Both happy and mad have their places in my life. I breathe them in. I breathe them out. Nothing stays longer than is good for me and nothing is ignored.

Sorry Mom

Today is Inauguration Day and I am very angry. Angry at what is about to be unleashed upon my country and the rest of the world. Angry that so many people allowed this to happen again. Angry that I didn’t do enough to stop it. Angry about the completely unqualified and hateful people who are destined to run our government’s most important agencies. Angry over the wounds to the relationships that may never properly heal. Angry that I have to listen to his insanity for another four years.

I am angry and I am not in denial. There is no stuffing this one deep inside or brushing it aside with happy emotions. This past election was a gut punch that keeps on giving and no amount of artificial smiling is going to make it go away. My anger needs to be felt in every fiber of my being.

Sorry, Mom, but I am riled up and there is nothing you can say that will settle me down.

Bending the Arc

Today is a day to welcome in a multitude of unpleasant and uncomfortable feelings. Today I will allow myself to hurt, bleed, cry, shout, throw snowballs at unsuspecting trees, rant (see the poetry below), stomp my feet, and be heard. This article is the starting point for all of the above.

However, today’s overwhelming anger has a shelf life and I am not going to allow it to stay one second longer that its expiration date. Like turning swords into plowshares, I plan melting it down and repurposing it into the strength to keep fighting now matter how big the setback(s). Thankfully, there will be joy in helping to turn this mess around.

Joy in working with like-minded community. Joy in making a measurable difference. Joy in knowing that I didn’t give up. Joy with each new convert to my cause.

I shared the next paragraph in my recent and related Kitchen Ministry article. It bears repeating here:

In 1853, Unitarian minister Theodore Parker wrote, “Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

I am going to keep both eyes on that arc and today’s anger will witness tomorrow’s bend — no matter how infinitesimal that bend might seem. Please join me in this essential journey. Slowly and surely, we shall overcome.

Thank you for reading.

Plain and Simple

If you can excuse sexual assault as locker room talk
pretend that all men do it
say it

They don’t

If you can stand by violence and aggression
without hanging your head in shame
without standing up and demanding change

Then you are the rape culture
you are why it lives and how it flourishes

Plain and simple

Fifty-Three Percent

She takes the white man’s anger
the white man’s fears of difference
of change

She takes his words of hatred
for those of a different color
she takes his fear
over those of a different dress

All his lies and all his tantrums
his vile thoughts and vicious actions

She takes this man to her bed
and lets him fuck her into submission

His Lips Are Moving

See the old, fat, and pasty faced white man
smug and contemptuous
see him lolling behind his walls and fences
like some drunk perverted baboon
hands in pockets
fingering his money while scheming for more
head deep in the trough of public plunder
and private thievery

See the man
this gluttonous, wicked man
taking as much as we willingly give him

The New New Colossus

Give me your tired
your poor

But not your children
no matter how hungry
no matter how frightened, abused, or alone

Your huddled masses

Just not the brown-skinned
the blacks

Yearning to breathe free

Not my air and not my freedom
it’s mine and I’m not sharing

The wretched refuse of your teaming shore

Don’t be ridiculous

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door

No
never
go away
from this, the new New Colossus

White Privilege in the Voting Booth

Money in the bank
check

Food on the table
check

A bed for sleeping
check

A doctor, dentist, lawyer
check

Not pregnant
not sick
insurance up to date and paid for
check

Not brown
not black, yellow, or red
not atheist, not Muslim, not Jew
check
check
check

The right to throw my vote away
a big fat white privilege check