Urgent.....

[REGINA SEWELL]

Ed,

I do not disagree with you about the urgency of the situation.  Personally, I am horrified.  Politically, I am active.  And, I also know from personal experience, on both ends of the bat used to beat our points in with, that beating a point in doesn't work.  People get angry.  Ronald Reagan was once a Roosevelt Democrat.  He was somewhat socialist... the head of a union... the Screen Actor's Guild.  After getting death threats and condemnation from the more radical actors union (I can't remember the name off hand) he became the Ronald Reagan who we all know and love for his reactionary conservative political policies, not to mention his callous dismissal of the AIDS epidemic.  

More close to home, I have been stumping about saving the whales and the elephants and the earth since I was a small child.  I rode my bike or took the bus to school and work for years.  I don't now because it is a 40 mile drive and there is no way to get there that is safe.  And I won't move because it's not that safe to be queer in the town where I work.  I buy organic.  I buy local.  I recycle.  Whatever...   I have a housemate that recently discovered the environment and every time I fail to avoid him, lambasts me about the importance of biking to work, taking cold showers, being vegan, not using the lights and lately, washing clothes by hand.  He sounds pious, judgmental and condemning.  My reaction:  I go to the "dark side" and wish to beat him to a bloody pulp with the axe handle I have in the attic for self defense.  I imagine maggots eating him from the inside out.  I want to buy a Hummer, park in the drive way with the engine running, listening to my $5000 stereo or watching movies on my surround sound HD big screen TV in the back.  

It's basic counseling 101...  joining....   I have to "be with the peeps" where they are in order to lay the path made up of  little crumbs of bread to get them pointed in the direction of where I'd like them to be.  To tell people what is, what they should think, how they should be is, I think, is arrogant, condescending and devisive. And it pisses people off.  

This is why, I think, urgency is highly over rated.  It drives people to act without being connected to our shared humanity.  

Slowing down allows us to be present.  It gives us time to look at and let go of the fear, guilt, shame, and anger that gets in the way of action.  Joanna Macy has some really good stuff on this.  

So yes, we need to act as if our lives depend on it.  And we need to be absolutely present in each moment because our lives and our planet depend on it.  Note that the buddhists do a very slow walking meditation rather than a running meditation.

celebrate whirled peas,

regina sewell, Ph.D.


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