Over the Rainbow

In 2004, just a month after George W. Bush was elected for a second term, I wrote my annual Holiday Newsletter. I stumbled across it today and re-reading the opening was both discouraging and encouraging at once. We—at least, I— have been here before. The bandaids on cancer failed to heal because of a refusal to accept the deeper diagnosis and the needed treatment. But the symptoms are now so irrefutable that the systems that sustain them are finally showing signs of crumbling. It feels worth a repost here, looking at ways that we can individually and collectively not only get through, but help pull down the supporting posts. Here’s what I wrote then and here’s what I still stand by now:

                                    HOLIDAY NEWSLETTER 2004

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us… in short, it was a time much like the present…”

 

And so it is, has been and ever shall be. But now the stakes are so much higher. The power behind blind ignorance and willful malice is exponentially greater than ever before and the resulting damage of global proportions. In a time when we need the best in us to step forth, we have capitulated to the worst. In a time that calls for our most imaginative thinking, far-reaching vision and compassionate caring, we have elected sheer stupidity and hearts incapable of remorse. It is difficult time to write a holiday newsletter. 

 

And yet, the sun sill rises and sets and the pages of the calendar still turn. We get up each morning and go forth into the day in hopes that each small act might make a difference. We continue to study what has been so that we may imagine what might be. We read to step inside the shoes of the other, to discover the shared humanity that the newspapers don’t report. We keep on teaching children in hopes that they might carry forth the work we’ve started and reach for the places we’ve missed. We sort through the entanglements of working together with others, try to keep our common purpose in sight amidst the daily squabbles and stepped-on toes. 

 

We carry on making art, playing music, singing songs, writing poems and dancing, try to wrestle our joys and sorrows, our certainties and confusions, into shapes that heal and uplift. We break bread together—carbs be damned!— to nourish both bodies and companionship. We suffer through our perpetual failures, sort through the confused choir of inner voices to search out the hidden harmonies, get up from the floor determined to either be better or accept the goodness inside of our faults and flaws. We continue to grow stronger by habitually exposing our vulnerability. 

 

We also slowly realize how the narratives of our personal shortcomings are often systemically imposed by power and privilege protecting itself by making their agenda of harm and hurt our problem— and finally refuse it. We pull aside the curtain to reveal the fake Wizard pulling the ropes of White Supremacy, Patriarchy and Class, and reclaim the brain, heart and courage that these toxins have poisoned and beaten down. We understand that the land we dream of “over the rainbow” is the rainbow, with all the colors shining together. We finally accept that we don’t return home from mere naïve hope and tapping our red shoes together, but by intentionally walking the road together, one yellow brick at a time. And yes, while singing and dancing. 

 

Happy Holidays!