Brilliant, touching, beautiful . . . . Discovered through Upworthy.
Credits: ORIGINAL: By Shane Koyczan. If you'd like to get one of Shane's poems emailed to you once a month, go here. And if you'd like to follow the amazingly talented Hannah Epperson, who accompanied this performance on the violin, Like her here.
This was posted by Jamie Utt at his Change from Within blog. It's a guest post from a friend of his, Dan Mahle, a program coordinator, facilitator, and community builder living in Seattle, WA.
We all should be asking this one simple question, which is from the article below: “So what can we, as men, do to begin to transform this culture of violence against women?” And then we should take it a step further: "What can we do, as men, to begin to end this culture of violence?"
While I fully support this particular cause, I also recognize that patriarchy is not about men - it is about power over others. We all want to end violence against women, but we also want to end violence against men, against children, against any human being. Rather than power over, we can begin to create a culture of empowered with - we become empowered individually and collectively with each other.
I don't know exactly what a new interdependent culture would look like in practice, but I know that violence would become, over time, obsolete.
Dan Mahle at the 1 Billion Rising event in Seattle, WA
Dan Mahle is a program coordinator, facilitator, and community builder living in Seattle, WA. He received his B.A. in Peace and Global Studies from Earlham College in 2008. He has been involved in a variety of non-profit organizations since then, including several youth programs that he helped to launch. His personal mission is to support people in uniting across lines of difference to identify common values & goals, build culture & community resilience, and share powerful stories through creative expression. When he’s not working, he can be found running, hiking, writing music, and eating tasty bowls of cereal late at night. —————— One Conversation: A Call to Men
I had an incredible conversation with a complete stranger today. He was an older guy who happened to stop by the 1 Billion Rising local event that took place in downtown Seattle. As I was walking toward the small crowd of mostly women who were holding signs and dancing, he stopped me with a loud, “Hey, what is this ‘1 Billion Rising’ thing?” When I told him that it was a global movement to end violence against women, launched by Vagina Monologues playwright, Eve Ensler, his voice softened and his eyes darted away. He started telling me about how violence had affected so many of the women in his life. He began tearing up as he shared that most of the women he loves have been victims of sexual assault and/or abuse. He recalled spending 15 years with his ex-wife who, despite endless medications, could not overcome the depression she felt ever since the day she was sexually assaulted. I could see the hurt and sadness in his face as he told me that he couldn’t find any way to help her. His mother, he said, had also been a survivor. Suddenly staring firmly at me, he said, “Women shouldn’t be treated this way. They are the life-givers; we owe everything to them.” He was visibly shaken. I looked back at him and asked, “So what can we, as men, do to begin to transform this culture of violence against women?” We talked about how important it would be for more men to have honest conversations about patriarchy and its countless negative impacts on us and on the women in our lives. Both of us acknowledged, though, that these kinds of safe spaces for male emotional expression are few and far between. I gave him a hug and he said, “I love you, man.” We had met just 5 minutes before, but the moment of solidarity and healing that we shared in that short space was profound. It got me thinking: Why don’t we, as men, seek out more spaces for truthful sharing about our feelings and our experiences with patriarchy? Why don’t we talk about violence against women, about sexism, and about rape culture? The ‘1 Billion Rising’ movement is based on a single, chilling statistic: One in three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. That’s 1 billion women worldwide. How can we say that we love the women in our lives, even as we are perpetuating (consciously or unconsciously) a culture of violence against them?” Every day that we are silent, the cycle of violence continues.
The Cost of Patriarchy This is where shame often comes in. I’ve known it by many names: frustration, defensiveness, anger, aggression, rage, a need for control, etc. But it all comes back to shame. It all comes back to some deep-seated feeling of unworthiness that keeps us from meeting our most fundamental human need: the need to feel loved. While women in our society are taught that their worth depends on their physical beauty, men are taught that our worth depends upon our performance, our control, our accomplishments. At some point, like so many women, many of us realize that we will never be able to fulfil the expectations placed on us. But instead of questioning the patriarchal culture that has burdened us with these perverse and insatiable demands, we come to believe that who we are is not good enough. In an effort to avoid feelings of vulnerability, we methodically replace emotional expression with emotional numbness. And so, in our disconnection from self and others, we unlearn what it means to truly love. As bell hooks puts it in her book, The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, “The reality is that men are hurting and that the whole culture responds to them by saying, ‘Please do not tell us what you feel.’” When we forget what it means to love, we often desperately search for cheap replacements: we work long hours at work in an attempt to receive praise and recognition; we watch porn or buy prostitutes in a distorted attempt to feel loved and sexually fulfilled; we buy an endless number of things in an attempt to fill the painful void of loneliness within. Until we, as men, face our fear of vulnerability and begin telling each other what we feel, nothing will change.
Right now, there is a powerful, growing movement of women who are rising up all around the world to demand an end to violence. This movement is a struggle for equality, but it is also a call back to love. It is an invitation to all people to transform the dominant culture from a culture of violence to a culture of love, starting from within our own hearts. We owe it to all women to stand beside them as they say “enough is enough!” We owe it to ourselves to finally invite love, in all of its fullness, back into our lives. Learn more about 1 Billion Rising here.
Inaugural poet Richard Blanco read his poem "One Today" at the swearing-in ceremony for President Obama. Here is the full text of the poem as written. You can also watch a video interview (ABC News) with Blanco - Watch Video.
This is a quiet, simple poem, but one filled with the sense of unity I think President Obama also sought to invoke in his Address. We are one people, no matter how diverse, under one sun, each of us in our own ways facing one day, and then another, and another . . . together.
"One Today" One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies. One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story told by our silent gestures moving behind windows. My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors, each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day: pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights, fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper— bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us, on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives— to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did for twenty years, so I could write this poem. All of us as vital as the one light we move through, the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day: equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined, the "I have a dream" we keep dreaming, or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain the empty desks of twenty children marked absent today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light breathing color into stained glass windows, life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth onto the steps of our museums and park benches as mothers watch children slide into the day. One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands as worn as my father's cutting sugarcane so my brother and I could have books and shoes. The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it through the day's gorgeous din of honking cabs, buses launching down avenues, the symphony of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways, the unexpected song bird on your clothes line. Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling, or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom, buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días in the language my mother taught me—in every language spoken into one wind carrying our lives without prejudice, as these words break from my lips. One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands: weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report for the boss on time, stitching another wound or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait, or the last floor on the Freedom Tower jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience. One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes tired from work: some days guessing at the weather of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother who knew how to give, or forgiving a father who couldn't give what you wanted. We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home, always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop and every window, of one country—all of us— facing the stars hope—a new constellation waiting for us to map it, waiting for us to name it—together.
THE COURAGE TO FEEL
Buddhist Practices for Opening to Others by Rob Preece more...
Dharma Quote of the Week
Recalling our interconnectedness, we begin to recognize our total interdependence and that whatever we enjoy in our life comes through others--through their efforts, their work, their hardships.
It does not necessarily require that others had a specific intention to enable us to enjoy the things of our life. If we think of this in terms of the obvious examples like food and clothing, we can immediately see the global meaning of this contemplation. Our food comes from all over the world and if we consider the people and other creatures involved in its production, picking, packaging, transportation, and selling so that we can enjoy it, the numbers are vast. It is through their labor, their efforts, their struggles that we enjoy what we eat. Often their lives are terribly hard, and to feed a family they must work for very little--yet we enjoy the fruits of their labor. This is something to feel a huge gratitude for.
If we begin to look more closely at our Western life, we can see how much we are dependent upon people in considerably poorer circumstances all over the world for what we consume. What we often don't consider is the impact of this consumption on those who produce it. In this meditation, it can be very useful to spend some time dwelling upon this so that we really feel the profound depth of appreciation for our interdependence upon others for our lives. This can counter the tendency to take our good fortune for granted and can open up a sense of gratitude for the kindness of those around. If guilt arises, it can be used to increase our awareness of the responsibility we have globally.
Gradually, we may begin to see the complete interdependent nature of our relationship with the countless other beings around us. We cannot overlook this connectedness to others and the kindness and benefit we have gained through them. When we come to feel this deeply, we will be able to hold others dear and automatically respond to others with a greater sense of care and concern. (p.80)
--from The Courage to Feel: Buddhist Practices for Opening to Others by Rob Preece, published by Snow Lion Publications
The Courage to Feel • Now at 5O% off! (Good until December 2nd).
