You are reading ‘Like person, like coach’: explorations at the intersection of personal narrative and coaching practice:
’When trying to understand why people do the things they do, a fog descends.’
- Maira Kalman
I checked out of the Gaza war.
’Many of us like to ask ourselves: ‘What would I do if I lived during the times of slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide? The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now. ‘
- Aaron Bushnell, found via Jessica Dore’s March 3rd Offering
I knew it at the back of my mind. And then I was reminded in a conversation with my friend Amal. Of the inner conflict that arises when one continues to live their life as usual whilst knowing that others are losing theirs through violence that, if contemplated for long enough, can ‘lead to insanity’. (Sharon Welsh)
Our conversation reminded me of Ilya Kminsky’s poem ‘We Lived Happily During the War’:
’And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough.’
So what do we do?
I think a lot about this question. And the question: ‘What will you say when they will ask you what did you do?’ In my mind I protest: ‘But what if it’s not about our guilt?’ And then: ‘But how else do we become accountable? How else do we stop the war? Can we stop the war?’
I want to believe that where there is deep darkness, there is also infinite light. I want to feel reassurred that extreme suffering gets balanced out. But maybe it does not. And then, where does that leave us? Is that what we’re looking for, as onlookers? Hope? A desire to hang onto a belief in humanity?
I’m stunned at how thin the line is between denial and action. How quickly we can shift from taking responsibility to checking out. It’s almost as if most of the time we are checked out and the work we are required to do is called forth by a meditation bell that you have to train to ring. What does it take to keep the meditation bell ringing? And what do you do when it rings? Or when it doesn’t?
’To be truly liberative, a theology of liberation must not regard itself as the definitive exposition of the structure of freedom and justice.’
- Sharon Welsh, Communities of Resistance and Solidarity
We make each other into beacons of light, not by self-will. None of us more free than the work we put into allowing ourselves and each other to be. All of us holding the possibility of loving with force, where we are, and across miles of sea and land - whether through prayer, charity, activism, protest, time given, words shared.
Listen to Poets for Palestine (Oct 30th 2023) - 3hrs of poetry about the war
This week, reading:
1. A word for white people, in two parts - adrienne maree brown
2. Why people of colour need spaces without white people - Kelsey Blackwell
3. The limits of solidarity: a case for true politics of care for Palestine - Charlotte Rose
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