Listening, Moving My Feet, Day by Day
In the face of grief and Palestinian genocide
Art by Bassent Ashraf badawy | بسنت داوود
Hello beloved reader,
I have not been listening to the news, engaging on social media, consuming the content that bares me witness to the minute by minute genocide, the terror and brutality against children, elders, entire Palestinian lineage-keepers, and Israelis too.
I am also not listening to the shame or guilt that comes up because I’m choosing to not absorb the media that would pull me into the trenches and spin me to react, to hate, to prove a stance, or move at the pace of an urgency that is utterly disembodying.
Listening to the news or social media is not required for me (perhaps for you too?) to feel the searing grief, the blazing rage, the deep despair, the resilience, the compassion, the awe.
I am listening before I speak. I am uplifting what I hear that lands with me as medicine. I am moving my feet based on the actions, gifts and services that I can offer, day by day.
Listening to my body, to the trees and the breeze, and moving in compassion:
Listening to the sensations in my body, to the emotions, and the stories that my mind conjures with the utmost mindfulness, so that I can meet any and all emergences in kindness and common humanity, before throwing it at others in instagram comments or conversations.
I don’t know about you, but I am not in service with my gaze, my words, or my care when I am so disregulated in my nervous system to a point of acting from projected fear, shame or guilt.
Fear is here in the collective, and it is burning; for it to be connecting and humanizing rather than disconnecting and dehumanizing, it must first be held by our compassion.
Compassion is fierce, it’s active, it’s empathy IN ACTION. It’s not passive, cowardice or without a stand. It holds nuance and complexity beyond a binary, it requires self-responsibility, which includes awareness of our impact and belonging in this tapestry of interdependent humanity.
As trivial as it might seem in these times, my devotional practices of self, community and earth care are more important than ever; practices like meditation, being in community circle, spending time consulting with the wind and the trees, and letting my gratitudes and affections be known and felt. These are the ways I can start and start again.
I’m honoring how I could be of highest service in the ways I have access to, and honoring how others could be of highest service in the ways that they have access to. There’s plenty to say about privilege and convenient avoidance and performative activism, though I’m not exerting my energy in understanding, calling out, or judging folks there. I’m choosing to focus on how I could be of service, how I could invite others to recognize how they could be of service, and letting each choose for themselves each day. Deepa Iyer’s Social Change Ecosystem Framework has been a necessary reminder:
Framework by Deepa Iyer via Building Movement Project
For me, being in the streets in protest is not where I can be regulated or find regulation to be of much good. Being in intimate circle with others, prioritizing each other over agendas and deadlines in work meetings, sharing affection and kindness, holding space for our grief, sending voicemails, letters and emails, making calls and art, appreciating those in my life who I can’t agree with and forgiving our differences, singing with my elders, tending to the garden, are how I can stretch to contribute love and healing to the planet, right now.
Listening to Palestinian activists like Jenna Matari and Shirein Creates, and moving in accordance with some time-sensitive actions to:
Sign the petition to CEASEFIRENOW
Write a letter to government officials to demand a ceasefire
Email Congress to stop funding Gaza genocide by supplying Israeli military
Call government officials to de-escalate and call for a ceasefire, and demand that humanitarian assistance be allowed into the Gaza
Even as a ceasefire has happened in the past, and doesn't come close to the necessary relief and freedom from boiling intergenerational trauma and fear, I (perhaps you too) have to do what I can from where I’m at now, then listen and move with next steps further.
!نعم للحق والسلام // yes to our rights and peace! by DYANA
Listening to ancestral and contemporary voices of revolutionary love, and moving in my relationships:
"Our most powerful response to the horror in Israel and Palestine is to refuse to surrender our humanity.You will be told by some: The deaths of Israeli children are unfortunate but inevitable, because Israel's occupation of Palestine is brutal and wrong.
You will be told by others: The deaths of Palestinian children are unfortunate but inevitable, because it is the only way to keep Israel safe from terror, and Hamas brought this on its own people.
Both will say: Our aggression is the only response to their aggression, our fear more justified than their fear, our grief more devastating than theirs ever will be.
But oh my love, the hierarchy of pain is the old way. The moment we allow our hearts to go numb is the moment we shut down our humanity.
I don't know the solution to the conflict in Israel and Palestine, but I do know the starting point: To grieve "their"children as our children. It's the only way to break the cycle.
To my loved ones who are Israeli, Jewish, and Palestinian: I see your searing pain. I love you and grieve with you and am reciting my ancestors' prayers for protection as you search for your families and bear the unbearable. May love find you through the impossible.
To all of us witnessing this story: What does love want you to do? If you cannot look at the news and the images: It's okay. Step away, be with the earth, go to the trees, let them breathe through you; remember that you don't need to do all the things, just the one that's yours to do.
If you want to help but don't know how: Begin in relationship. Who in your life is hurting from this? Offer to walk with them, listen to them. There is no fixing grief, only bearing it together. Only then do we know what to do next.
If you are falling apart: Your breathlessness is not a sign of your weakness, but of your strength. Of how deeply you feel the horror, how deeply you care. You still feel And that matters in a world that wants us to feel nothing. Who can feel it with you? Breathe with you?
Opening our hearts to grief-others and our own-is how we hold our humanity in a world that would destroy it. It's how we will begin to survive this.”
May we do what we can from a place of deep listening and love, whatever that looks like, each day.
May our nervous systems be washed with waves of soothing and rest. May we digest our feelings, take small actions daily, and be in communities of care and graceful accountability.
In compassionate listening,
Chetna
