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Progress for them,  along the line of their mandate for life.   This was this morning.  Early.   I just went out this eve to see any difference.   What i am hoping is to see the evidence of their transition from consuming to transformation.   Not yet.  the Consuming continues.

 

I will tell you that i am completely absorbed with the Events in Ferguson Missouri.  I read everything i can,  i watch video,  i sit and stare at image slide shows.  All of it.  Everything.  

"The Pew Research Center released a national survey of attitudes about Ferguson and it's meaning.  Asked whether the shooting in Ferguson "raised important issues about race",  80% of black respondents agreed.  And while two-thirds of black people said the police response in the aftermath of the Ferguson shooting went too far,  only a third of white people thought so.  Only a quarter of white respondents said they had followed the story closely,  compared to half of black respondents."    White America's racial blinders   Derrick Z. Jackson  Globe Columinst

I lived in Detroit, Michigan during the "riot" of 1967.   Lived in an apartment just off the campus of Wayne State University,  downtown.    I was young.   and what i remember most was having gone late at night to the White Castle oh so cheap hamburger joint a few blocks away,  walked there,  and sat eating hamburgers (that i would NOT eat today) and just talking to whoever was there.  Somehow,  and looking back,  i am in total awe of it, really,  somehow having a sense of safety.   That nothing could happen to me.   I wish i could go back and talk to that me,  find out what she knew,  what she was thinking.  How she felt that she was safe.   What she thought about it,  that she did never feel threatened.   What the ignorant innocence was that made her feel immune to harm.  ANY harm.  Any harm at all.  Same as walking in protests in Detroit over Civil Rights,  same as  participating in protests of the war in Viet Nam.   That same odd sense of immunity.  

There are many many photographs that are stunning and heartwrenching coming out of that small town in Missouri this August, 2014 .

 

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this one to me was the Strongest.   I was born in Detroit,  my father worked for the DSR the bus service.   I remember,  when i wa s young,  and then later when i was no longer young,  my father talking about the Negros.    About how their hands are different,  have scales.  My father was a racist.   I grew up for the most part in the suburbs of Detroit where there were only White people.  But somehow,  something inside me was repulsed by my father.   So i think,   what is That?

And i am looking at this photograph.   Looking at something really, plain,  a man stung by Pepper Spray,  Capsicum,  capsaicin, the chemical,  and someone pouring MILK on his face.   MILK.  Same as when i eat too much chili here, now,  that is too hot and i drink a glass of milk.   Milk.  Milk on his face and look.  Look at the detail in this photograph….i am STUNG,  stung hard that this is happening still.   And it's happening still because no one wants to look.  No one really wants to Stand and Face.  We are not much farther along, really.  Years go by and we don't look at Things.

 

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Me, here,  thinking all the above and yet 

just Making a Cloth.  Feeding Goats.  Writing words here.

There is a woman, Hedy Epstein,  who just turned 90 just now and is a Halocaust Surviver who is in Ferguson, Missouri.  walking with the people.

 

 

 

 

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21 responses to “August 20, 2014 Variations”

  1. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    They eat and eat and eat….It may be quite awhile more. Wish I knew what variety of caterpillar.
    Oh Grace…Police armed to the teeth here too…lots of sirens, lots of activity. i was woken at 4:30 AM Wednesday morning by the screams of a man in pain and fear, out my front window I witnessed eight or more big cops drag a semi naked black man out of the patrol car and slam him face forward and handcuffed to the cement, then haul him upright and hook him under the arms, then lift his feet and into the station. I didn’t sleep again till seven. Started stitching one of those tea and walnut dyed sun cloths.
    That picture–powerful image–this article–http://religiondispatches.org/the-praying-preying-police-in-ferguson-mo/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-praying-preying-police-in-ferguson-mo
    I went to the Zendo earlier and sat with others. What else can I do, eat, sleep, balance the energies, be kind.

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  2. yvette Avatar

    in shock
    my eyes are focused on the middle east so i missed the Ferguson riots
    you say you felt safe when you were young or not?
    as long as i remember i’ve never felt safe but with a father who was surviver of a concentration camp it’s not strange i think
    always afraid if people are harmed as a group
    afraid of racism, anti semitism, zionisme, and now the derailed muslim men
    you felt in a earlier post you feel not quiet and the remedy is going out of your head
    i slowly going out of the news and as i said before, my concentration will be nature, now no furhter thinking then the raindrops flinkering in the sun
    Grace Grace Grace!

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  3. Patricia Avatar

    oh Grace. you are not alone in this.

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  4. debbie.weaver Avatar

    It is so easy to watch and read and be shocked by what is going on in the world right now. We never learn, never change, but what to do. I wouldn’t have the courage to go out and help any of these other people, I also have not felt save since my early teens when something happened to make me not trust people any more.
    So we sit at home and watch and listen and carry on with our own lives. Sometimes I wonder why I am making things to decorate people’s houses, it all seems so futile when faced with world events, maybe we could all emulate that old women who is making clothes for the refugees, that is something I could do.
    There are no easy answers.

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  5. beth Avatar

    Not many words lately, Grace, but I am still coming by your place. There is a lot of comfort in hanging out here even in silence.
    http://www.democracynow.org has had good news coverage. Yes there are issues of race, but we also need to pay attention to what happens in a climate of us and them. Because sooner or later…

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  6. Dana Avatar

    I have read your post several times…it finds an empty place inside me that is hard to articulate. What to do in the face of endemic human cruelty? As a human, I have felt and expressed meanness and cruelty myself so I know the fearful interior caverns that can generate heinous actions against others, but I so long for a world where kindness is the first response. Consciousness is the only answer I can think of, so your reminder not to look away is helpful. Thank you.

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  7. Mo Crow Avatar

    thank you Grace for holding the light shining out from the desert
    witnessing with your wise eyes, heart and soul
    raising awareness around the world
    namaste

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  8. grace Avatar

    be kind. be kind is important. whether in person or just in Heart. be kind.
    Tracy i think has solved the mystery. Tomorrow…that.

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  9. grace Avatar

    i try….i try to go out of my head, but i remain in my head, really
    i just need to keep looking until there is a sense of having looked long enough and then i get quiet.
    i love you, Yvette

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  10. grace Avatar

    not alone. this is important.

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  11. grace Avatar

    we have learned some. we have changed some. Some. not
    enough but some. We are slow. Slowly evolving to even ask the questions we do. Making Beauty is still important. It always has been and always will be. Not to decorate the house, but the spirit. Decorate the spirit. You do this…

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  12. grace Avatar

    i always go to Amy in these times. and it’s something anyone can do…give a few dollars to Democracy Now. Where we can go if we want truth.

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  13. grace Avatar

    there is nothing to do but to go Toward that place where kindness and goodness is the first response. Nothing else to do. Keep going. and to keep going, we need to LOOK. we need to keep LOOKING

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  14. grace Avatar

    Mo…it’s only Facing. that’s all. we can all do it.

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  15. debbie.weaver Avatar

    Thanks Grace, that is how I should think of what I do, you are right my work comes from deep inside but maybe I need to be told to recognise that.

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  16. grace Avatar

    more and more i see what we Make, all of us, as
    food for spirit. ours and anyone who finds it to be also.
    Feeding Spirit is honorable work.

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  17. Nancy Avatar

    Grace~ Everyone~ Your words, comments, bringing tears to my eyes. So Hard to be a witness to it all, but yet can’t stop…don’t want to, need to know…because of that “happening still”. I sometimes think “Have we learned Nothing”…the movie “To Kill a Mockingbird” flashes in my head, that courtroom, the wrongness of that accusation and the end result and I think why can’t we learn, from stories wisely told…from our own history???
    Then I listen to the news of the World and it is too scary and I feel helpless. And I, like Yvette that anti semitism is really – still, not too far away. I’ve heard it recently in my own workplace. Reported it. “Oh no I didn’t mean that! I have family members married to Jews”. My gut tells me different. Daughter’s friend, Syrian. I read her viewpoint. She moved back there in second grade and lived in Egypt and other locales, thinks like us (meaning the women here in the Spirit World circle). How must these events feel to her?
    And like Michelle, I see things too nearby. Yesterday a detour on the way to work, a man shot dead in his truck. Why? By whom? ANd like Debbie, feeling unable to completely trust due to childhood scars.
    And sometimes it is all too much and I have to not look and not listen for a little while, so I listen to music that feeds my soul while I drive through the not always safe area, windows up, doors locked, on my way to work each day.
    (((sigh)))
    I guess I needed to get that off my chest.

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  18. grace Avatar

    These things you say here are like jewels, really. They
    shine and glow with the truth of your experience. They shine and glow because you spoke them ALOUD. You laid them on the table that is in the Center of us. This is very honorable.
    It is exactly what we All need to do. Not filter it, or censor to make it “nicer”. Just what it is. Put it there. On the table, in front of our place. It’s the first step.
    As always, to me, it is what is UNSAID, that is toxic.
    I am continuing to read, to read everything i can this time. In past years i guess i’d imagined that it all would somehow find a better way. But i see now that we are Stalled in some kind of Limbo. So i read and read, look and look. And i look at it HERE. in this country. in so many of the other areas of Grief and Conflict there is the issue of land. The issue of how land became seperated by historic events. Entire peoples moved, becoming refugees from lands of origin. That is almost easier for me to understand.
    WELL AND AS I WRITE THIS, I THINK…THAT’S CRAZY GRACE…
    THINK AGAIN.
    ok…need to think more.
    But still and anyway, i woke in the middle of the night to think that maybe we can NEVER as Groups, accept All Human Beings as Same as we are. Who ever the We is. Maybe that just won’t happen. So…ok. if it Won’t happen, then what we really NEED to do is simply to follow very basic and simple RULES. Don’t kill.
    My huge question at the moment is….WHY CAN’T POLICE SHOOT PEOPLE IN NON LETHAL PLACES? I am assuming that they know well how to shoot guns. Why then can’t they shoot individuals they deem needing to be shot in the legs? In some part of the body that would hopefully not cause death? A leg and a shoulder?, maybe. Certainly, an unarmed person shot in the leg and shoulder would be
    hindered?
    but this does not speak to the rest of the world which is almost impossible to try to understand. Gaza. Africa.
    It’s too much for this little blog here. Because it’s too much for this little mind here. But…there is really no reason for fear.
    Once again…in this little Hood i live in. The other day, i was doing something with cloth and heard a sound.
    SCHUTTTE……and Tay whizzed out the dog door in the screen door barking and i went out and the phone rang and Margie Across the Road was calling. Some kid was shooting a BBgun into this yard…the Way Back. I hung up and ran out again and whipped out the gate. They were down by then to the end of this place, in front of the abandoned neighbor’s place next door…pointing those BBguns. the sound again and i yelled. HEY!!!!!!!!!!! and then some words i wish i hadn’t…but What the Fuck are you Doing??? They were right at the end of the buck pen. I didn’t give them the benefit of the doubt but stormed down there like a dervish. One was late teens, or more. One was young, maybe 9? 8? The young one was the most argumentive, the older sullen, but i told them to go shoot their BB guns at their own homes. Or go somewhere in the hundreds of acres around and shoot them. But NOT HERE. it went on a while. But i have no sense of anger at Them as Beings. But i do have the spontaneous willingness to do what ever it takes to keep the Goats safe. So i am looking at that. How does that play into it all?????????????? Take it out. Put it on the table.
    Look at it. Don’t turn away. This is what i need to do.
    LOVE…..

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  19. Nancy Avatar

    I too wonder about their shoot skills and goals. They could aim different, I just know it. But Why don’t they?
    And you experience with the boys…interesting how easy it is to go from peaceful with cloth to curse words and confrontation. This ‘she-bear’ effect makes me feel for all in Gaza, who want to hold on to, or protect, or ? It seems to be a deep seated trait of humans, that genetic, gut reaction…Mmmm. Must think about that more.
    And yes, last night I was able to put words here that I usually save for conversations with friends or boyfriend or children. I know how you honor the putting out there all of the elements of life, even the bad and hard. It is good to be able to have those conversations, but I also honor those that do not or can not put all of it out there or must word it ever so carefully (like me). Not that it would ever be known, really, but I still work and get judged and can’t feel safe to be authentic in workplaces. A long story that I choose not to share in the vast online world. I share what, when I can or need to. I share at other’s blog homes more freely than at my home. Hard to fully explain. But I honor my ways too, because we all have to do what feels best and right for each of us. I hope that makes sense. Anyway, I know I can share here and be heard in kindness and that feels good. Goodnight.

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  20. grace Avatar

    i think we just say what we really NEED to say and the rest
    remains still within us. But just to be Aware. to not
    numb that out.

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  21. Nancy Avatar

    Yes Grace, maybe we hold it til it needs to be let out. Or sometimes just let it out right away. there are so many ways to do this life thing. I think of your numbing it out words and I think that I have never numbed, usually feel to much. But I know many who have numbed with drink or drug or business and more.
    (((hugs))) Nancy

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