Stand up with Roe Rage

One thing about our evolution is that our instincts are sometimes backward.

When 9-11 happened, I know it reminded me of Pearl Harbor, and so my next thought was that our country would go to war.

But we’re emerging from thousands of years of the Piscean era of domination and patriarchy into a time when war is never, ever going to work as a solution to anything. Examples? Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Yet my belly clenches and my shoulders tighten. Upon learning of the Fascist Court ruling to overturn Roe V. Wade, I feel ready to fight. Every part of my body wants to join an underground group of fierce fighters ready to defend our freedom.

I feel like I’ve been training for this my whole life. Years of daily exercise have prepared me. And yet what planet am I on? Did you hear yourself? Violence isn’t a solution to our problems anymore. (People might say it’s never a solution, but wars did have a functional role in the heart of the Piscean era. World War II was a terrible thing, of course, but it did stop Hitler. Wars used to work.)

So we basically have an entire nation in fight or flight, coiled. I, a nonviolent communications enthusiast and an advocate for universal health care, human rights, and sensible regulation of both firearms and corporations, want to drop it all and take up arms.

So I inhale. And I let it go, just that breath. Then maybe the next.

How are we supposed to respond when Warrior Rises Within?

“The strong man is the one who can stand up for his rights and not hit back,” Martin Luther King Jr., reverend & Ph.D., one of my heroes.

Not only a scholar, but Dr.King also followed our divine Source with 100% devotion. Love the racist, not the racism. He urges me to stand up for my rights and not hit back. Love my enemies. But the burn smolders and threatens the nation’s arid plains.

Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh says of anger to look at it like a burning bush. To say to your anger, I see you, but not to feed it.

All right then. I see you smoldering. I see you there, dry grass, raw tinder everywhere. I see you and I inhale again and exhale and try to recover my peace within.

And yet anger is also a beacon, a raging calling card that alerts us when something is wrong.

How do we stand up for our rights now, without hitting back? Talk with me, God. Answer my prayers. Hate the fascism, not the fascists. Rise above the urge to gun them down, the same urge they just sanctioned as holy. Should I join the river of blood they have invited to run the nation’s streets? Or, as one of my wise peers in the movement for universal health care says, have the corporations orchestrated this divide all along to keep us fighting among ourselves?

If the American people vote Biden out of the office and a fascist in, Putin wins.

And yet Biden’s beholden to the greedy corporations. Most politicians are because it keeps them in campaign funding to stay in office.

Who are we to trust? The anger seeps into my mouth. I long to open my mouth and have my snake tongue hiss venom out.

I’m furious. I’m angry. It’s not okay. Whether they mean well or not, they shall go down in flames. Vengeance looms. And I am not that kind of a person; I don’t believe in violence.

Let justice rain down like fire on their heads. Ohm. Aum. Inhale, exhale. Show me the Way, God.

When I don’t have time to pray, I pray harder, King wrote.

When all I feel is fury, feed me the water of you God, that I may rise and do good with all this Kracken’s power unleashed.

My need is to have them listen to the women of the country who know better than anyone else what’s best to do with our own bodies.

My need is that they not be in power 5 minutes more.

My need is the end of this fascist bullshit even if it requires a revolution.

My need is for the end of all suffering, and for us all to enjoy peace.

My need is to cool these flames.

My need is to cool this planet.

My need is to trust my Source that there is a plan here wiser than anything I could dream up and for You to show me, show me, show me how I can best be of service for the good of all life.

My need is a reckoning, but not by my own hand. My need is to trust the great universe, my need is that love fills my heart, and that, no matter my fury, that love and truth guide my actions.

That we somehow stand up for our rights and somehow, somehow, don’t hit back. Show me, God, what to do with my fury.

Oh, and protect all our nation’s pussies from impregnation until we can resolve this. Thank you.