On this International Women's Day, as war continues to break out in Ukraine, we acknowledge that it's and especially women & children - who suffer most with the fallout of war - in Ukraine, and also in Russia... We invite you to breathe into this collective moment with us, along with all those that lay underneath it in the rubble of Empire. Can we expand our hearts' capacity to be present with the breaking - out there, as well as in here?
True peace requires us to FEEL, and as bell hooks & Thich Nhat Hanh taught so many of us, it is not in the the binary where we learn to live & lead in love, but in holding the Both/And and staying close to the heart within us all that breaks and yearns to be free.
The machine of global Power wants us to do anything but be present with this heartache in a real way; to instead acquiesce to its binary answers and the "inevitable" interventions and mandates it promises will return our lives to peace & normalcy. Yet the reality is that we have not been at peace for centuries, and in some cases thousands of years. War & the fear of war has been our "normal". And the interests of governments are seldom in the real the interest of the People, but in what's most profitable, while they suffer.
What if we chose to link our hearts with both Ukrainians & Russians, and also with those in other parts of our world who are still suffering with the pain of war? Can we widen our circle of compassion to the ancestors of these peoples who's fabric of peace had been torn so very long ago?
And can we then ripple our hearts out to our own displaced ancestors; our own inherited cellular memory of war? Can we hold this much breaking? Can we be honest about the collective trauma we carry?
This is how we begin to truly mend what's been broken.
From this broken-open place, we can also more fully dream into a world without war, and what would that take. A world that values peace would also center women as life givers - not only as makers of children, but of art, healing, culture, and society.
20/20 Vision cure-ator Cheryl R. Riley's language of "The Glyphs" - which were exhibited all over the walls of "SOUL KITCHEN" - offer a potent doorway into such a world. This language of a new matriarchy came to Cheryl when she read that women & children are killed the most in wars, and that matriarchal societies had no wars. In the language of The Glyphs in fact, there is no word for war. But there are many words for cooperation, creativity, and acts of sustaining Life.
The Glyphs also draw inspiration from languages pre-dating the written word, thus moving beyond the binary by accessing the power of symbols, and are drawn on top of old encyclopedias which represent the patriarchal language & code of order.
Perhaps The Glyphs can guide us in envisioning a new kind of culture & language - a new/ old way of speaking & relating to peace - which begins within ourselves and our most intimate relationships - along with an honoring of women in the deepest sense.
Armed with such a language, we might find the courage to keep believing in the victory of the flowering earth, and the ferocity to resist what threatens it.
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