June 2018 – peerspirit.com

This week on a summer solstice, forest walk in our local state park I was greeted with an enormous surprise. The flower I was named after was in bloom everywhere—from small patches to entire ridges.

Linnea borealis, the twin flower

A “field” of thousands of twin flowers in bloom

Never in 40 years of living in its range have I timed a walk to be in the woods at the peak moment of bloom for Linnaea borealis (the twinflower). I have seen one or two or a small colony of the tiny flowers blooming at one time, but nothing of this magnitude! I carefully sat down at the edge of one of these blooming fields and became completely still.

South Whidbey State Park on summer solstice

No human sound penetrated the forest’s deep silence on this cool summer day. I inhaled slowly. There is reputed to be an elegant fragrance that comes from these fairy flowers. I had never been able to perceive it, but here were thousands of flowers in one place. Slowly, steadily I found myself engulfed in a very slight citrus smell.

The ecstasy I felt must be akin to someone coming from a planet with no flowers landing in the northern hemisphere in June. I both wanted to shout out loud in amazement AND be silent in the temple of beauty.

This tiny woodland flower was my grandmother’s favorite in her Swedish homeland. She gave her fourth child, my mother, the middle name of Linnea. My mother passed that same middle name onto me. After kayaking around Lake Superior in the summer of 1992, I felt so profoundly changed that I needed an outward claiming of my inward change. So, I legally changed my name to Ann Linnea.

At this moment in the woods, I felt enormous connection to my mother, my grandmother, and my Swedish heritage. Since my mother is still alive, I eagerly called her when I returned from my walk. She has always lived a bit south of where this tiny plant grows. She knows what it looks like, but cannot ever remember smelling a Linnea flower. I sure hope my sweet, quiet grandmother had a moment like mine in the forest of her homeland when she was a child.

My grandmother’s favorite wildflower in Sweden. She immigrated here as a teenager.

Nature holds the thread of wonder if we look carefully. It is a powerful antidote for us humans—it has always been so.

In the back of my journal are pages devoted to news clippings, magazine articles and photos: the Parkland students, injured Syrian children, Rohingya families fleeing into the poorest country on earth for shelter, addicts shooting up on city streets on their way to work, ICE patrols breaking up families of farm workers, earthquakes and storm surges, a starving polar bear leading her emaciated cubs to suicide at sea, the destruction of our protected national wild lands. Now also the photos of children being torn from their parents’ arms and shipped around the country to secret detention centers. Lost.

I paste some variety of these pages into each journal volume. My life ramblings filling pages front to back: these wider horrors and concerns pasted back to front. To endure being informed I have to find a sacred way to hold what’s actually happening, not just toss the daily news into the recycle bin or trash icon. I am a journal writer: the journal is an archive, a document of witness.

LOOK, my journal says, while you are sitting on the deck writing the morning up, or having dinner with family or friends, or working your way through personal challenges—this and this and this is also happening.

I have scrawled in black marker on these pages: I allow myself to believe that I can live with integrity inside the territory of my personal life; but I do not know how to live with integrity in relationship to the shattering of the wider world. My privilege contributes to destruction; the beauty, safety, and love around me I offer as prayer.

Right now, with the separation and incarceration of thousands of children and parents on the Mexican/US border, I can no longer claim to live with integrity in my own personal life: certainly not in my life as an American. I cast about in anguish for something effective to do.

A few days ago I emailed all my representatives. I wrote to a list of names that I’m told are the PR folks at the contractor companies that are putting up the detention centers. I shout at the people in the news stream—the young ICE officers, border patrol guards, attorneys, social workers, food delivery truck drivers, Congress members—“Resist! Resist! Resist! Don’t leave that room without taking the children. Run with them toward the cameras, make us all look, make the media become your protector.” I send small donations. I stand in protest—but I am far away.

I am a 72 year-old, only English speaking, Caucasian woman living just south of the Canadian border. I have few skills to help in this crisis except my own grandmothering arms; how I would make dinner, how I would encircle mother/father/child and refuse to let anyone rip them apart, how I would step between… Would I? How do I?

How do I manage my outraged heart in a time of impossible horrors?

In Bob Stilger’s book, After Now, When we cannot see the future where do we begin? he explores the potent idea that disaster gives us a chance that will never come again: to create the community we want. After the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and the reactor meltdown, Bob says some Japanese were courageous enough to admit, “This disaster has the potential to release us (Japan) from a future we did not actually want and to redefine where we are going.”

The United States is in a huge reset button: the end game of capitalist corporatism is now flashing uncontrolled in front of us. This is where we have long been headed—it’s just all laid bare; this imbalance of power was already available for misuse in the system; this is the greed of the great Monopoly board turning on itself. Our current disasters—both natural and politically generated—have the potential to imprison or empower us. Inside the walls of our nation I want the world to know millions of us are stirring awake and asking, how can we use this disaster to release ourselves from a future we did not actually want—and to step boldly, humbly, courageously into the future we do want, embracing the losses and reaching for the new promises that we ourselves call into being.

I carry my journal and my fountain pen with me everywhere. The pages of my life story and the larger context story are racing toward that point where they will meet in the middle of the notebook.

LOOK, my journal says: Look at everything: do not turn away. Carry it all: release it all. Refrain from violence, especially in your own heart, and understand the nature of fierceness, of holy outrage. Then take what action you can. Now. Today before one more child suffers, before one more piece of our precious earth is destroyed.