I’m often struck by how some of the most simple things we can do can also be the most powerful. Here’s a list of things that I have noticed:
Look people in the eye.
Sometimes it’s easy to look people in the eye, other eyes may be difficult, dangerous. I try to do it more, and I try to notice when I’m looking away. I try to look everyone in the eye, and it helps me feel connected, communicative. Someone at the bus stop, the cashier, the neighbor, the friend. We see each others humanity.
Charles Eisenstein relates how prolonged eye contact with another person, around 30 seconds, creates a “connection that penetrates through all the superficial posing and pretense that define daily interactions.” Bliss and intimacy of longer eye contact is available to us almost all the time, yet we go without it. We only allow ourselves brief moments.
“Can you imagine—all that bliss is available all the time, less than sixty seconds away, yet we go for years and years without it.”
Hold our bodies with dignity.
Effort towards my posture has been one of the most empowering things I’ve done. It’s changed the way I think of myself, it’s changed the way I am. A lot of oppressive behaviors cause us to look down, rather than away. Looking down is the first step towards a decline in posture. Our thoughts follow our posture, and our behavior flows from our thoughts. Deep, I know.
Remember what we are for. Solutions.
For the water, for real human- and place-centered economies, for food, for wildlife, for aquifers, for a full range of human experience deep sorrow to rage to joy to freedom, for bodies, for gender, for skin, for health, for synergy, collaboration, cooperation.
Speaking of, where is the next online gathering place? When will it arrive?
Listen
Not only with our ears, our minds, our hearts, our eyes, our guts. Listen when its ugly, its angry, its painful, when it’s joyous, rapturous. All share a piece of the truth.
Listen.
We listen. To all. All have truth to tell us. We listen carefully to find it. With practice we improve. We understand more truths from which others operate.
Pray.
Prayer strengthens our relationship with the Creator, with the earth, with the people and things around us, it shifts our consciousness and realigns us. Anything we do, we can offer as a prayer, any act, any movement can be one of prayer.
Face the stories of our pasts.
I’m of settler heritage. Germans who came to live on the land, purchased land from the U.S. government, freshly drained wetlands on the eastern edge of the prairie. I don’t know the stories of what happened here. How so many were fit onto such small squares of land. I have learning, listening to do.
