Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website only and is in no way meant to replace experience with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.
It is often challenging to practice stewardship at a time of year when everyone seems mad to eat from a sense of duty and tradition rather than gratitude and hunger and to buy goods to “fuel our economy” in its quest for limitless growth rather than out of personal need. And yet we know in our wisest, most conscious moments that our habits of excessive consumption are killing our planet, shortening our individual lifespans, and alienating us from our brothers and sisters all over the world. Here in the west, perhaps unwittingly, we have become insular and parochial rather than thankful world citizens. We have made having more of everything the greatest good and in the process chained our souls to a brutal and unforgiving way of life. We witness the signs of dire poverty on every street corner of every town, city, and village. We witness racism at work in our educational, political, and judicial systems. We complain about our leaders, but show no leadership ourselves. We go along with things as they are because to do otherwise requires an effort we cannot imagine making. Change, however, is always possible. At this time of year, as the seasons change, as our fuel bills change, as our wardrobes change, as our relationships with our modes of transit change, the energies of change – of fundamental transformation – batter at the doors of our yearning hearts.
Ferguson, Missouri, calls our attention to the great divide between ordinary citizens of all races, sexes, and religions whose belief in equality, in democracy, prompts them to stand against the militarized actions of those who are charged with serving and protecting all citizens. Let us be thankful for citizen restraint in the face of excessively armed opposition; let us be thankful for memories of the fifties and sixties of the last century when young children led our nation into the horrifying reality of racial inequality and hatred.
Spike Lee’s Four Little Girls speaks to current racially charged situations with a tenderness that belies the violent deaths of its four young heroines. Michael Brown and all the young African American boys and men who are currently being profiled as dangerous are in the room with us when we view this documentary. Our hearts are grown by Spike Lee’s story telling as he softly creates space for the parents, siblings, and friends of Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, and Carol Robertson to tell a little of the tragedy of racially fueled hatred. As we watch, we cannot help our weeping because their stories are pregnant with the ordinariness of a Sunday morning spent with family and friends. Ordinariness, no matter our race, is our common currency. Simple pleasures – a pretty dress, shined shoes, combed hair, and the promise of good times with good friends – prompt our tears. These girls are children heading to church to sing, praise God, and socialize in a safe place they have probably been visiting most of their lives.
Michael Brown, an eighteen year old lad, was heading off to college in the fall. For most of us, this is a terrifying prospect. We all ask, “Will I be successful? Will I know how to behave? Will I be able to handle myself well?” As adolescents, we find these questions terrifying. As adolescents, we are tormented by potential embarrassment at every turn. Our bodies are becoming more demanding of our attention, and our peers are becoming more important than the most revered parent or mentor. It is a dangerous time, adolescence, because we are so vulnerable in every situation. Quite literally, there is no place where we are at home. Neither children nor men and women, we stand on shifting sands and do our best to strike and hold a pose. We talk tough to impress our friends and disguise our fear; we talk dirty to fake experience, the currency of belonging. We are lost and at sea while appearing to be stable on dry land. And when a large white man carrying a gun tells us off, we have enough of the Jesse James lore in our hearts and minds to behave stupidly. But stupid is merely stupid. It is not the forever of a bullet, or six bullets, or fifteen. We may get over being stupid. We cannot get over being dead.
The current state of the world requires we all become leaders. The current state of the world requires we stand with stupid and against killing. The current state of the world requires we put down our forks and pocket our credit cards and move into our communities to stand with the vulnerable of every colour, age, religion, and sexual expression. The current state of the world requires we summon our courage to defend our children against recruitment into a growing police state that will, if it remains unchecked, kill us all.
We have in tapping an amazingly transformational tool. Let us use it to equip ourselves to undertake brave deeds. Let us use it to stand with the marginalized, to summon courage and perseverance, wisdom and kindness to make a positive difference in the world. Let us use it to transform our communities into wellsprings of decency where thankfulness is a daily, an hourly practice that includes all people and our magnificent earth home.
Until next week
Jane
Jane Buchan, MA, AAMET Advanced Practitioner, jane@winterblooms.net, 802-533-9277