Dear Rev,
I want to feel hopeful but the violence of this time we live in – the fire and flood and wars and disease – just stops me sometimes. Hope feels fake.
Carol,
Salt Lake
Dear Carol,
Hope feels fake. Oh yeah. We all know what you mean, Carol. Leonard Peltier tells us that superstorms are messages from Mother Earth. If that’s true, then we can hope for some communication straight from the disasters. Which seems more sensible than trying to make sense of US politicians.
There is a reason that fantastic science fiction feels to millions of us like the last source of common sense. Some part of us in a way that we can’t explain – is cheering on the Earth, no matter how tragic today’s story might be. We know that a beautiful autumn day is a message just as clear in its meaning as an ocean storm that you can see from the planet Pluto.
When I was writing “just as clear in its meaning” in that last sentence, I almost wrote “just as clear in its mystery”. Carol, how do we feel hopeful from 200 mph wind? We don’t understand what is happening, but we trust the Earth and her necessary evolution. We know love when we see it, and the Earth loves us.
Hold that mysterious loving hope close to your heart. Don’t scold yourself for being confused by what’s happening. The land and the sea beyond the horizon are right here in our hope. We can touch far away life. It touches us. Call it “intimate distance” instead of “natural disaster.” Call it “The Sixth Evolution” not the “Sixth Extinction.”
This is a time of re-dreaming and re-naming. Imagine the life that seems impossible, and name it with the help of that hope you’ve been growing…
Earthalujah!
Rev Billy
Dear Rev,
I’m bored, Rev – adrift on my computer. News? COMPLETELY repetitious. Corruption in high places? well – surprise surprise. So I try to call friends but even the ones I could count on for a good laugh are becoming like most comedians – you can hear the punchline a mile away. BORED! My life is slipping by!
Don’t bore me with your answer, Rev Billy. Yuck! Yuck!
Sonora
Dear Sonora,
The crisis of society is confusing. The new entertainment is the flames of war and the AI billionaires…. Hollywood or actual leadership or the endless cycles of play-off games – those old warhorses seem very predictable now.
Personally, I find that a walk in the woods, even in a local park, is more fascinating than anything in the media. In fact, after solitude in nature, people seem more fascinating when I return to them. Falling in love, playing with children, getting lost in music. I’m reciting the mysterious things now. Having experience without shopping for it.
You know what’s really not boring, is helping the people who are suffering. If you sign up to serve soup at a shelter. Spend time with a stranger who is suffering. Sometimes all a stranger wants is someone to listen for a while.
Love,
Billy
IDEALISM MEETS ACTION
Hey Reverend Billy,
I just got home from a big May Day protest. I found it inspiring to be with so many like-minded people who were not afraid to dream of a more just and free world. Am I corny or crazy for still being inspired by protests like my other roommates who roll their eyes when I head out for another demonstration?
Not afraid to be idealistic!
Jack
Dear Jack,
Jack – You’re wrong. Idealistic marching – It’s the place where 90% of us stop moving. Afterwards, we return to our apartment with a good memory. Idealism for left-leaners in the USA in 2026 is definitely something to fear, Jack. BE AFRAID TO BE IDEALISTIC! Jack, you act like you fear your room-mates and not the idealism. Turn that around. Be impatient with idealism. Notice when it becomes a repetitive sentimental habit. Your room-mates are wise-ass cynics? Some of the most effective activists are wise-ass cynics….
I march in NO KINGS, and sing with the Stop Shopping Choir. Then again – some of us are old enough to remember February 15, 2003, when we marched for Peace in 700 cities. George W. Bush called all those millions of people “a focus group with its own opinion but I disagree with it.” Millions of us were left standing there in the streets with our idealism. Bush didn’t like our brand and began the slaughter of Shock and Awe in Baghdad on March 19, a month later. Could we have done something else in those 700 cities?
The idea in our idealism is change, equality and Peace. We need to say goodbye to the idealism and start the change fairly quickly or the idea takes over like that four letter word “hope”. Jack, change is strange, idealism is traditional. You might have some good strange change waiting for you beneath the braggadocio gestures of your room-mates. If you turned and took your roomies on, turned and stopped their rolling eyes and had a particular no-bullshit kind of conversation with them… When their eyes stop rolling they will see the emergency and opportunity that we’re in. Give your roomies some last-minute clarity and WATCHOUT!
Billy
Dear Reverend Billy,
I marched against the Iraq War when I was in high school. Now, the US and Israel are attacking Iran. How do I explain to my daughter why this war is happening and why our government can’t use the money it spends on blowing people up and use it for something good?
Helen
Dear Helen,
We’re all in a state of shock. It’s a nightmare with a laughtrack. And not knowing what to say to your child is a horror show. But Helen… our opportunity, our opening – is the kids.
You can’t hide from a child the truth. They sense the falsehood. If you can open up your helplessness, let your confusion come out – that makes more sense than some strategic explanation. Shine the light of your daughter’s common sense on your own fear. Help the child help you.
There is a revolution about to happen. These government and corporate people are the cheapest kind of simulated machismo. The revolution that will overwhelm them needs a child-like simplicity at its core.
The children can ask the simplest question, the question that the White House shields itself against. Trump can easily dispense with intellectuals, poseurs, “experts” — but children are like climate change to Trump. He wants to call them all a hoax.
The child’s strenuous demand of “Why?” gives us the power to march and shout and keep walking forward. Helen, you marched in high school. You were a child then. Time to do it again, with your daughter walking and shouting with you. That’s a form of Peace!
Peace-a-lujah!
Billy
Dear Rev,
Is it official? The United States is a lost cause?
I won’t ever be what we dreamed it could be.
Donald in Newark
Dear Donald
Lots of folks around my neighborhood in New York City are asking that very question, but then we need to add a second question right away: “How would that work. Can we stay here and leave here at the same time.” How would this work in practical terms.
The Pentagon, and its allies in violence Wall Street and Silicon Valley – have made their own country that disowns many of us. But a revolution that could bring peace and democracy is not easy to envision. These people have the weapons (Pentagon), the psychological control (the virtuality and screens of Silicon Valley) and the money (Wall Street and the big banks.). But there are openings, there are solutions.
We run our lives around cities, states and the nation – all of which are corrupted or starved of tax funds by the three power blocs. If we Let’s end those relationship and go over to neighborhoods, eco-systems and bio-regions. Instead of Akron, Ohio, and the US, you would have the people on your street and on your block, the immediate love of people, then all kinds of life in the ecology (no toxins, and that means gas-driven cars) and instead of the USA would have the continent without borders but instead lots of trust of strangers.
The systems now in place, which take money upward to the billionaires, poisons and wars – would put up a fight. But we’ve already started to accomplish this, just by imagining it. It starts with loving the person right in front of you, family and neighbors. Deepen those ties radically. Share food, clothing, and constantly offer to help. Get away from banks and chain stores.
Now I’m from the Church of Stop Shopping. We believe that Consumerism, the enforcement culture of Capitalism, can be boycotted. Let’s turn out backs on the flood of products, advertising and credit card debt. There’s a reason corporations never speak up about Gaza and ICE and Iran as Trump kills innocent people. The corporations have no morals. They are all climate science deniers. The put toxin chemicals in their products. Corporations cannot love.
We can. We do. Love is the radical answer to all this violence. Loving the Earth can come right into our neighborhood relationships. Plant that tree and love that tree and share that love of that tree with the people next door. This would change the world.
Love Earth!
Billy
Dear Rev,
I feel like the violence of Donald Trump is a war against my everyday life. What happened to single-use plastic, not eating meat, helping neighbors get their medicine, tending to my garden? All those good little habits don’t keep helicopters away from defenseless families.
Marsha
New Orleans
Dear Marsha
Our small acts of kindness are what Trump cannot pepper gas and throw to the ground. Ultimately, we will gather our gentleness in millions of us. A peaceful revolution will disarm and forgive and rehabilitate these sad ICE men who crossed over to violent fear. I know that sounds over-hopeful. This is our dark hour.
But remember we’ve been here before. The gentle world is what we sensed existed in the lives of Renee Good, and George Floyd, and Marsha P. Johnson and John Lennon and Victor Jara — The joy of their lives which attracted the killers… Well, we thought we founded new traditions and laws to protect against violence. We must do more.
Marsha, everyday kindness is what the killers have lost. Gentle personal living needs to have a great rising up into public life, into gentleness-at-scale. Love needs a big sound system. Acting on the wisdom of Nina Simone and Joan Baez – the small acts of Peace must sometimes have their super storms. We need strong winds and high waves of Peace…. to preserve that gentleness. I believe that we will learn how to do it.
Love-a-lujah!
Billy
Rev,
How do you negotiate with a nightmare? Every time I see a screen I’m supposed to gaze at cruelty to helpless people, maybe they are neighbors, maybe I know them, the food and medicine is taken from them and then the President wants us to watch their faces…
Sandy
Columbia, Missouri
Dear Sandy,
I know. I know. We all agree with you. Open cruelty is supposed to be like entertainment. Sandy a lot of us are watching and we’re stunned and passive. Its rape, forced hunger, bombed fishing boats, and its violence against the life of the Earth too, same thing, toxins, killing of all life, disgorging waste on life.
I feel sometimes like they are daring us to be good. Great American is not a good American. Sandy we need to keep kindness alive in small things we do. Be honest with someone who showed some gentleness and look them in the eye and say “Thank you, you have been good to me.” Even if it feels awkward. See a kind act, even a very small courtesy, and keep that little light shining.
Earthalujah!
Billy
Dear Rev,
I live in Denver. I saw your show before Neil and Chrome Hearts. I’ve got a question. You say that the Earth’s gift of Love and erotic attraction, planted in our bodies, is how we make change. So you suggest that the Earth gave us Love to fight the oil companies? What do you mean ‘gift’? Is this a holiday gift under the tree?
Ruby.
Dear Ruby
I remember that wonderful night at Fiddler’s Green. Listen Ruby, we need a lot of things to fight Big Oil’s CO2 and Methane toxins. We need, first of all – the power of dreaming. We have to picture blocking these huge corporations and this fossil-fueled way of life (much worse in the shopping season) and dream of another kind of life.
They have fed us oil and plastics and chemicals for so long, that it isn’t so easy to dream of life after oil. But we have to dream it and then believe in the dream with complete conviction. We keep that dream hot by Loving the Earth, and loving each other, because you know – we are made of the stuff of the Earth. And here at the holidays, our most loving gifts are beyond oil.
You follow me? We’ve tried saving the Earth with abstract ideas of correctness. Not enough juice in that approach. It’s more like, the Earth Loves us and we are Loving the Earth back and now we have the power and courage to march into that fossil bank and talk (or better yet – sing!) the customers at the teller window out of depositing their money there. You can do that if you know the Earth is Loving you for it and you are Loving the Earth back, inviting that consumer in that line to Love the Earth with you.
There, now we’re dreaming it, we’re picturing our activism. The American people are gonna take back their money and stop investing in those poisons! A Christmas gift for the Earth! Feel the Love?
Earthalujah!
Rev Billy
Dear Billy,
The level of elation around the world from Zohran Mamdani’s win is like – fascinating. Gaza teenagers are dressing up like him and going around shaking hands and kissing babies, pretending they are politicians. What’s going on?
Abe, in Brooklyn
Dear Abe,
This is a good question leading up to Buy Nothing Day. Abe – we have been hypnotized for decades now. Products come down on us in clouds of pixels, glossy mailings, algorithmic surveillance…. A study found that a New Yorker with a computer is hit by 10,000 advertisements every 24 hours.
So how did Zohran win? Basically, a hundred thousand people knocked on two million doors. Corporate media was completely out-witted, or ignored. The most sophisticated communications of all – direct talking and listening – raged across the city right under the billionaires’ noses. They bought last-minute saturation attack ads, Bloomberg gave Cuomo $10mil – but nothing is as powerful as looking into another person’s eyes and talking about the cost of food and rent.
This is a way that we can resist fascism but not go the way of traditional money-dazzled Democrats. This is how we can save neighborhoods, and fend off the ‘monoculture’ of chain stores and luxury towers. We won’t watch our homes get swept into Wall Street markets.
The power of face-to-face humanity. Wow! Abe! THIS is the WAY OUT of their TRAP!!! Stop Shopping! Earthalujah!
Rev Billy
Dear Rev Billy,
You working the sidewalks on Buy Nothing Day this year? All these millions in the street in the No Kings march, what if they all stopped shopping?
Did you have that thought? I wonder what percentage of those crowds would change how they live?
Earthaluhjah!
Balthazar, in San Francisco
Dear Balthazar,
Yes, the Stop Shopping singers voted to invade bad store and sing, just last night. We’ll hit Buy Nothing Day this year. And the Saturday marches are part of this decision, encouraging us. This week we’re gonna let our imaginations go, sketch out activist ideas. We’ll sing and preach in Chase Bank this week, hand out information on their fossil fuel investments to the workers and customers (and security and the janitor.). JPMorgan Chase is a retail bank, so you can walk in there. We’ve been doing that since 2007. We have more Chases in New York than Dunkin’ Donuts. Another target would be Amazon, that’s an obvious one. Neil on the front page that he’s pulling his music out of Bezos’ company. A third one would be Boeing – with how they made money cutting corners for Wall Street and then sending us up 35,000 feet in their dangerous airplanes, and of course burning climate-killing jet fuel too… Start with those three…
You are so right Balthazar. If 7 million people changed their buying habits, the corporations would respect their customers. And better yet – some big Earth-hating institutions might go out of business. And we all feel like there can be change, and the marches do make a difference. We feel lighter. Sunnier. Well, we’ll see. We will see. Maybe some of those people in the animal costumes were National Guard. Earthalujah!
Rev Billy
Have a question for the Rev? Contact us at Revbilly@revbilly.com.
Dear Rev,
The heat wave is relentless. It feels like traditional environmentalism is in ruins as the EPA is dismantled. My green activist friends seem numbed by it all. Is there a direction to go in for the Earth?
Penny, in New Jersey
Dear Penny
Over here in the Church of Stop Shopping we’re finding opportunity in all the tragedy. We feel the rise of a new kind of emotion, where mother earth and father earth are real, and our being with and talking to nature is real. We feel the need of a kind of DIY mysticism. Talk to the Trees, Neil’s tour album, couldn’t be better timed.
Walk out of the cities and find the natural world and listen to it, be with a patch of ravine trees, or an old park, or walk along the edge of a salt marsh by the ocean. Find the Earth and hear messages in the notes that are being played by the wind as it comes through the trees, long grasses, pollinator plants in the ditches….
The Earth is evolving with force, with more death of life forms and more life inventing itself, too. The Sixth Extinction is underway, but its misnamed. It’s the Six Evolution, a deep, fast radical change. We need to walk right into it and join up. Wise ones like Leonard Peltier and Debra White Plume, they tell us that the Earth offers us a way to partner with her in this struggle. Love is our strongest emotion, and when we are in love we are willing to brave things, crazy things…. Love is how basic change begins. The Earth is waiting for humans to join us. This is the Earth’s revolution.
Does that help, Penny?
Earthalujah!
Rev Billy
Dear Rev,
Why don’t we have the Earth’s tragedy in the news about the war. I read that the US military is the top polluter. Every picture of rubble and desperate families in Gaza probably once had trees and meadows…
Thank you,
Irene
Dearest Irene
Don’t say that the Pentagon is the dirtiest corporation. Don’t stop there. Don’t dodge the question just because the answer seems very strange. The Pentagon is the most powerful cause of superstorms, fires and floods. Don’t try to make the Earth separate from War, as if the Earth will stand by, holding back its life, waiting for the adolescent nation states to sort things out. The Pentagon pretends that the Earth isn’t there. But life is the presence of the Earth and the Earth offers us so much love and breath, well, we know that there will be life beyond all this violence.
I believe that when you shoot children then you assure the destruction by climate change, worldwide toxicity and mass extinction. It is time to radically change. It is time for new human life to return to the natural world. People must bring the force of flourishing life to the very hottest center of the battlefield. The terrorizing of the children and torturing of the mothers will only make the sea rise, the glaciers melt, and extinction make its silence. But the Earth’s life – all of us – are there inside any war. We are in the war because we are the Earth. If we love the Earth we turn back the bombs.
Peace-a-lujah!
Rev Billy
Dear Rev
The name of Neil’s tour is “Love Earth”. The name of his new album is “Talkin’ to the Trees.” Well, they are jailing us and shooting us. Fathers are being pulled out of their homes, and babies taken from mothers… Love is stopping that?
Randall, in Texas
Well Randall, here’s a good headline: LOVING EARTH STOPS EXECUTIVE ORDERS.
While he imitates kings and killers going back in time, the future that will overwhelm this gang of thieves is made of our love of the Earth and each other.
We will turn around this fear of life, this traumatized “greatness”, by the things that are given to us by the Earth. Like an unbelievable love affair, the Earth will bring us powerful gifts that we can’t imagine: we will see through walls and take bombs from the sky.
We will welcome the wisdom of the stranger and the rise of animals and plants and rivers to legal status. There is a reason that the Hidden Life of Trees is an international bestseller; that the science fiction of Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin are so popular; that people give birth, pray to the Spirit, walk 5,000 miles braving armed gun-men at every border.
The Earth is coming with its deep, rapid evolution. Some call it the Mass Extinction because they are afraid. But we are fantastic, Randall. We are changing how we live and love – as the Big Change rises to meet us.
Dear Rev,
The fires and floods are multiplying around the globe. I see that, but I know about it because I look for it. Seems like there’s more climate chaos than ever, but it’s harder to find. Some big trillionaire somewhere is adjusting the volume control, pushing the disasters away. Or am I just paranoid?
Ashley,
Cartersville, Georgia
Dear Ashley,
We do the censoring of the Earth’s message ourselves. We don’t need Musk to do it. We say that the super storms are “over there” in the Carolinas or Mexico or the Philippines or Bangladesh or East Africa or Brazil…. So we cut off the storm from us. we say the drowning people trapped in homes and under debris – we say that this human tragedy is the storm’s total story. We say that we are not in that storm. We’re on higher ground, up in the temperate zones… That separation of victims from civilized survivors comes from what idea of Heaven and Hell, the good and the bad, the rich and the poor. Where did that idea come from? We are all drowning, Ashley. We are all in the fires and floods and heatwaves. This is the lesson of the Earth’s revolution. We are all here in this place together. We are standing inside one storm. We are a crucial cause of it. We are part of the storm. We are the storm!
Earthalujah!
Billy
Post-script: I was walking around outside, on a beautiful day here in Brooklyn, and I – let me add something Ashley. We have to keep our love of the Earth steady. The violent wind and floods and fire – that’s not a betrayal by the Earth. It’s not punishment. The Earth is doing what needs to be done to keep Life living, that is her job. The last two years have been the first step in the Sixth Extinction, with skyrocketing temperatures that scientists can’t explain. A deep, rapid evolution has begun, but this is the Earth doing what she must do for life to go on, and the miracle that the survivors share is Love. We Americans aren’t very good at giving our Love to something that is more powerful than we are. But Love is the maker of Life! Love the Earth!
Dear Rev,
I want good role models for my kids, but I’m not coming up with too many. Who do we look up to in today’s world?
Allen, from Iowa
Dear Allen and your children,
Heroes are not useful right now. A successful life for someone who is a child in 2025 needs role models that we can’t imagine – because the Earth is sweeping us all into radical change.
The heroes of tomorrow are powerless and penniless – and that might be the hero’s journey. Original self-invented people, like members of old tribes that were always scary to “modern man”. Allen your role model may be among the native people, unknown but able to show how to live with the heatwaves created by our power-mongering. Your best role model will be a survivor!
That penniless stranger at the border is the role model for your young one, Allen. The Sixth Extinction is ignored by big institutions, but it is unleashing a cataclysm like we have never experienced. 100 million people are now walking the long road and tossing in the seas in leaky boats because they cannot farm or they are being shot by strongman governments who are controlled by US industries from their oil and minerals. Your role model has been walking and walking, dreaming and dreaming.
We have to start over, go back to the beginning, to find our “best angels” – as Abraham Lincoln put it. And how do we do that? In the beginning there was love, and dreams, and wonder. We start by being free of these man-made transactional forces – not easy to do – but let’s go to Earth. The Earth would be a good teacher for your child, Allen.
The Earth is infinitely complex, magical, always making more life. She will lead us into the great unknown. The Earth is telling us with its so-called disasters – and with its gentle flowers too – be completely your own radical natural self. Evolve! Be the Earth! Let your radical nature come forth! Earthalujah!
And as Kurt Vonnegut used to say, “Damnit! You gotta be kind!”
Stop Shopping!
Billy
————————
Dear Rev
There is a feeling that none of this is real. Is Trump really President? Can Musk fire thousands? Will ICE come into sanctuary cities and do peace activist sweeps? I just don’t believe it.
Donna
Dear Donna,
What IS happening? I think we all share the unreality-creep you are describing, Donna. If we get tough with the fascists and confront them with a functioning justice system, well – what will we return to? We will then believe that we know what happened – liberal democracy was overtaken temporarily by a strongman gangster. That would be a lie. To come up with the truth about what IS happening now, we must unravel this terrifying riddle: What kind of life have we been living?
If we beat the fascists, what will we return to? Before Trump descended on his gold-plated escalator, we lived in saturation advertising that sold an economy based on toxic waste. We lived in sentimental patriotism with eagles and drums that covered up a militarized empire. We lived in a deadly mix of fundamentalist belief systems that pretended to have invented God.
We have living in a cyclotron of lies, yes, but more than that, we were at several removes from actual experience. Our popular products were portable entertainments. We are so weightless, so many of us hypnotized so much of the time, it’s surprising that Trump didn’t happen sooner, or did he? We thought he was a special effects-concocted super villain; that he would just go away when the popcorn ran out.
The ultimate product of a consumer society is to deny that the system itself is a product. We would never admit that our Presidents have been products and that our political parties are retail giants like WalMart and Amazon. We didn’t think that our thoughts and dreams and even our love – were actually targeted profit centers.
In that system that we must never return to – Life itself is a targeted profit center. The planet Earth is a profit center, good for extraction, real estate and recreation. The record-breaking heat of the last 30 months seems to be a statement from the Earth that we will not be allowed to return from fascism to the old lies. When the Earth ceases to support our life, will that also be unreal to us?
Stop Shopping!
Billy
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Dear Earthchxrchers,
I can’t remember a time when healing the planet was this hopeless. Does the Love Earth family see a way forward?
Erika
Dear Erika,
This is the question we’re all asking. Where from here? But deep in the blues are the roots of basic change, I’m convinced.We have an idea here in New York. This is the home of the Doomsday Bank, JPMorgan Chase, which, as Bill Mckibben says, is in a league of its own when it
comes to lending money for climate change-causing gas and oil projects. Chase’s toxic investments are almost 30% higher than any other bank. This company, led by the John Wayne of fossil fuels, Jamie Dimon, loaned $196 billion in the 3 years following the Paris Climate Agreement, and dozens of banks defied their nation’s pledges, following Chase’s lead, until $6.9 trillion was poured into Oil, killing Paris and accelerating today’s fires and floods.
Chase summarizes the contradiction of the present US economy. It tries to kill us with CO2 and Methane-poisoned air, but then it turns around and expects us to be its customers. More
than half of USA citizens are involved in one way or another with Chase. So it’s the old “Kill You Love Me” syndrone. There are 250 Chase banks in the NY area, rivaling the Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donut franchises. The main banks in Manhattan have faced many protests over recent years, but many more New Yorkers, we believe, are ready to confront Chase, both at their banks sites and with a bodycott, by pulling personal funds from the bank. Chase fears this, which is why it is splurging on saturation advertising, spending $4.6 billions for marketing last year.
But we are not pushovers anymore. It starts by resisting Trump and Musk When Hurricane Helene pours down a years worth of rain in a single day, and when Los Angeles burns to the ground, and New Orleans gets 5 foot snow drifts – we are reaching the critical mass point. So many of us have suffered from climate tragedies, or know personally someone who has lost everything, lost life itself. It is time. The people are roused from their sleep. We will protest Chase Banks like never before and resist with more direct impact. We won’t let Big Oil kill us. There’s big change in this bad weather!
Earthalujah!
Rev
Have a question for the Rev? Contact us at Revbilly@revbilly.com.
Dear Billy,
I can’t believe Trump is president again. Is he the living Evil? He seems to want to hurt people. I read that millions of South Africans are without their HIV medicine. They are locked out of their clinics. How would someone want that to happen?
Maya
Dear Maya
Many of us share your disbelief, Maya. Part of his evil is that it stuns us into standing still. He freezes us. Our perspective is stuck, we just can’t believe it. When we are unable to move and groove, then we are a sitting duck for his lying ass. Here’s one lie. He wants us to believe that he is one man with one idea. Actually, if we tear our eyes off of him and start whirling around and go back into the world…. we quickly see that there are a thousand Donald Trumps. And you know what? We have got a job to do here, for each other,, to help and to heal. We have to live in a neighborhood that refuses to die and comes back to life!
Maybe someday we will give and give until we live in a nation of neighborhoods that refuse to die. Right now, we don’t have to guess at the big vision. Samuel R. Delany says that if you walk by the same person three times on the third time stop and offer your name. The morning after Trump’s election a very tired looking AOC urged us to go back to our neighborhood, our family, our loved ones, our pod – and be sure those intimate relationships are strong. Right now, we are mesmerized by this one man – but to get back to our own good work we have to be in motion, in fact we need to dance and laugh and when we do this with abandon we suddenly see that we are not alone, our loves are laughing in motion too. How would our perspective shift if we looked away from him and took in the world with new eyes, the new eyes that come from looking out at the world with our loved ones looking with us? Then we see beyond this one damaged soul and we notice that the air itself is harmed. The environment of our culture is going insane, in scary unity with the environment of the Earth.
The space between the murderers is the air that we are forced to breathe, and it is the space where we learn to believe. There are a thousand Donald Trumps but we must help each other continue our breathing and singing and stay in motion. We need to stay in action together in this public poisoned landscape that is now breaking into fire and flood – we need to stay as active as the Earth is active. And we have the Earth and its current sometimes violent dance as our teacher. And we emerge from the rubble of the latest disaster with our radical giving. The Earth is creating gift economies with Helene and the LA fires. Our disregard for the lives of others produced the hate of Trump. But we don’t have to continue with this distancing. It’s back to the love that started it all. Can I help you? Do you have bandages? I have an extra blanket…
The air we breathe can have our attention as we move through it and pledge that we will be radical enough to protect the air, to keep it breathable. Maya, did you follow that? I’m trying to look away from the Evil and see another way to go. I wish the best for you. We all have such work to do. Maya your name, it says here, comes from the Sanskrit and it means “illusion” and “magic”. We have to look away together and start anew together. At first it will seem like dreaming, but if we do it together it will become dancing. Earthalujah!
Billy
Dear Billy,
I can’t believe Trump is president again. Is he the living Evil? He seems to want to hurt people. I read that millions of South Africans are without their HIV medicine. They are locked out of their clinics. How would someone want that to happen?
Maya
Dear Maya
Many of us share your disbelief, Maya. Part of his evil is that it stuns us into standing still. He freezes us. Our perspective is stuck, we just can’t believe it. When we are unable to move and groove, then we are a sitting duck for his lying ass. Here’s one lie. He wants us to believe that he is one man with one idea. Actually, if we tear our eyes off of him and start whirling around and go back into the world…. we quickly see that there are a thousand Donald Trumps. And you know what? We have got a job to do here, for each other,, to help and to heal. We have to live in a neighborhood that refuses to die and comes back to life!
Maybe someday we will give and give until we live in a nation of neighborhoods that refuse to die. Right now, we don’t have to guess at the big vision. Samuel R. Delany says that if you walk by the same person three times on the third time stop and offer your name. The morning after Trump’s election a very tired looking AOC urged us to go back to our neighborhood, our family, our loved ones, our pod – and be sure those intimate relationships are strong. Right now, we are mesmerized by this one man – but to get back to our own good work we have to be in motion, in fact we need to dance and laugh and when we do this with abandon we suddenly see that we are not alone, our loves are laughing in motion too. How would our perspective shift if we looked away from him and took in the world with new eyes, the new eyes that come from looking out at the world with our loved ones looking with us? Then we see beyond this one damaged soul and we notice that the air itself is harmed. The environment of our culture is going insane, in scary unity with the environment of the Earth.
The space between the murderers is the air that we are forced to breathe, and it is the space where we learn to believe. There are a thousand Donald Trumps but we must help each other continue our breathing and singing and stay in motion. We need to stay in action together in this public poisoned landscape that is now breaking into fire and flood – we need to stay as active as the Earth is active. And we have the Earth and its current sometimes violent dance as our teacher. And we emerge from the rubble of the latest disaster with our radical giving. The Earth is creating gift economies with Helene and the LA fires. Our disregard for the lives of others produced the hate of Trump. But we don’t have to continue with this distancing. It’s back to the love that started it all. Can I help you? Do you have bandages? I have an extra blanket…
The air we breathe can have our attention as we move through it and pledge that we will be radical enough to protect the air, to keep it breathable. Maya, did you follow that? I’m trying to look away from the Evil and see another way to go. I wish the best for you. We all have such work to do. Maya your name, it says here, comes from the Sanskrit and it means “illusion” and “magic”. We have to look away together and start anew together. At first it will seem like dreaming, but if we do it together it will become dancing. Earthalujah!
Billy
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