My Grandmother’s Hands (book highlights)

In response, these landowners (and other powerful white people) came up with a divide-and-conquer strategy. […]

Whether we’re rich or poor, we’re all white, so there is no need for us to fight each other. Instead, we need to band together to fight the villains among us: Black Bodies.

p. 70

“In the late 1600s and early 1700s, these white and Black immigrants worked and lived together on plantations that were owned by powerful white male bodies…in several early worker revolts, Black and white people rose up together against plantation owners. These revolts posed serious threats to the power and supremacy of white landowners.

In response, these landowners (and other powerful white people) came up with a divide-and-conquer strategy. They gave white workers small parcels of land to work…”You’re just like us: you’re white and you have land to work.”…. At the same time, they forbade Blacks from owning land, and told them, “You’re Black, and you’re completely unlike us.”

“What had been white-on-white (or, usually, powerful-white-on-less-powerful white) trauma was transformed, in carefully calculated fashion, into white-on-Black trauma, which was then institutionally enforced… Political leaders in Virginia legislated whiteness… The first such law appears to have been enacted in 1691.”

“Over the years, all of this proved effective in shifting the power [tension] divide from landowners versus workers to white people versus Black people… It undermined poor white folks’ sense of identity and convinced them to fight against their own interests. It created a false settling in the bodies of many poor, white Americans. And it soothed some of the antipathy poor white people felt toward far more powerful and wealthy white landowners. To this day, many white Americans continue to live under the thumb of these delusions.” – Resnaa Menakem. My Grandmother’s Hands. Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. pp. 69-70

The deadliest manifestation of white fragility is its reflexive confusion of fear with danger and comfort with safety.

pp.99

“In some cases, when a white body simply experiences discomfort, its lizard brain may interpret this as a lack of safety and react with violence. Thus white fragility grants permission to white and police bodies to regularly kill Black ones – even unarmed, unresistant ones- in ostensible self-defense (“I feared for my life,” “I thought his wallet was a gun,” and so on).”

“What happens when a police officer’s body interprets the mere presence of a Black body – or the presence of a Black body and an object that could possible a gun – as a high-stress situation? … “By some accounts, Yanez was an exemplary patrolman who had graduated at the top of his class. Until he shot Castile, he had a spotless record…

Yanez, a trained police officer, was terrified of Castile, a calm, compliant young man whom he’d pulled over for a broken taillight. Castile was in a car with an equally compliant young woman and her small child. Castile, politely explained [His words were: “Sir, I have to tell you…] – presumably in an effort to attempt to settle Yanez’s nervous system – that he had a gun, which was legally registered in his name. Yanez then shot him dead.”

“Officer Yanez was charged with second-degree manslaughter.”

“Some questions to consider: if Castile had been white, would Yanez have shot him dead? And another: Can you recall an incident in which a police officer pulled over a white driver who was calm and compliant and had a child in the car- and then shot that driver dead because the officer `thought I was going to die’? And another question: if such a thing were to actually happen, do you think a jury would agree that the officer’s fear justified the killing of the white driver?”

“What if, some time before his encounter with Castile, Officer Yanez had addressed any racialized trauma that was stored and stuck in his body? Or, what if his employer had recognized the need to provide some healing infrastructure to help its officers address this ancient trauma? Might either one have prevented Castile’s death?”

“As we have seen, thinking that `I am going to die’ when encountering a Black body is baked into the bodies – and the lizard brains- of many Americans.”

“Robin DiAngelo describes this reaction well:

White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation... This insulated environment of racial privilege builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress.

These defensive moves include forms of fighting, fleeing, or freezing and, occasionally, verbally annihilating.”

On Joy

“Joy is not a luxury, it is not a privilege. It is a resilience-giving, life-giving birthright and we can’t call forth in the world something we don’t believe in and embody…and it is as powerful as anger.”
Krista Tippett
“If writing an article brings you closer to God, he said, `it is good sadhana (spiritual work), which is all there really is’.”
Sara Davidson

Dear Aurelia,

Welcome to our family. This beautiful day, I would like to share with you a creation story of our kind, humans, humanos, descendants of Manu.

This creation story came to us through the Hindu mythology. It is about Manu, the first human.

Manu, a great sage, was praying on the banks of the Ganges river, when one little fish came to him for protection. Manu put him in his hands and asked, “What do you want?”. “A bigger fish wants to eat me, please, save me”, said the fish. Manu, moved, carried the little fish to his home, put the fish into a little pot and fed the fish. In the morning, the fish had become as big as the pot and said, “I cannot live in this pot any longer”. Manu then carried the fish and put them in a tank. The next day the fish was too big for the tank, so Manu carried them to the river. The next morning, the fish filled the river, so, finally, Manu carried the fish to the ocean and let them free. As Manu was putting the fish in the ocean, the fish called Manu and said, “Manu, Manu, in a few months, a big flood will submerge the whole earth. You must build a big ship”. As the fish had predicted, the rain came. Manu started to build the boat and other people started to help him. They took seeds and food and called out to animals to take refuge in the boat.

Manu, the other women and men who also built the boat, plants and other animals got into the ship. The fish then said to throw them a rope. The fish took the end of the rope and pulled the ship through the water, through the nonstop rain. Eventually, as the rain started to decrease, the fish led the boat to a mountain top that was safe from the flood. Manu and the beings in the ship had survived.

This is how a new world and our kind was born. We are the children of Manu, who once decided to stop and care for no other reason than just because. That is the story of our kind, and what defines us being human.

I hope the kindness that touched Manu’s heart be with you all the way, in your heart and in the heart of the people in it.

On Silence and Words

“Deep listening is at the foundation of Right Speech [mature or wise speech]. If we cannot listen mindfully, we cannot practice Right Speech. No matter what we say, it will not be mindful, because we’ll be speaking only our own ideas not in response to the other person…When communication is cut off, we all suffer. When no one listens to us or understands us, we become like a bomb ready to explode… When we listen with our whole being, we can defuse a lot of bombs.”

In his book, The heart of the Buddha’s teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh reflects on the importance of choosing wisely our silence and words, “Right Speech”. Given the power that they have to destroy or to heal:

“For example, a family member may suffer very much. No one in the family has been able to sit quietly and listen to him or her. If there is someone capable of sitting calmly and listening with his or her hear for one hour, the other person will feel a great relief from his suffering.”

He develops on the qualities of silence that can bring healing:

“Kwan Yin, a person who has a great capacity of listening with compassion and true presence… Listening like that is not to judge, criticize, condemn, or evaluate, but to listen with the single purpose in mind to help the other person suffer less.”

“`I am listening to him not only because I want to know what is inside him or to give him advice. I am listening to him just because I want to relieve his suffering.’ That is compassionate listening…If you don’t feel that you can continue to listen in this way, ask your friend, `Dear one, can we continue in a few days?’…training oneself to listen with compassion. That is very important, a great gift.”

Then, reflecting on the words component of speech, Thich Nhat Hanh highlights the importance of using caring words when telling the truth and being aware of the context and person you are speaking to:

“Sometimes we speak clumsily and create internal knots in others. Then we say, `I was just telling the truth.’ It may be the truth, but if our way of speaking causes unnecessary suffering, it is not Right Speech… Words that damage or destroy are not Right Speech.”

“Before you speak, understand the person you are speaking to…so that your speech is `Right’ in both form and content… Of course you have suffered, but the other person has suffered also… When you begin to understand the suffering of the other person, compassion will arise in you, and the language you use will have the power of healing.”

His reflection, is a reminder that communication requires practice and attention, not only to our words, but also to our silence.

On Rejection

The Hymns of the Earth, Poem by St. Catherine of Siena

“I wanted to be a hermit and only hear the hymns
of the earth, and the laughter of the sky,

and the sweet gossip of the creatures on my limbs,
the forests.

I wanted to be a hermit and not see another face
Look upon mine and tell me I was not
all the beauty in this
world.

For so many faces do that –-
cage us.

The wings we have are so fragile
they can break from just
one word, or

a glance void
of love.

I wanted to live in that cloister of
light’s silence

because, is it not true, the heart
is so fragile and shy.”

Awakening the Soul de Michael Meade

Estoy leyendo a Michael Meade, su libro “Awakening the Soul. A deep response to a troubled world”. Una de las ideas que maneja que me gustaron mucho es la visión de que a lo largo de este viaje tenemos un compañer@ de viaje, un remanente de estrella. Este entendimiento que ha acompañado a personas a lo largo de la humanidad en la época actual comienza a extinguirse y ante esto escribe:

“Lacking a sense that there is a greater self or soul within”, the feelings of emptiness and void that come when the time has come to radically change the way we have been living in it can be easily confused and find one self feeling disoriented, unsettled and disconnected from the source of life.

“It is one thing to suffer anxiety and feel the pull of despair,” it is quite another thing to do so with “the felt sense that there is a knowing and sustaining presence inside oneself and that meaning and purpose are woven into the cells of our bodies as well as the depths of our souls.”

Each person must learn the language through which the unseen world speaks to them or else miss their star and become lost in the storm of the world and the confusions of life.

“The inner spark would light the way to a meaningful destiny in each life, yet it must find its fuel in the limits of the here and now and in the exact conflicts found in each psyche.”

On Love. Resonating Love.

On Love. Human Love.

“Love, amor, amor es diferente a atracción. Atracción es tu cuerpo indicándote resonancia con esa persona. Es tu cuerpo diciéndote compartimos una frecuencia, una vibración que resuena.”

Love, “amor”, what is love?

Is love physical attraction? 

Attraction is your body telling you this persona and you share a frequency, that your shared frequency or frequencies resonate. 

“In Physics the term `resonance’ refers to the natural tendency of many objects to vibrate more vigorously at some frequencies than at others. The frequencies at which this occurs are called the object’s `resonance frequencies’.

In acoustics great use has been made of a particular kind of resonance, called air resonance. This occurs when the air in a container is made to vibrate and produce a sound.”[1]

In case of human interaction, if two people talk to each other, what would their conversation be about? If their bodies share the same frequency, what would the air in the container produce sounds of? How would they vibrate?

If an angry person joins a conversation for example, would his/her frequency impact how the conversation evolves? Would the new frequency in the conversation lead to the other people to tune into his/her anger?

In the 1850’s Herman Helmholthz designed “Acoustic resonators”, vessels that “only respond to a specific frequency of sound, and would greatly amplify the sound when it was present. 

[…] 

Each resonator was carefully tuned to respond to only a single frequency. For the person using it, the resonance would occur quite suddenly, with an unmistakable amplification of a particular sound.”[1]

And, sound is vibration.

“A sound wave is created as a result of a vibrating object. The vibrating object is the source of the disturbance that moves through the medium…Any object that vibrates will create a sound. The sound could be musical or it could be noisy; but regardless of its quality, the sound wave is created by a vibrating object.

Nearly all objects, when hit or struck or plucked or strummed or somehow disturbed, will vibrate…If you pluck a guitar string, it will begin to vibrate…The frequency or frequency at which an object tends to vibrate with when hit, struck, plucked, strummed or somehow disturbed is known as the natural frequency of the object.”[2]

What affects our natural frequency?

“The speed at which waves move through the strings is dependent upon the properties of the medium.”[2]

For example, in the case of a guitar, the material a string is made of the density and tightness affect the speed of the wave and the length of the strings affect the wavelength when the guitar is strucked. Or, in the case of wind instruments, the speed of a sound waves can be altered by changes in room temperature.

In music, the “role of a musician is to control these variables in order to produce a given frequency from the instrument that is being played[…]to find instruments that possess the ability to vibrate with sets of frequencies that are musically sounding (i.e. mathematically related by simple whole number ratoios) and to vary the length and (if possible) properties to créate the desired sounds.” 

In life, we are both the instrument and the musician, we can choose where to be, with whom and what to engage with given our natural frequencies and based on these natural frequencies we may resonate or not with someone else. 

But, all of this, is attraction, physical attraction or resonance. Is this different than love? 

[1] “Resonance – Smithsonian” https://americanhistory.si.edu/science/resonance.htm 

[2] “Natural Frequency” Sound Waves and Music – Lesson 4 -Resonance and Standing Waves https://physicsclassroom.com/Class/sound/u11I4a.cfm