This morning I received this essay from Judi Cohen, a meditation and mindfulness teacher whose focus is training attorneys and judicial system workers through her organization, Warrior One. It speaks to the special circumstances surrounding this Thanksgiving and so, with her permission, I offer it to you.
I'm approaching Thanksgiving with mixed feelings.
I'm grateful for my warm home, loving family, good health and work. And for the fact that, in my small corner of the world, we feel mostly safe.
I'm incredibly sad about the lives lost in France, Lebanon, Syria, Russia, Israel, Palestine, so much of Africa, and the U.S., to violence, terrorism, and racism; and for young people whose lives are filled with hopelessness, and who reach for racist, nationalist, and religious fanaticism as an anchor, or cure.
I'm grateful for my meditation practice, which reminds me to work for peace, no matter the odds or the news.
I also feel humble. Although I am warm, safe, and loved, I'm there but for fortune, as the song goes. I could have been born into challenging circumstances instead of to privilege, and my life would have been far different. Although this is unsettling, it's probably also true for much of the Warrior One community.
And so, I feel compassion -- for the victims of war, terror and racism, but also the perpetrators. My best guess is that those who inflict violence and terror are unable to see how interconnected we are. And did not grow up surrounded by privilege and love.
In the old joke from Fiddler on the Roof, the Jewish townspeople say there's a blessing for everything, and ask what the blessing is for the Czar. The Rabbi says, "May God bless and keep the Czar... far away from us!"
It's funny. But it's pretty much how we feel.
I am here. I am safe. They are there. They are not.
So I also feel fear. What happens to us if we see victims or perpetrators as "other," and try to keep them far away from us? My grandparents snuck across the Canadian border at the end of the 19th century because they couldn't get into the U.S. any other way: no one wanted more Jews in the country then. If we close off our borders and close off our hearts, aren't we closing off part of ourselves?
Thich Nhat Hanh's 1978 poem, "Please Call Me By My True Names," says this much more elegantly than I ever could. Writing about his fellow Vietnamese as they fled their war-torn country, Thay said,
"I am the twelve year old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pilot. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving....Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open...."
I'm grateful to Thay for his poem, and its reminder of interconnection - what Thay calls "inter-being." I know I have a tendency to separate immigrants from refugees, victims from suicide bombers, African American men from the police who shoot them, and myself from them all. And yet I am the girl and the pirate. The Jew and the Palestinian. The American and part of a global community that perpetuates more suffering than I can comprehend. Those are my true names.
And so I am grateful for my meditation practice (again), because it helps me to remember, as often as possible, that the only real choice is to live as courageously and connectedly as possible, and to love and be grateful for each joyful, disastrous moment.
May you have a beautiful, connected, holiday. May gratitude fill your world. May you appreciate the inter-being in your own life. And may you be safe and surrounded by love.