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On Interdependence Day, Be the Peace You Want to See in the World

Today is Independence Day in the US, a holiday that seems quite grim this year, as the American democratic experiment has never seemed weaker or more fragile. 

For many years, I have preferred to celebrate this day as “Interdependence Day,” a day to recognize that the boundaries that might seem to divide us are artificial—in fact, each of us is interwoven with all life on Earth. 

Just as air, water, earth and fire know no boundaries, there is no real separation among any of the components of our beautiful Gaian home.

That may be true at the level of physics and metaphysics, but in between these fundamental realities there is a zone of choice: we choose to group ourselves into communities of like-minded spirits, to dwell amongst people and in places that nourish our growth and flourishing. 

The challenge comes when the ideologies of these groups clash. I support people’s right to self-organize as they see fit, but not to impose their ideas and worldviews on others—not to do harm to other people or any member the Earth community.

These days, we can’t seem to agree on the definition of “harm.” And so we argue and clash, and the cacophonous discord of our public life grows louder and more harmful, while the goal of peace and harmony seems ever further out of reach.

Many wise teachers say we cannot change a pattern we don’t like by dwelling on it. We can only change it by strengthening our vision of the reality we would prefer. 

So instead of rehashing all that is wrong with America and the world, on this Day of Interdependence I am going to celebrate our growing awareness of how our individual thoughts and actions reverberate out and impact the larger social field.

Though it seems like we are being sucked back into the darkness of violence and separation these days, in fact more and more of us are waking up to our profound interconnection, our awareness of each one of us as a point of light in the vast matrix of our planetary home.

On this Interdependence Day, let the light that you are shine out bright and steady. Our task is not to DO so much as to BE—to be a harmonious note in the collective Gaian symphony, focusing on creating a groundswell of peace on this beleaguered planet. 

Namaste.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on July 4, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Leadership, Politics, Politics of Gender, Social change, Spiritual Ecology, Spiritual growth
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on July 4, 2022

https://bethechange2012.com/2022/07/04/on-interdependence-day-be-the-peace-you-want-to-see-in-the-world/

Becoming a channel for peace

The events in Ukraine have been triggering for me, as a person of Jewish heritage whose ancestors fled that region around the turn of the 20th century because of violence, discrimination and enforced subservience to repressive overlords. 

Ukraine, now improbably led by a Jewish man, is repeating the pattern of David vs Goliath, with ordinary civilians making improvised explosive devices to try to defend their homeland from invasion by soldiers equipped with missiles and tanks, while children huddle with their families in basements, or join the throngs trying to flee across the borders to uncertain, relative safety.

Squint a little and you can see so many other conflicts that have played out in just this way, since the dawn of human history. Are we doomed to endlessly repeat the cycle of military build-up (keeping the weapons factories humming and the stock market soaring) followed by conflict and the violent imposition of new social structures—rinse and repeat?

Can there be another way?

In the case of Russia vs. Ukraine, it’s been heartening to see big crowds risking their lives to protest the action of their government (just as US citizens did in 1968 (Vietnam) and 2004 (Iraq). Unlike World War II, when there was a clear enemy who deserved to be vanquished, most recent conflicts are wars of choice, fought to preserve or enhance elite strategic interests.  

We may not like Putin and his cronies, but they are just another example of the general paradigm of might makes right, which has been the US stance as well: here at home we tolerate the on-going impoverishment of people and social services in order to support the most powerful military in the world.

It’s the paradigm that needs our attention.

Those who are facing down the guns do not have the luxury of holding space for peace, unless they are willing to be martyrs. 

It falls to those of us on the sidelines to do the hard work of changing the paradigm and fostering a culture of peace.

In 1848, Thoreau famously withheld taxes and went to jail to protest the US involvement in what he considered to be an unjust war. 

In his letter penned from prison, “On Civil Disobedience,” which inspired Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. decades later, Thoreau wrote: 

“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth — certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”

Listening to Thoreau in 2022, I have to ask: How can I lend my life to the cause of world peace, the creation of social structures that nourish all people and the more-than-human world?  How can I put my gifts—for writing, teaching and encouraging others to give creative expression to their truths—in service to the cause of a brighter future for all of us on Earth?

Thoreau also wrote: “Most [people] live lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

One act of liberation that any of us can do, with the basic creativity that is our birthright, is to sing our song! Sing it loud! 

Let the beauty inside us shine through and counter the darkness of that heavy, old paradigm under which so many of our ancestors were forced to live and die. 

We are each being called upon now to become sturdy planks on the bridge to the future, over which our descendants can cross to the better world that is possible. 

Each of us is a vessel for the creative spark that dances with life on this planet. Open your hearts and let that Lifeforce pour through you! 

Let your words and your images become instruments of peace. Reach out and harmonize with kindred spirits around you. Let your chorus ring out, sending ripples of peaceful intentions across the world.

Darkness can only be defeated with light. Every whisper, every murmured prayer, every unspoken positive intention, is an important contribution.  

As Rumi said, “Be your note.” 

Be it now, for the ancestors who are cheering us on, and for the future beings who, we hope, will be blessing our memory in a better time. 

Photo by J. Browdy
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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on February 27, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Leadership, Peace, Politics, Social change, War
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on February 27, 2022

https://bethechange2012.com/2022/02/27/becoming-a-channel-for-peace/

Homage to Amanda Gorman: Shine on!

American poet Amanda Gorman reads a poem during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, Pool)

On a day that still tingles with the electric pulse of the U.S. Presidential Inauguration, I remain moved and thrilled by the ringing cadences of Amanda Gorman’s finale poem—not only her brave and lyrical words, but also the grace with which she delivered them. 

Afterwards, I wondered: how did the Biden team find this gem? I discovered that it was Professor Jill Biden who recommended Ms. Gorman to the Inauguration planners after encountering her at a 2017 reading. 

Does it make a difference that Amanda Gorman is a Harvard University graduate? Certainly she seemed at home in the rarified circle of the Capitol, as she did in a 2019 poetry performance for a ForbesWomen conference. 

She has a poetic passion that is at once gritty and polished. She speaks of herself as “a skinny Black girl descended from slaves,” but also as someone who is part of a redemptive “we,” Americans who will “rise” to “rebuild, reconcile and recover” our country.  

“Being American,” Gorman says, “is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.”

There is no point in lingering in the past, Gorman insists: “We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.”

She imagines what America might be if we were able to “merge mercy with might, and might with right,” so that “love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.” 

Today I am wondering, can America live up to the challenge and the promise of Amanda Gorman’s “bold, fierce and free” vision? 

Can we merge mercy, might and justice to pave the way for love, rather than hatred and division, to become the legacy our generation will leave to the next? 

I have been a professor of comparative literature and media arts at a college for gifted students for more than a quarter-century. I teach courses like “Writing to Right the World,” “Women Write the World,” and “Leadership, Writing & Public Speaking for Social and Environmental Justice.”

I have met many young people who have the passion and even the talent of Amanda Gorman—but few who are able to offer their inspired visions to the world with such grace and aplomb. 

In these latter years of my time in the professoriate, I find myself no longer interested in teaching young people how to write proper academic essays. Yes, I want them to know how to do serious research, and to cite their sources responsibly. But what interests me most is developing three key capacities in young people: 

  • the ability to articulate interesting questions and follow these questions through to interesting, often unexpected outcomes; 
  • the confidence to write in their own personal voice, allowing their idiosyncracies of expression to shine through; 
  • and the poise and polish to present their ideas orally, whether live or on camera, in the strongest way possible. 

I encourage students to explore the intertwining dimensions of the personal, political and planetary in their writing; to write with both a hyper-local and a broadly global awareness; and to see how their personal experiences are conditioned by politics and place—as is every piece of writing, though for too long we have been taught to take the white European male perspective as the invisible, “neutral” default. 

Like Greta Thunberg and Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Amanda Gorman speaks for many other young people, no less passionate but perhaps less able to articulate and convey their passions on a prominent public stage. 

The more those few exceptional ones step forward and lead the way, the more inspired, invigorated and enlivened their contemporaries will become, and the brighter their collective lights will shine out in the world.

It was a brilliant move for Joe Biden, the oldest incoming President of the United States, to invite powerful young women to grace his Inauguration. From Amanda Gorman to Lady Gaga and J-Lo, youthful energy blazed forth on the steps of the Capitol on 1/20/21, insisting that America must live up to its promise. 

While Joe himself looked back to Lincoln in calling for unity, young Amanda Gorman looked forward, proclaiming that “our people, diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful” from all the challenges that have beset us of late. 

She closed with a challenge: “For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

I agree with Amanda: we must be the light that we want to see in the world. We must shine for our friends and neighbors, for our families and loved ones, for all the future generations yet to come.

In the immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Darkness can’t drive out darkness; only light can do that.”

It’s our time, now, to be the light. 

Thank you, Amanda Gorman, for illuminating the path forward with such brilliance, poise and clarity. Shine on! 

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on January 21, 2021  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Leadership, love, New stories, poetry, Politics, Social change, women's leadership, women's writing, WorldWrights
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on January 21, 2021

https://bethechange2012.com/2021/01/21/homage-to-amanda-gorman-shine-on/

American Carnage

January 7, 2021

I feel today like I did on November 9, 2016, the day after Donald Trump stole the US presidential election. 

Dumbfounded that such a criminal act could be allowed to proceed in the USA. 

Shocked and disgusted by the coarse hatred and stupidity on display in the crowds that supported him—the ones who chanted “Lock’er up” about Hillary Clinton, and put journalists in cages in the center of packed arenas, to be jeered at as though they were in some kind of stocks. 

Those same folks turned out in droves for Donald’s last stand in DC yesterday. And they must have had accomplices among the Capitol Police and other law enforcement units, who spectacularly not only failed to prevent the mob from overrunning the Capitol, but were caught on camera practically bowing as they let the criminals in. 

It was chilling to hear one of those self-styled “American patriots” speaking to an NPR reporter on the grounds of the Capitol building, declaring that lawmakers opposed to Donald Trump ought to be strung up and hung on gallows then and there. He went on to sketch out his vision of gallows in groups of four, ready to break the necks of anyone opposed to Trump.

American carnage, indeed. 

Shock and alarm beamed around the world, as people in other countries saw the unthinkable violence taking place in the heart of America, the so-called “leader of the free world.”

Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by “freedom,” doesn’t it. 

For Trump and his brainwashed followers, it means the freedom to bear arms anywhere and everywhere, including schools, malls and halls of government. 

It means the freedom to insist that up is down, that wrong is right, that losing is winning, and that anyone who disagrees with you should be hung. 

The blind compliance of the Trump/Fox/Newsmax/QAnon followers is terrifying. 

We’ve seen it before, in the legions who followed Hitler and sent their neighbors to the gas chambers.

We saw it in the Cultural Revolution in China, where brainwashed followers committed violence and murder, often against their own family members, in the name of their fearless leader Mao. 

We saw it with the Hutus in Rwanda, who murdered their neighbors the Tutsis by the millions when the call came over the radio to do so. 

This is human nature, it seems. A savage mob mentality, lurking beneath the veneer of civilization, can be easily manipulated, at viral speed, by the dark lords of social media.

It is the job of those of us who have the capacity to discern truth from lies to continue to hold that line. No, the 2020 election was not stolen. Yes, Joe Biden legitimately won. 

But how can we heal a society so broken, a social fabric so frayed?

The US is on the brink of chaos. 

We saw it in microcosm yesterday. Imagine if whoever is masterminding this (and I don’t believe it’s Trump, he’s not intelligent enough. Steve Bannon, perhaps?) was able to bring the Trump mob out in multiple cities across the nation simultaneously. Imagine if sympathizers in the police forces, and perhaps even the military, stood by as violence erupted. Spin out that scenario and you see the clear outlines of a civil war that could only be quelled by serious military intervention of the kind that we are used to seeing in other countries. Think Baghdad, 2004. 

There are many today who are calling for Trump to be ousted from the White House immediately, using the 25thAmendment. My fear is that the toady Pence would then turn around and issue him a blanket pardon, which would prevent his future prosecution. Because make no mistake, Trump will be a menace until he is safely behind bars, without access to the Internet. Even then, he’ll become a folk hero, a rallying cry for his mob forevermore. 

It’s hard to know the best course of action for sane heads in America to take today. 

For those of us on the sidelines, watching and listening as the actors strut and fret their time upon the stage, these terrifying, sickening times must just be endured. I wish I could pull a Rip Van Winkle and go to sleep until it’s all over. 

But no. We are here for a reason. To hold firm to our belief in truth—yes, real, actual truth; to insist on justice for all—not just white supremacist fascists; to proclaim that might is not and never will be right. 

If there are angels watching over this sad, sick planet, I pray that they will strengthen the better nature in each one of us.

We surely need all the help we can get today.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on January 7, 2021  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Politics, Social change, social justice, Terrorism
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on January 7, 2021

https://bethechange2012.com/2021/01/07/american-carnage/

Don’t let their blood red tarnish your vision

In the wake of the 2020 US election, I’m sitting with the sinking feeling, lodged like a stone in my gut, that there is not going to be any easy exit from the social quagmire that now exists in the United States. The ideological lines between red and blue have deepened into chasms between people who apparently disagree about pretty much everything. 

The red side is ready and willing to take up guns to settle such disagreements. In 2020 America, violence is always only a hair’s breath away, with millions of guns in civilian circulation, combined with militarized police forces everywhere. 

On the red side are autocrats who liked the original Constitution just fine—the one that gave rights only to landowning white men. It’s been especially disturbing to see how many white women support their own oppression, voting for the Handmaid’s Tale-esque party of “grab’em by the pussy.” 

I’ve seen some social media posts blaming the robust red turn-out on a poor public education system. It’s true that the red autocrats have been battling for years for ideological control of the common curriculum, with considerable success. I’m always struck by the starkly different narratives offered by American students from various parts of the country, when I ask them what they were taught about key topics like Native American history, the Civil War, slavery and women’s rights. 

But the most potent ideological education seems to be happening via the media these days. The red/blue divide is also a Fox/NPR divide. The Fox side lies with impunity and calls anyone who disagrees with their point of view a liar. How can you argue logically with people like that? 

Both sides speak to their own choirs, in a cacophony that boils over in every election cycle, when we are forced to hold our noses and listen briefly to each other. 

I have found myself pondering how a red/blue secession might work, logistically: is a bicoastal country possible? Or would the Pacific Coast and New England/Atlantic Coast each form their own federations? 

The fact that I am thinking about this is profoundly disturbing.

But given the Democrats’ failure to secure a majority in the Senate or mobilize a presidential landslide, in a year where at least apparently this was not because of “Russian interference” or any nasty “October surprise”—in a year when the red leadership seemed to be bending over backward to show its heinous true colors—blood red, we might call it—well, there is just no way to sweet-talk myself into believing that sane heads will prevail in American government going forward, even if, as I hope, Biden takes the White House.

The meanness and gridlock will continue, with the most vulnerable people being continually sacrificed on the altar of greed and xenophobia. Racism and sexism will continue to worsen, with a Fox-driven hysteria around “socialism” and “elitism” that whips poor white people up to do the bidding of the masters. 

As a woman of Jewish heritage, I am aware of my family’s privilege, these past few decades, of “passing for white” in the racist USA. But any Jew in this country has to be triggered by the Nazi rhetoric and symbolism coming out of the White House lately. What are Jews like Mnuchin, Miller, Kushner and Adelson but the kapos greasing the wheels of bigotry, hoping to profit off the downfall of others? Attorney Cohen saw how well that went. 

And yet—and yet, all the sages of the world tell us to respond to such evil with love, not fear. Meet hatred with forgiveness. Melt oppression by turning the other cheek. 

I don’t like the feeling of my heart hardening. I know it’s the work of fear, throwing up walls, finding enemies, closing down compassion. 

I have compassion for the millions of people who have been duped by the Fox oligarchy into voting against their own interests.; those who have been persuaded to harden their own hearts, not only against their perceived enemies, but also to the vulnerable within their own ranks. 

I do not have compassion or love for the ones who are doing the manipulating, in such a cynical, open way. They may be thinking that it worked for Hitler, but we know how many paid the price. 

Is the US heading for a civil war? Is there anyone on the horizon with the uniting vision of Lincoln who can pull us back from the brink and remind us what “these United States” are supposed to stand for?

I know it’s a mistake to rely on charismatic leaders. We should be looking within ourselves for that leadership, those answers. 

Vision is all. Vibration is powerful. We cannot allow their dark visions to prevail. 

Perhaps this is what is meant by “coming from love, not fear”:

Continuing to hold a bright vision of “equality and justice for all”; to animate that vision with personal integrity, making it so at least within our own limited spheres; trusting that the positive vibrations we put out into the world can and will make a difference, growing into a mighty chorus affirming the human potential for kindness, respect, beauty and right relations among all beings on this Earth. 

Join me in this, the least we can each do: don’t let the blood red of their vision tarnish yours. Keep your vibration high. 

Photo by J. Browdy, October 2020.
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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 5, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Alternative Futures, Community, Leadership, love, Politics, Politics of Gender, privilege, Resilience, social justice, women's leadership
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 5, 2020

https://bethechange2012.com/2020/11/05/dont-let-their-blood-red-tarnish-your-vision/

Stop letting the days go by

An invitation, from my heart to yours

It’s been several years since I woke up to the fact that we live our lives at the nexus of the personal, political and planetary. By this I mean that our individual lives are enmeshed in and shaped by the collective experience around us, and the wider backdrop of the physical environment in which we live. 

This may seem obvious, but when it comes to thinking about our lives, very often we tend to place all our emphasis on the personal story, giving only the barest of nods to the role of the political and planetary systems that are, whether or not we acknowledge it, the scaffolding that enables (and sometimes constrains) our individual possibilities. 

Suddenly, in the post-COVID world, many more people are coming to understand the essential role played by the political and planetary in our personal lives. The importance of health, in the personal, political and planetary sense, is now foremost in the minds of almost all of us, it seems. We see clearly how impossible it is to be healthy as individuals if our political systems are corrupt and our environment is diseased. 

The invitation of this dire year, 2020, is to dig deep into the question made famous by David Byrne: How did I get here? 

His answer: Letting the days go by….

To some extent, all of us have drifted heedlessly to this watershed moment, letting the days go by, letting the political system rot, letting the generals, finance wizards and corporate masters rule, letting the racism and bigotry go on, letting our planet be poisoned and our fellow Earth beings go extinct, letting ourselves be carried in the fierce undertow of the 20th century to finally hit up against the stark realization that this cannot go on. 

The despair that allows us to tap into and express this deep, heartfelt insight is also the potent seedbed of the vision that comes next, of the world that could be, if we begin to align the personal, political and planetary in ways that are healthy for all. 

If you are fortunate enough to have the time and space for reflection now—as the wildfires and floods rage, as the political and economic systems crack, as the winds of collective and planetary change sweep over us all—then I invite you to inquire into how you, as an individual, got to this particularly fraught moment in time. 

This inquiry is not about guilt or regret; it’s not about blame or anger, although aspects of these strong emotions may show up as your excavation deepens. 

It’s about seeing how the threads of your personal experience are woven tightly into the tapestry of the larger collective social and environmental reality in which you have lived. It’s about taking stock of how your experience has been shaped by the circumstances into which you were born and in which your individual life played out. And about how you, in turn, contributed to the warp and woof of that larger tapestry of collective experience.

Once we are able to see the past clearly, we can begin to understand the present more fully. And from this place of understanding, we can move into the future more intentionally, more responsibly, with greater awareness of the power each of us has, as an individual, to make choices that affect the collective experience not only of other humans, but of the entire world system in which we live. 

There is much we cannot control about our world. But we can choose where to put our focus each day. We can choose to focus on the positive that continues to resound in our experience: the beautiful colors of the sunrise and sunset, the stubborn persistence of the weeds that flower in the sidewalk cracks, the cool touch of wind and rain after a long hot day. 

This is not a matter of denying the horrors and injustices of our time. It is a matter of tuning our own awareness to a positive, harmonious, resonant pitch that gives us the strength to stand up and fight, each in our own way, for a better world.

This is what I call “aligning the personal, political and planetary for a thriving future.” Once we understand how we got here, on all levels, we can take the next step of envisioning the brighter future we want to live into, and roll up our sleeves to work actively towards bringing that bright vision into reality. 

I invite you to join me on this journey of introspection, embarking on the inner, personal work that leads to action in the outer, political and planetary world.  

You don’t have to be interested in writing a memoir to enjoy and benefit from this contemplative practice. 

This inquiry is for anyone who wants to understand how we got here. It’s for anyone who wants to stop drifting, letting the days go by. It’s for everyone who is ready to start working actively to align the personal, political and planetary in service to the thriving future we all so deeply desire. 

This invitation is for you; from my heart to yours. 

Namaste.

The sun always rises. Photo by J. Browdy, October 2020.

Next online purposeful memoir workshop:

October 18, 2 – 4 pm EST.

Join me on the journey…more information here.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 9, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Environment, Health, Leadership, New stories, Politics, Social change, Spiritual Ecology, Spiritual growth, WorldWrights
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 9, 2020

https://bethechange2012.com/2020/10/09/stop-letting-the-days-go-by-2/

Just remember to breathe

We knew what to expect, didn’t we? Donald Trump is a street brawler from Queens, turned Manhattan mobster, and he certainly acted the part in the first so-called presidential debate. It was, as everyone bemoaned on the morning after, a disgrace, a national embarrassment, a total sh*t-show.

Well, I have a bright idea. 

The media should stop enabling Trump’s bullying. If he can’t participate in a civilized exchange, fine! Let him and Biden each have their own 90-minute slot to discuss their vision for the country with a moderator (or a panel). 

Let Trump stand in the spotlight all by himself, and put his incoherent, racist, misogynist, arrogant, moronic self on full display. 

And then let Biden do the same. He may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but he looks like an angel next to the orange demon. We’ll take him!

I am straining to reach for a thread of positivity to catch hold of today. I’ve been awake for almost 12 hours, and I’m still straining. 

One thing I know is that for us human herd animals, emotions are contagious and self-reinforcing. One smile leads to another; but the same is true for frowns too. 

When we are constantly bombarded with negative emotions, via the media and each other, the negativity quickly builds into a vortex of toxic energy that whips over the entire psychic landscape like a tornado, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.

We have to resist this! This is what Meg Wheatley means when she calls on us to become “warriors for the human spirit,” creating “islands of sanity and calm” in the midst of all the chaos of our time.

This morning I was distressed as I settled on to my yoga mat, in need of the able physical/mental/emotional massage of Jurian Hughes’ gentle yoga class. 

Come back to your breath, Jurian reminded the 80+ people who joined the virtual class. No matter how out of control things seem, one thing you can control is your breath.

And by the end of the hour of deep breathing and slow deliberate movement, I was calm again. Not happy; not buoyant; but calm and ready to face my day.

We can’t control what others do. We can make suggestions, and here’s mine: next time give each man his own stage, or at least turn off the damn microphone so they can only be heard one at a time! 

But on a day-to-day basis all we can do is to try to remain anchored in the present moment of our ordinary, physical lives, which for most of us continue on their own rhythms no matter what the clowns on stage are doing. 

Try not to let your active imagination trigger your fight-or-flight fear reflex over something that is happening far away, or that might happen in the uncertain future. 

When you resist the tornado of fear that threatens to send you spinning into panic or depression over something you can’t control, you are doing your part as a “warrior of the human spirit,” holding your positive vibration steady for everyone.

This matters. It matters for you, and it matters for everyone around you. It matters for the psychic energy of our whole human tribe, and by extension for the health and wellbeing of our entire Gaian web of life. 

For all of our sakes, please—remember to breathe.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on September 30, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Leadership, Media analysis, Politics, Spiritual growth
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on September 30, 2020

https://bethechange2012.com/2020/09/30/just-remember-to-breathe/

In memory of RBG, we must stand up for justice

Moments after the NPR notification appeared on my phone—Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died—my social media feeds also lit up with shock and distress. Dear Ruth, so beloved by so many! She tried so hard to stay alive until after the election, and she came close…dying on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. 

As is often the case with Jewish holidays, Rosh Hashanah has a serious tone to it. The day RBG died is the first of 10 days of introspection, culminating in Yom Kippur, the day of atonement for one’s mistakes over the past year, along with a vow to do better in the coming year. 

Although I am not a practicing Jew, this ritual of taking stock of one’s transgressions at the start of the New Year seems like a wise one to me. I think many Americans are asking ourselves these days: how did it come to this? How did we let it come to this?

Well, my fellow Americans, it came to this because we were not paying close enough attention. We were not willing to rock the boat. We were not willing to give up our comforts. 

Justice Ginsburg was a shining example of a woman who paid attention. She repeatedly rocked the boat to stand up for her principles, and was beyond stoic in her willingness to sacrifice her personal comfort in order to serve her country. 

Imagine, at 87, after several battles with cancer, still working out at the gym to stay fit enough to keep going to work every day at an exhausting, demanding job. 

Gail Collins, in an admiring eulogy column, offered this summary of RBG’s trail-blazing legacy and her legendary grit:

“She came up as part of that first generation of women who proved they could mix families and careers, who stunned the authority figures in even the most demanding parts of their profession with their determination. While she was in law school at Harvard, her husband came down with testicular cancer. She went to his classes, brought him back notes, took care of their little girl … and made the law review.”

So many hard-working professional women today stand on the shoulders of women like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Thanks to her, the doors to power have been cracked open a little wider, allowing more women to step through more easily. 

But we still have a long way to go, and without RBG at the Supreme Court, or someone like her, America will continue its backslide towards what I can only call patriarchal fascism. 

Thanks to the social and economic devastation of the coronavirus, the wildfires and the hurricanes, coupled with the open train wreck of Republican “leadership” and the twin threats of militarized police forces and death-dealing vigilantism, Americans are finally paying attention. 

The Black Lives Matter movement showed that when people get angry enough to take to the streets en masse, change happens. 

No political tyrants have ever been able to withstand the will of the people when they refuse to go along with oppression. 

Americans above all should know this, coming from a country that proudly celebrates its birth in revolution. 

But revolution, or civil war, is always a tool of last resort. America has prospered as a law-abiding country, with good people like Justice Ginsburg working to bend the moral arc towards justice through the legal system. 

However, if the Republicans have their way, it is quite possible that RBG’s seat on the Supreme Court will be filled by someone who wants to bend the law towards oppression.

Americans have to pay attention, and refuse to let this happen. 

I still can’t understand how we all stood by and let Bush Jr. steal the election from Gore in 2000. 

How have we stood by while the Republicans gerrymandered the districts to give themselves the advantage in the state legislatures?

For that matter, how have we allowed the injustice of the Electoral College to stand for so long?

How have we stood by and allowed police brutality against people of color to continue with impunity?

How have we stood by and allowed women to be hobbled by the expectation that they will do unpaid housework and child care while also working jobs for which they are paid less than their male counterparts?

How have we stood by and allowed the corporate chieftains to throw the planet into the maw of industry, with the resulting extinction of millions of species?

How have we stood by and allowed America to thumb its nose at the rest of the world’s efforts to get a grip on climate disruption?

This long list could be much longer. The point is that in my lifetime, Americans have just stood by as our supposed shining city on the hill became ever more tarnished and corrupted. And now, in our networked, globalized human civilization, we are dragging the rest of the world down with us into the pits. 

Each of us bears some responsibility for the way things are now. And each of us has the power to act to make things better.

Of course, we all have to go vote. That goes without saying. 

But like so many Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, I find it hard to trust that we will have a just electoral process this year. 

And if the vote is stolen, if the election is rigged…then what? Are we going to stand by, like we did in 2000, and let the Supreme Court decide? Of course, that is why the Senate Republicans are suddenly slavering to appoint a Justice now, before the election.

How hard will they have to push Americans before a critical mass decides it’s time to stop standing by and letting the Republicans get away with the murder and mayhem they have inflicted on the country?

No one wants to see civil war erupt in the United States, and yet the conditions are ripe for it: a bitterly polarized citizenry, vast wealth disparity, and the powder keg potential of armed vigilantes and militarized police. 

The passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg brings us closer to this nightmare vision. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one tossing and turning last night, unable to sleep. 

I have no words of comfort to offer. 

We are in a transition time and the contractions have started. The pain will be real, the suffering immense. We can only hope that our collective labor will bring a better world into being. 

This morning, I am grateful for the shining example of RBG, who never, ever, gave up. 

7 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on September 19, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Leadership, New stories, Politics, Social change, social justice, women's leadership, WorldWrights
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on September 19, 2020

https://bethechange2012.com/2020/09/19/in-memory-of-rbg-we-must-stand-up-for-justice/

Extinction Rebellion 2019: Power Concedes Nothing Without A Demand

Last night I added the Extinction Rebellion frame to my Facebook profile photo, a gesture of support and admiration for the brave protesters around the world who are putting their bodies on the line to stop business as usual and focus attention on the most important matter at hand: restabilizing the life systems of our planet.

Greta Thunberg, our charismatic climate change Joan of Arc, told EU leaders bluntly this week, “Forget Brexit! Focus on the climate!” Here in the US, our political system is in an uproar over the Mueller report, which has had the effect of poking an already-angry nest of politician-ants, sending them all into a scurrying frenzy. And over in France, the mourning continues for Notre Dame, though people are questioning how it was easy to produce the millions needed to restore the cathedral, while money for restoring social stability and human services cannot be found.

Along with Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg, I say:

It is past time to stop feeding the greedy maw of the global corporate capitalist extractivist “limitless growth” economy.

It is past time to rally around the banner of Life and recognize the Divine in every expression of Life on this planet, from the tiniest plankton in the sea to the great pulsing soul of a mountain.

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***

Maybe one of the reasons I found the crash of the two Boeing 737 Max airplanes so unsettling was because the analogy to our current situation, as passengers aboard the capitalist machine, seems so apt.

The system has been programmed in such a way that even thinking, caring, competent humans are unable to avoid disaster.

I have the panicked feeling that we…are…all…going…DOWN.

But we are not there yet. And the protesters on London Bridge, like the youth climate strikers last month and the Green New Dealers in the US, are proof positive that the passengers are awake, aware and unwilling to go down without doing everything possible to overcome our suicidal societal auto-pilot.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand.”

Power and greed together, in the hands of the men (mostly white men) who rule this world, are a dangerous combination. Power and greed sent hundreds of those 737 planes out into the skies with a fatal flaw that caused the deaths of hundreds of innocent people.

Power and greed are ripping up the Amazon rainforest and razing the Canadian boreal forest; trawling the seas, fracking the land, and sending deadly poisons into our waters.

The sickening of Life on the planet, in all its forms including homo sapiens, is well underway. The extinctions are proceeding in an ever-accelerating cascade as the Holocene gives way to the grim, grimy Anthropocene.

Today I stand with Extinction Rebellion in spirit if not in body, to shout at that deaf, blind, deadly machine of global capitalism: NO MORE!!!

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The image reminds me of brave Rachel Corrie, who stood before an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 to protest the razing of Palestinian homes, and was crushed under its treads.

Protesting against powerful greedy men and their machines is dangerous. But we’re at the point where NOT protesting is equally dangerous.

Are we going to sit numbly in our seats as Life as we know it on the planet goes down?

Or are we going to get ourselves mobilized on the side of all the sweet innocents of this planet and do the best we can to steer the ship to safety?

***

It’s not a matter of whether or not it’s possible to change course and avert disaster. We know what needs to be done, and we know how to do it.

We still have time to shift to renewable energy and regenerative agriculture, renounce ecocidal chemicals, build resilient cities and towns, repair and renew the frayed social fabric of our peoples and reconnect on a soul level with the other life forms who share our planetary home.

These shifts start with the personal, with our conscious decision to stand for Life; and move out into the political, as we link arms with others sharing our planetary goals and become a force that the greedy politicians and CEOs can no longer ignore.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand.”

It was Frederick Douglass who said those words back in 1857, when the idea of abolition must have seemed quixotic to many. He went on, “Find out just what a people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted…. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

People, let us endure no more. So much depends on what we choose to do now.

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**For more inspiration, tune in to the Climate Change & Consciousness Conference (CCC19) starting today at Findhorn, Scotland; many of the keynotes, including Bill McKibben and Charles Eisenstein, will be streamed around the world to “hubs,” including here in western Massachusetts. And if you’re in the Berkshires, consider coming to my workshop on Saturday April 27, which will provide an opportunity to write and share about “climate change and consciousness” in good company. Namaste.

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CCC19 AVF Poster.jpeg

 

 

 

1 Comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on April 19, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Climate disruption, Environment, Environmental Activism, Politics, Resilience, Social change, Spiritual Ecology, Uncategorized
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on April 19, 2019

https://bethechange2012.com/2019/04/19/extinction-rebellion-2019-power-concedes-nothing-without-a-demand/

Facing the Zombies of the Trump Apocalypse

What can justify the tearing of toddlers from their parents? For Trump and his toadies, it is the parents’ unlawful entry into the United States—crossing the border without proper documentation.

Please think about this for a moment from the parents’ point of view. What could persuade a parent to take the terrible risk of crossing into the US at this moment in history, with small children in arms, without proper documentation?

Obviously these parents are fleeing something really terrible in their own countries. So far I have seen no current reporting about what’s going on in Central America that is pushing parents to grab their kids and make the perilous trek north. In the past we have had mostly young men coming north to try to make money to send back home to their families. What’s with the surge of entire families this year?

I hope we’ll start to see some journalists looking further upstream as this summer’s tragedy unfolds, and asking that all-important question: WHY?

Meanwhile, Trump is playing the hard guy for all it’s worth. He wants his wall, and he’s using traumatized children as the victims and pawns of his latest bullying. He wasn’t able to push the G7 world leaders around, but children in cages are easy targets.

This from a man who is only a generation or two removed from being an immigrant himself, married to an immigrant.

The alt-right who are supporting him are the slavering descendants of the racists of yore…the ones who had no qualms about tearing infants from their enslaved mothers (even when they themselves had fathered those infants). The ones who perpetrated systematic ethnic cleansing by kidnapping Native American children from their parents and detaining them for years in “boarding schools” that were much more brutal than today’s “tender age detention centers.”

What we’re watching today is not new, and its antecedents are not just Nazi concentration camps, which infamously separated families—though in the end most of them ended up in the same place, the gas chambers.

Trump has brought these dark episodes of human history back to life and reanimated them with a flourish of his executive order pen. In this horror flick, the evil zombies of history are back in action, and they care nothing for ethics and morality; they seem to be able to sweep aside any obstacle with a leering, bloody snarl.

It’s sickening to watch the craven Republicans going along with this madness, as they went along with the tax cuts for the wealthy despite huge deficit increases. Now they’re whetting their lips for the real prize, cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and welfare programs. Meanwhile Trump is planning his military parade and an expensive new military reality show—oops, I mean military program—called Space Force.

But we’ve been here before, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote has never been proven wrong: “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.”

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Berkshire MA residents Jana Laiz and Barbara Dean standing up for human rights and social justice in America

Good people are on the rise now. Protests are happening all across the US. Lawsuits are being brought daily against Trump and his mad minions. The Mueller probe continues. Journalists are upping their game, calling out the lies and asking the hard questions.

So much rides on the coming elections in November. Until then, Americans, we must hold on to our values, remembering who we are and what we stand for. We must not allow our thinking to be distorted by the mind-fucks of this misbegotten so-called president and his sycophants.

To be honest, I am worried about fraud and hacking in the 2018 elections. I am worried about a manufactured crisis that will throw Americans into disarray, a la 9/11. I am worried that Americans are just too unhealthy, in so many ways, to create a healthy society.

But these fears and anxieties go nowhere and help no one.  Every American of principle has a civic duty to stand firm against the onslaught of the Trump nightmare, vanquish it, and work towards creating the dream of MLK, Abraham Lincoln and so many other good leaders. If we stand together, we shall overcome.

1 Comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on June 20, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Human Rights, Leadership, Politics, social justice, Uncategorized
Tagged , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on June 20, 2018

https://bethechange2012.com/2018/06/20/facing-the-zombies-of-the-trump-apocalypse/

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