Taking a Deeper Breath

Winter is here. Hanukkah and Christmas have ended, and Kwanzaa has just begun. The longest night has passed. Little by little, almost imperceptibly for now, the light is returning, both to the skies and, I hope, to our lives. As we look forward to the end of 2020, I see places for great hope in the year to come. Whatever the future holds, we know that there is much hard work to be done. Our racist systems and structures did not spring up overnight, and it will take time, energy, and effort to dismantle them all. We must be focused and act with intention. We must be strategic, single-minded, and persistent. We must persevere when we are weary.  Still, we need to have strength to do the work; we must rest and regain our energy. So as this seemingly endless year finally comes to a close, I offer some music videos to lift our spirits... I start with my favorite new discovery, Portland's  Resonance Ensemble.    If you aren't yet familiar with this group, be sure to check the website

My husband and I own a home that stands on sacred and stolen land, land once home to indigenous wildlife and to indigenous peoples. The deer and coyotes we sometimes see in our neighborhood are descended from creatures who roamed here freely before the developers descended.  On our street, October 2020 I have not yet been able to determine exactly which First Peoples lived on the land where my home sits, but the Atfilati band of the Kalapuya (Tualatins) seasonally migrated to a nearby area to fish, hunt, and forage, and the Clowella Chinooks also made their home near mine. The Portland Metro area rests on traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Tumwater, and Watlala Bands of Chinook, the Tualatin Kalapuya, the Molalla, and other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River.  Beginning with the first "settlers" in our area, the Native peoples here were nearly wiped out by disease. Territorial and, after 1859, federal policies such as boar

"Fifty nifty United States from thirteen original colonies...." That's a line from a song I learned in elementary school as part of my sanitized history education. We were taught about the "discovery of America" as if Columbus were the first to arrive here. As if there weren't diverse nations already thriving here for thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived. Each year at this time we talked about the Pilgrims and Indians and the big feast they shared on that "first Thanksgiving." We did not learn about the eradication of Indigenous peoples, felled by new diseases brought by Europeans, and then by  genocide at the hands of colonists and "settlers."   We were not told that Native Americans were enslaved by the English colonists, although one scholar reports that "between 1492 and 1880,  between 2 and 5.5 million Native Americans were enslaved  in the Americans in addition to 12.5 million African slaves." Stealing lan

I have never had perfect vision. In fact, I wear trifocals these days. But I don't need my glasses to see with much more clarity now than I had at the beginning of the year. I have 2020 vision now. Perhaps you do, too. This has been an extraordinary year by any measure. How many times have I heard someone ask, "what else could happen?" And then   we find out .   I keep thinking that we must have hit the bottom by now, but then we sink lower. It's been gut-wrenching, to be sure, but eye-opening, as well. The onslaught of challenges and changes has brought deeper perspectives on so many fronts.  What seems clearer to me now is the breadth of all I have wrongly assumed and taken for granted. My White privilege surely accounts for many of my former assumptions and expectations, but it goes beyond that; I've held -- and still hold -- a number of privileges that have colored my views.  With the privilege of an able body, I took for granted not only the pleasures of dail

There've been times that I thought I couldn't last for long But now I think I'm able to carry on It's been a long, a long time comin', but I know A change gonna come, oh yes it will  Lately I've been hearing Sam Cooke's voice in my head. At this difficult time -- when COVID and the struggle against White supremacy felt traumatic enough, and now we are dealing with catastrophic wildfires and choking smoke -- it's helpful to be reminded that change does come. That it will come. And that we can be a part of it. As a psychotherapist, I have learned that change is a process, not an event. Behaviorally, change may be thrust upon us, as in a pandemic or natural disaster. But a change in outlook or beliefs, a change by choice, or a change that is embraced is ordinarily the culmination of a process. And that process usually begins below our consciousness, before we are even aware that we may be getting ready to consider a change. So it makes sen

Persistence is the sibling of resistance. When it comes to pushing back against injustice, we need to take a long view. Change can come -- I'll have more to say about that in my next post -- but it can, and usually will, be incremental. We must be prepared to resist for as long as it takes to achieve real change. Our mentors knew this. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted for over a year. John Lewis did not make it across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on his first try. On the night before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., told his gathered followers, "I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land."  Today, Montgomery busses are integrated, and all are free to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge; at his death this summer, Congressman Lewis's coffin was respectfully  carried over the bridge  in tribute to him. The Promised Land? We are still waiting for that. And we must continue our resistance

While some would have you believe that my city has collapsed and is burning down, here in Portland, peaceful protestors have been on the streets every single day since George Floyd's murder nearly three months ago. It's important work. Not all of it happens downtown. Carl and I missed our weekly neighborhood vigil the day after I broke my heel, but with my cast and scooter we're back out again. There's been a core group of us out there every week, and with the ghastly attack on Jacob Blake, Jr., there was an even bigger crowd yesterday.  We need protests. Crowds in the streets get attention. Crowds with a united purpose get action: The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom helped lead to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Peaceful protests give voice to pent-up rage, and provide both encouragement to supporters and tangible proof to skeptics that the people want change and they will not be silenced:  crowds beget crowds.    Peaceful protesting is a powerful tool

It seems a lifetime since my last post. In that time, my photographer son was arrested while on assignment to cover the protests, and I broke my left heel in several places in a freak accident with my little grandchild. More about those later. The point is that life as we know it can turn in a heartbeat, and in ways completely outside our control. We always have a choice, though, about how we respond. If anyone knows about unjust imprisonment, physical pain, or mental and emotional anguish, they would be His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet and the Most Reverend Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa. The same could be said for the late Honorable John Lewis, Member of Congress representing the Fifth District of Georgia. Between them, these three icons of grace under extreme circumstances have experienced deep personal and community pain. Archbishop Tutu grew up poor in a segregated society. Childhood polio left him with an atrophied hand, a younger

I live in Portland, Oregon. So I've had a number of challenging conversations lately -- in person and via e-mail -- about "the situation" in my hometown. Those who have gotten in touch with me have been angry about the protests and the violence that followed for many nights. I read angry letters to the editor in my local paper. I see the anger of the young White man who flipped me off this afternoon as I stood at our weekly vigil with my "End White Supremacy" sign (and the older White man who also flipped me off a few minutes later). I absorb the anger of those who disagree with my views on White privilege, reparations, policing, and criminal justice reform. There seems to be no end to the anger of those who believe that we should not be protesting. Then there's the deep anger of the protestors. I feel my own rage at the murder of George Floyd, and at the sight of peaceful people being beaten and teargassed in my city by armed federal troops in camou

When the late Congressman John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge with a crowd of voting rights activists on March 7, 1965, he was met by Alabama state troopers who brutally beat him , leaving him with a fractured skull. Yesterday he crossed the bridge for the last time, his flag-covered coffin on a horse drawn caisson. And while the bridge still bears the name of a man who was a Confederate Army officer and a grand dragon in the Ku Klux Klan, this time, uniformed state officers saluted as John Lewis passed them. Yes, our country has made some racial progress in the last 50 years, and for that we can be grateful. But we have also lost ground, and it's up to us to reverse that. Congressman Lewis and Dr. Ibram X. Kendi are among the Black leaders who have told us what we need to do. Two months after the courageous John Lewis led the march on Bloody Sunday, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That act was supposed to ensure that no state or loca

We've just lost two heroes. Both the Rev. C.T. Vivian and Congressman John Lewis died yesterday. These brave leaders were close associates of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and like Dr. King each was a "drum major for justice," a "drum major for peace," and a "drum major for righteousness." Each was a champion of nonviolent action, and each lived a powerful life of effective nonviolent resistance. They led us all for decade upon decade after the death of Dr. King, and we are all diminished by their loss. We sorely need their example and their inspiration now. The Rev. Cordy Tindell ("C.T.") Vivian was one of the key organizers of the civil rights movement. He was a leading member of the Freedom Riders, and in 1963 he became the director of affiliates for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which traces its beginnings to the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a White man. Then