June afternoon sky / More listening during yoga practice

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John Lewis:

... And you live that you’re already there, that you’re already in that community, part of that sense of one family, one house. If you visualize it, if you can even have faith that it’s there, for you it is already there. And during the early days of the movement, I believed that the only true and real integration for that sense of the beloved community existed within the movement itself ...

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... Because in the final analysis, we did become a circle of trust, a band of brothers and sisters. So it didn’t matter whether we’re Black or white. It didn’t matter whether you came from the North, to the South, or whether you’re a Northerner or Southerner. We were one.

But at the same time, I would tell my members of my own family and members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and members within the movement, within S.N.C.C and S.C.L.C and others, I’ve always said, “Pace yourself, pace yourself.” I would tell my wife and say, “Every fight is not your fight. Pace yourself.” And I would say it to the young people and others sometime, “Don’t get in a hurry. Our struggle is not a struggle that lasts for one day, one week, one month or one year or one lifetime. It is an ongoing struggle.” ...

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... Well, I think about it, but you have to believe there may be setbacks, there may be some disappointments, there may be some interruption. But, again, you have to take the long, hard look. With this belief, it’s going to be OK; it’s going to work out. If it failed to happen during your lifetime, then maybe, not maybe, but it would happen in somebody’s lifetime. But you must do all that you can do while you occupy this space during your time. And sometimes I feel that I’m not doing enough to try to inspire another generation of people to find a way to get in the way, to make trouble, good trouble. I just make a little noise ...

Grateful to be alive and listening to one of our young people carry the song forward / Confident as the ocean and stardust / Beloved Community

Crepuscular rays at dawn.

Spring in this northwestern corner of Washington State is more often an experience of greening and flowering and birdsong under sublime grey skies, and there is still snow in the hills.

The cattail marsh fills with the song of birds all day long.  Soon the Canada Geese flock will return to this cattail marsh, announcing their arrival with loud honking.

Carmel Point 

Robinson Jeffers, 1887 – 1962 

The extraordinary patience of things! 

This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses— 

How beautiful when we first beheld it, 

Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; 

No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, 

Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads— 

Now the spoiler has come: does it care? 

Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide 

That swells and in time will ebb, and all 

Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty 

Lives in the very grain of the granite, 

Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.—As for us: 

We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; 

We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident 

As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

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Side by side is:

"... There is an old African proverb:  "When you pray, move your feet." As a nation, if we care for the Beloved Community, we must move our feet, our hands, our hearts, our resources to build and not to tear down, to reconcile and not to divide, to love and not to hate, to heal and not to kill ..."

(John Lewis, Walking with the Wind:  A Memoir of the Movement, published 1998)

May 2008 Revisited / Ten Years Later in November / Standing Our Ground in August 2020 (Not Alone)

Although summer in this far northwestern corner of Washington State is mild, we had a few days of temperatures in the 80s.  I don't walk as much when it is hot or even warm and had not taken a walk for a week or so.  On August 3 at noon, I decided to take a short walk from my home to Whatcom Falls Park.   Even though the section of trail that fills with mosquitos in June has been free of mosquitos for almost a month, I haven't walked into Whatcom Falls Park since May, choosing to walk up the hill to the high point where I can look out at the Canadian Cascades in British Columbia and be free of mosquitos.  Here are the photos I took on my way into Whatcom Falls Park:

 













Here is what I photographed as I was getting close to home again:

Just beyond this dappled section of the trail is the cattail pond that my porch looks out on.  Most of my walk, except for that section, is in the shade.  Probably because it was midday and somewhat warm, I saw few people during my walk.  When I was a little more than halfway along the section of brightly sunlit trail that is visible from my porch, I became aware of a man's voice at some distance behind me, but he was close enough that if I had turned around, I would have seen him because the section of trail beside Scudder Pond is straight.  Within seconds as the voice drew closer, I realized that he was yelling as loud as he could.  He was angry.  I could hear in his voice what I have heard in the voices of men who attack women.  I have been attacked when I have heard that kind of voice before.  At first I couldn't hear what he was saying but as he approached I heard his clearly shouted angry stream of obscenities and threats that seemed to be directed at me but were clearly directed at all women in an attempt to terrorize.

I felt the fear that I have felt before.  Then, something within me that I have learned to trust told me to keep walking, not to turn around, not to register in any way that I heard him.  I thought of John Lewis.  I thought of all the women and men who have had to face this kind of fear and had to learn how to respond in the moment.  It occurred to me that I might be assaulted or even killed by this anonymous man filled with rage against women.  As the yelling came to within 10 feet of me, I was thinking of John Lewis and everyone who has ever stood their ground.  In this instance, continuing to walk in dignity, not showing fear, I was "standing my ground."  I kept walking, wondering what was going to happen next.

In a silent instant, a nondescript white man, neither young nor old, neither large nor small, wearing a neon green bike helmet and generic clothing, riding what I would guess to be a mountain bike that cost him some good money, rode past me at a high speed, turned to the right just ahead of where I was walking, and disappeared on a short path that leads to a busy street.  Can you imagine my relief despite the fact that I was deeply shaken?

As I tried to absorb what had happened, I knew that I needed to call the police and make a report. Within a few minutes I was able to speak with the woman who answered my 911 call and took down my story and said that a police officer would be calling me.  Within a few minutes, I was talking on my phone with a sympathetic young male policer officer, telling him what had happened and answering his questions.  The police officer said that he was sorry that I had that experience.  He said that he had never heard of anything like that happening before.  I said, "I am reporting this because the man on the bicycle will do that again when he gets the chance, and I want there to be a record in place when that happens."

This happened in the middle of the day on a popular public trail in full view of the condominiums where I live.  I can only wonder what else this man has gotten away with when there were no witnesses, where the woman he threatened was afraid to make a report.  I can't be sure, but I sensed that both the 911 dispatch woman and the police officer wondered if I had made the whole thing up. Who wouldn't question my story that I was able to keep walking the way I did?

I am grateful to the many women and men who have been in the position I was in and who stood their ground and whose stories encouraged me to stand my ground.  Standing one's ground is not without risk.  Something told me to take that risk.  John Lewis was brutally beaten for taking that risk.  He continued to risk standing his ground.  He was not alone.

Hiroshima Day and Jacob Lawrence and the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima (2016) and Soh Horie's story

From the Builders Series:  Carpenters, by Jacob Lawrence (1977)

When I watched a documentary on John Lewis, I saw that he and his wife lived with art work by Jacob Lawrence.

Young and old / 50 years later / Maya Angelou's 90th Birthday

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. "

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

Maya Angelou would have been 90 years old today.

Faith

"Confrontation at the Bridge," by Jacob Lawrence

The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.

-- John Lewis