Category: George Floyd

How We Live in The House of Happy.

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“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college—that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, ‘You mean they forgot?’” ~ Howard Ikemoto

Dear Heart,

You came with me to humanity, into this earth body, soft and open like a woman’s womb. I was just an infant when I began to turn you to stone rather than let you break me.

I dropped pebbles of pain into you. As a little one hooked up to tubes, pneumonia constricting me, I started to encase you for protection. After such a short stint in this world I was born into, but not born for, I fought. I won; one pebble buried in the heart of this baby body.

Later at home, as the youngest, I let words that hurt from my brother and sister—children striving for attention and power, as we’re inclined to do—drop like pebbles into the puddle of my heart, to help me toughen up.

To be tough enough, I took my unacknowledged aggression to school, fist-fought boys and made them cry, pummeling pebbles of humiliation into their little-men hearts.

The pebbles I spit out left remnants that grew like rocks in my gut. Unbearable, I determined to become unbreakable, strong, independent.

Oh, how the world clapped for me. Later, I read books and learned to be better, to love, even with my hardness.

Love awakened you, Heart. It made you wild and free like a dolphin in the ocean. Then, I’m sorry. For all the times I couldn’t sustain love and tended to you only enough to make you resilient, rather than let you be my guide.

You represented the rock I tripped over too many times, not realizing how to repair, reclaim, or reconnect. So, I trusted my mind over you.

For what’s a woman to do—raised in patriarchy, perfectionism, and the overarching premise that the purpose of life is to get it right?

Mirroring society, I relied on my mind, sought logic and proof. I learned to manifest and compete with the best.

I used my body as much as any man did, making it serve me as a tool, rather than a partner. I willingly elected my mind the master, the masculine driver.

We Americans are so smart, but it seems we, collectively, as I’ve done individually, repeatedly drove ourselves into a ditch. That’s where our thinking got us.

If knowledge was the answer, we wouldn’t face such disaster.

So now, dear Heart, I turn to you. With the piled pebbles, you seem frozen like stone. I’m tempted to turn back, listen to my mind, manipulate myself the way systems have manipulated us all, while we eagerly participate by downplaying, dropping dozens of pebbles and perpetuating what’s not working rather than feeling what’s wrong.

We’ve been taught not to feel, not if it hurts. Happy is the American mantra. So, we turn from our hearts as we’ve done for generations.

I try to imagine being a slave owner’s wife, watching him whip, lash, and slash another human’s back. But no, I would’ve, as a white woman in history, turned away—like we do today when we say, “I can’t look at that,” on behalf of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and numerous names we don’t want to know.

We don’t want to look, to see, so we say. What we’re afraid of is feeling the grief, sorrow, shame, and rage of a heart awakened.

So, we return to the House of Happy, the house of privilege, to our hearts heavy with generations of swallowed pebbles, now boulders born through epigenetics.

Who told us to think big, but feel less? “Don’t be so sensitive,” my ex-husband said. Worse, we say it to ourselves.

No, no! We proclaim. I feel. I feel good. I’m happy. I look at what’s before me. I feel love and gratitude. We chant, with our backs turned toward those suffering.

Heart nudges. She tells us to look around, not just in front of us, but who’s beside us and what’s happening?

Heart doesn’t need more pebbles. She’s here, ready to serve and honor our souls’ calling. To love bigger, wider, deeper, past the masks.

Heart encourages us to look directly into the chaos, to see the kids in cages, the Wall of Moms and Veterans braving teargas from their government, the teenagers showing up, standing up, getting busted up on behalf of a better tomorrow, the hospitals bursting with a pandemic of epic proportions, the people and police being pulled into ever-evolving chaos and violence, the economy threatening to crumble harder than the Financial Crisis of 2008. Unsustainable systems are breaking.

The mind is livid. We scream, “I can’t take this!” The problem is we can’t think our way out of this.

But, Heart? She’s here. She’s cracked. The pebbles fall and scatter like marbles on a linoleum floor. Heart rises like the phoenix. She’s come full circle, once again soft and buoyant, as open as a woman’s womb, growing and ready to give birth to something new. Let her.

 

How I Let My Mind Go Blank.

Alice LundyLeave a comment

“We’ve been conditioned to turn away, to not feel.” ~ Sarah Entrup

My kundalini yoga practice consists of a nervous system overhaul set, which requires lying on my back, raising my legs to 90 degrees, and crisscrossing while doing breath of fire (equal breaths in and out through the nose). Then, more sets with leg lifts, crisscrossing, and sit-ups with legs still in the 90-degree position.

At the end of the set, my instructor Sarah tells me, via video, to lie flat on my back and completely relax. I do.

Until my throat tightens.

The neckline of my shirt pulled down my back makes me claustrophobic. In my mind, I see George Floyd and imagine a knee on my neck, although I’m face up.

Halfway through this resting pose, called corpse pose in some yoga, Sarah says, “Let it all go. Let it be a reset. A death. A completion.”

I remember in the now-embedded-in-my-mind video, Mr. Floyd said, “I’m through.”

In my practice, on my mat, I let go. My mind goes blank for this one moment each day.

Later, I think of how he said mama. I choose to believe she was there with him in his final moments, that he said it to the sight of her and a gang of angels greeting him.

I don’t think about that during my practice. I let the moment be a letting go of all thought.

Then, as instructed, I do what George Floyd could not. I move my wrists and ankles, bring my own knees into my chest, and roll up into easy pose to begin my next set.

It’s called subagh kriya and I’m told it helps me align with my destiny.

I like to believe in the big picture, and that maybe George Floyd, the knee on his neck, his tragic death, meant something along the lines of his soul’s destiny.

Not that the man George Floyd would choose that, but Jesus… May George Floyd’s destiny serve our great awakening.

My White Privilege Told Me I Was a Princess.

Alice Lundy5 Comments

 “I blame the White House for encouraging white supremacy. Yes. That is correct.” ~ Glennon Doyle

Dear God,

I sign up for the Army of Light. Send me into the Darkness.

Hold me accountable for my whiteness, for being a blind witness and an unknowing accomplice. Because white privilege told me I was a princess.

I didn’t have to look hard at hard things. I could cut racism out of my life, set it safely on the sidelines, see it on TV, and bitch about it as if that made me more than part of the problem.

I held my head high because I dated, loved, and developed friendships with black people.

Like a man thinks he understands women’s plight because he slept with them, even loved and lived with the special ones.

A man cannot know what it means to walk as a woman. Let me not forget I walk as a privileged, protected, white woman. Because we played into the hands of white patriarchy throughout history.

Played victim to blackness so white men would rescue us. Not me! Alright. All white.

Amy Cooper connected us to George Floyd in ways we don’t want to see.

Not me! Using emotions for power.

Emmet Till. Emmet Till. Emmet Till. STILL.

Amy revealed us. Despicable.

Of course, I judged her for doing something I’d never do. You’d never.

Place blame. Play victim. Avoid responsibility.

Fragile. Damsel in distress. White woman. White witness.

White lies we tell ourselves and pretend we’ve helped bridge the gap of racism, simply because we don’t exercise it ourselves.

I would never make the call Amy Cooper made. My privilege lies in the fact that I could.

With freedom comes responsibility. Can we see others don’t share our freedoms? Not in this country.

Could Christian Cooper have called the police on a belligerent white bitch? It’s laughable.

Who is the victim? Who gets blamed? Who gets killed? Does it make it better when we say, “African American,” Karen?

We’re all Karens, even if we’re not abusing our power like Amy. Let’s stop pretending the color of our skin doesn’t offer us protection. Just because we’d never make that racist, life-threatening call doesn’t make us reliable allies.

Until we do something, our anti-racist values are as good as dollar bills kept in a shoebox under the bed.

When will we do our white work? When will I do my white work? What does that mean? I vow to learn.

Is what’s happening in our country enough to wake us up? Now what?

Can I and all the other Karens watch the entire video of George Floyd without whining, “It’s just too hard for me to watch”?

Our privilege allows us not to. We haven’t really been looking for a long-damned time.

We don’t want to watch George Floyd be murdered by a white man with all the power, granted by much more than a badge, but a society—that’s us—who repeatedly insists the black men killed somehow deserve it.

We tell ourselves, because our white privilege allows us to, that the police are just doing their job, that most cops are good.

Most cops are good. My nephew is a good cop.

None of this negates systematic racism in multiple departments throughout our country and history. It’s not like that now, we tell ourselves.

White women, we’ve always had the privilege of looking away. Let’s not.

What’s possible if we look at our privilege? What’s possible if we stop pretending everything is ok?

It’s uncomfortable. We might feel guilt or shame. Good. Now we’re getting somewhere.

In order to be part of the solution, we must stop being part of the problem. We’re part of the problem when we refuse to see it.

Like the boss who refuses to see his employee act as a bully or engage in sexual harassment, right under his nose.

We were blind. Now, will we see?

Look. Watch the entire video—not the short version—of George Floyd being sacrificed for us to wake up.

Why do people riot? Why do they turn violent?

Partly because over and over and over and over for the entire history of our country we, the Karens, played along, sitting in our comfortable positions holding up white patriarchy by refusing to look.

I sign up. I don’t know anything, yet. I’m willing to learn to act on the values I profess.

Use me, God. Let me look and see. Let me listen and hear. Let me use my whiteness for something good.