Ohh my God, can August crawl by any slower? Aside from December, this time of the year is the worst for us. And for poor A too. He’s trying, but the universe won’t cooperate with his wishes.
He’s been growing his curls, and they attract a lot of attention. My husband calls him a sequoia. LOL. A and R are both having the summer of hair, R having decided to dye his hair red and brown. They both look awesome.
Society has such a studied way of erasing disabled people, but in our house, they are at the heart and center. Every aspect of our home life is weird, and we are tiiiiired, but it’s better than the alternative, which is erasing them in here too. NEVER.
Every issue is connected, and I have been thinking about how this appalling age we live in seems to be all about erasing people and their histories and civilizations, their mark on the world, and the ways they see themselves.
At this point, if you are not having a spiritual crisis, I don’t know if you have a functional inner life.
And no, I will not apologize for saying that.
All around me, I see people thumping around without nuance, while accusing everyone else of lacking nuance, i.e. not wanting to dialogue and break bread with evildoers.
A clear example is: people who love interfaith dialogue. OMFG. Just say you want imperialism with the cloak of religiosity, while also insisting that people must cherish the frightened little mouse that is your psyche.
I can just imagine all these types now declaring that I lack nuance. 😉
Do you want to continue your religious life as usual, and occasionally discourse on the politics impacting your practices?
Then you are not having a spiritual crisis. And you should be.
Some part of all of us who have any kind of faith practice should be recoiling from what we have been taught to believe. Some part of us should be refusing to continue to claim community with people who tell us this is the way of the world. We should be unable to sit at a table listening to the same old drivel that has always lied to us about our place in systems, and minimized our impact on people “beneath” us. We should be saying or writing prayers that ask questions from a place of brokenness. And we should divest from faith systems that ask us to uphold harm, even while doing so might make us terrified of losing everyone, including divinity.
It doesn’t matter what God is. The people most likely to invoke Her name are using it to do planet ending shit. To bash in skulls. To rape. To deny us water. To force complicity so that no one can say no without losing everything.
To say “Oh, but God is this Other Pure Entity apart from all that” is childish and dangerous. It is imperial sleight of hand that always absolves you when you come to the altar with blood dripping from your sword, or your lust sated from violating someone’s body. All is forgiven as long as you say you have sinned. And because you hold yourself accountable to no one but Sky Wizard, you need never face justice.
We are not culpable for the twisted values we were taught. But if we have the capacity for self reflection and political analysis, we are culpable if we don’t put ourselves through a cleansing ritual of unlearning.
This isn’t a nice process. I can vouch. Who are we if we don’t want to be an arrow in the quiver that harms nature and people? Finding out means being suspended in a state of nothingness for some time, shock reverberating through us, and we only get reborn when we are ready to stop gnashing our teeth and take action.
One defensive habit I see in many people is: they ask me what my references and learning tools are, and then they make a demand that I argue for their being better than whatever sources are seen as more trustworthy, the texts and scriptures that make up their foundational learning.
I will not do that for you. You must do it. I have not been the first to face this crisis, and you will not be the last. Yet we have to behave and operate as if we and the world are new again. Otherwise we are still waiting to be poured into.
The difference between old me and present me is that I take responsibility for what I need to learn and do now. I don’t sneeze at the comfort of religious rites, and I aim to not be reactive in the face of patriarchy and other bs which coats every aspect of Hindu life.
My energies need to be directed towards people who have been harmed by my prior beliefs and practices. Who will benefit from my support, love, and authenticity. I no longer seek the reluctant attention of those who don’t want me.
It is not even important whether I (or you) would still call me a Hindu. Or whether you (or others) would still call you whatever you were raised to be. These are questions that still swim in the waters of terms set by people who don’t care about us in a granular way. Placating them, debating on their terms—this is the project of maintaining systems. We stumble over potential answers, and still suffer minutely.
Seeing the way people and systems are casually cruel to my children turned my feet towards this path of questing. More byways opened up to me after that. And continue to do so.
We are taught that not attributing every struggle we have to divine will is a terrible arrogance that will exact the harshest punishments. I am not saying that it is divine will, or it isn’t. Again, this is the master (small ‘m’) setting the terms and handing us the tools, to paraphrase Audre Lorde. Keeping us mending fences with people who want what we have built without offering us community or justice.
Don’t do anything because you want to set an example. Do it because you feel sick at the way things have been. Do it because it’s the first blaze of joy you’ve felt in an age. Do it because action is the highest form of worship in a time when armchair philosophy is what passes for jnana yoga.
Do it because not doing it is the death of all hope.
Radha.
