Like Seeds Turning Under Soil

By Anna Blaedel

I recently added a photo to my altar, published by the Associated Press, of a woman standing in front of an enormous military machine. She is holding a bottle of water in one hand, staring straight ahead, no more than a foot of space between her and a war machine carrying federal immigration agents to raid a farm in Camarillo, California. Rebecca Torres, as she is identified, looks fierce. Deeply rooted in courage, commitment, conviction, connection.

The image makes me think of Rachel Corrie, who was killed in Rafah 22 years ago, crushed by an armored Israeli bulldozer sent to demolish Palestinian homes. Rachel Corrie was only 23 when she was murdered. As a white American, Rachel’s gruesome death drew more attention than the countless Palestinians purposefully run over and crushed by Israeli tanks and bulldozers while sleeping, playing, protecting their homes, and homeland.

A lifespan of 23 years is increasingly unimaginable in Palestine, where there are stockpiles of food, rotting, while the people of Gaza are being deliberately starved. Where starving people, desperately trying to get food, are being intentionally gunned down by the Israeli army. After two years of a genocide that has been denied, even as it is live streamed. Israel has killed more unarmed, starving Palestinians at food aid hubs in the last weeks than the total number of Israeli civilians killed on October 7. There is no excuse, no justification, for the cruelty unfolding, the evil unraveling.

As beloved poet Andrea Gibson wrote, “the math of war has always been subtraction.”

There is no livable future, if we continue these trajectories of subtraction, extraction, disconnection, destruction. Neither denial nor despair enables us to root deep in the fierce and tender love that keeps us alive, and sets us free.

As Maia Kobabe writes in Gender Queer, “The knowledge of a third option slept like a seed under the soil.”

Joanna Macy, who died this week, taught there are three possible stories for understanding this time, and our potential response to and participation in it. The first story is “business as usual,” a story of industrial growth, society patterned by capitalism, competition for profit, concentration of wealth, inequitable distribution of resources. Under the weight of “business as usual,” our earth and our relations are unraveling. Business as usual is deadly. “The great unraveling” is the second story. Generations of colonial expansion, enslavement, exploitation, and extraction – including theft of land and life – have resulted in a world of intensifying unrest, disconnection, and crisis. As our worlds unravel, opportunities emerge to pivot, to turn toward life, toward survival, toward courage, toward care. This opportunity, the great opportunity of our time, is “the great turning.” An invitation to respond to the unraveling by reimagining everything. Macy calls this “deep time” work, in which we reconnect with ancestors as well as future beings, reweaving and repatterning our relations with each other, and with the earth. 

Kelly Hayes imagines how movements emerge from such deep time turning: “Come what may, I will bet on us, every time, because there is no other bet worth placing. I am all in, fam. I will never stop looking for openings and aiming at them. I will never stop reaching for people and saying, ‘Take my hand. We can do this.’ Because we are worth it.” Deeply rooted in courage, commitment, conviction, connection.

Andrea Gibson, who died at 49 just under two weeks ago, said, “Just to be clear, I don’t want to get out without a broken heart.” “In the end,” they wrote, “I want my heart to be covered in stretch marks.” Upon their death their beloveds wrote, “Though Andrea desperately wishes to have lived a longer life, they could not have possibly lived a fuller one. 

Andrea Gibson, like Kelly Hayes, like Joanna Macy, like Rebecca Torres, like Rachel Corrie, like so many known and unknown beloveds rooting deep in courage, commitment, conviction, and connection – they are asking us to turn, imploring us to bet on us, to bet on life, to bet on what becomes possible when we say, ‘Take my hand, we can do this, we are worth it.’

Beloveds starving in Gaza, and detained in California, and missing in Texas, and disappeared in Florida. Trans beloveds abandoned in Iowa. Beloveds violently displaced in Haiti, and brutalized in Sudan. Beloveds deported to places they have never been, never known. Beloveds: each and all. Worth everything. Worthy of our turning.

I recently learned a group of hummingbirds is called a bouquet, a glittering, a hover, a shimmer, or a tune. Most hummingbirds live only a few years. Each short life, gorgeous. Each life, over so soon. Each life, no matter how long, a possibility for fullness.

“This is what we do,” Andrea Gibson reminds, invites, implores. “We gather each other up.” We accept neither denial nor despair, but imagine new and ancient ways. We glitter, and shimmer, and sing. We, broken-hearted, covered in stretch marks. We, seeds sleeping under soil. We, rooting in courage, commitment, conviction. We, worth every possibility opening, every possible effort. We unravel. We reconnect. We turn.