Meeting Together, Ferocious with Care

By Anna Blaedel

Yesterday, I took my tears to the trees, and walked through the woods crying, and singing. 

Four intentions are grounding my practice, these days:

Feel my feelings, and help them flow.
Be in movement; move in rhythm with life around me.
Remember: while the feeling of love may come and go, the Love that is Lifeforce (June Jordan) is a steady throughline, a sacred songline thrumming through life.
Sing.

Yesterday, as I walked and cried among trees, I listened to a gorgeous new album, “Risk Hallelujah,” written by Orion Johnstone.  The first song of this queer musical, “Have You Been to the Well?” is a litany of prayer, an invitation into healing, an invocation of anti-imperial defiance. Sung within it, the questions: “Are you blown by the winds of the wounds of this world? Does the grief overwhelm your soul? Have you been through the fire, through the holiest of flames? Have you heard Transformation’s call? Are you tending the seeds for the world that could be?”

On Monday morning, a beloved brought me a bowl of pomegranate seeds. They just silently placed these edible jewels in front of me on the table, and I cried. I had feared the fruit might have gone bad. I had – for all the reasons and none at all – struggled to find the energy and time to pluck these ruby seeds from their skin. So much has gone bad, is filled with rot. But this pomegranate was still good. And the sweet juice of these seeds was sweeter, because they were shared, offered, with love.

Sitting with three beloveds later that morning, the one who handed me pomegranate seeds visiting for the first time, the other two who hold my heart and keep it whole on the regular, I laughed so hard I shot coffee through my nose, spraying the entire table. I don’t even remember what made me laugh, because joy was so abundant through the whole scene. But I do know it was a miracle to be at that table on that morning, with three other queers, three quarters of us trans, so full of love that unguarded laughter was possible. 

This week I saw a meme floating around, two people on either side of the same bus. One, heavy with doom and gloom, under the thought bubble: “There’s so much oppression and devastation in the world and I’m just one person, nothing I do right now matters.” The other, more curious, possibilities playing across their face: “We come from long legacies of resilience and resistance. Our actions combined are deeply impactful. We are building a world where we are all free – it’s going to take all of us to get there.” Are you tending the seeds for the world that could be?

A poem of June Jordan’s, “Calling on All Silent Minorities,” is written in ALL CAPS. Jordan knew how sometimes wisdom is whispered, subtle and quiet, and sometimes it needs to shout:

HEY
C’MON
COME OUT
WHEREVER YOU ARE
WE NEED TO HAVE THIS MEETING
AT THIS TREE
AIN’ EVEN BEEN
PLANTED YET

The song from “Risk Hallelujah” continues: “I will meet you there, and together we’ll revive…Together we’ll hold on…Together we’ll get free…We will sing as empires fall…Broken open, we’re already whole…Wherever love leads, we will go.”

Yesterday a beloved texted, “I want to try to imagine what Love is. And so much seems to be telling me not to. But I’m in love with Love.” Amen.

Oppression and devastation come in so many forms, but so do resistance and resilience, nourishment and sweetness, togetherness and love. Creativity, too, emerges from chaos. The power of our collective care is ferocious, and we are so much freer than we are told we can be. With and for each other, we have what we need. 

Love can still be the soundtrack of our shared life. Love is still the soundtrack of our lifeforce, together.

Hey, beloveds. Sweethearts. C’mon. Come out. Wherever you are. Whoever you are. There’s a tree somewhere, or maybe just a seed. Let’s meet there. Together, let’s root and revive. Together, let’s weep and laugh and shoot coffee through our noses. Together, let’s hold on. Together, let’s share sweetness. Let’s risk transformation. Let’s risk hallelujah. Let’s move in rhythm with Life, thrumming around and through us. Let’s sing as we practice love that makes empires fall.

May it be so.