Tribe:
Let me spell this out: by fantasizing about warring political factions and how one of those factions would obliterate the other, I was creating thought forms of violence that manifested yesterday in Washington, D.C.
Right on, precisely.
So, if you are in the US and appalled by what happened yesterday, one productive course of action Is to examine yourself. You can still be angry, but you can’t let that anger become self-righteous.
This is the hard internal work that will bring about the Great Turning.
Just so!!
my response to the terror
On Wednesday evening I got my SS colleagues from around the state together. We poured into a Google Doc with some resources for teachers to start the conversation about what happened at the capitol. By around 11:30 that night I started emailing it out - through my work email, through my personal Twitter account, and one final time via the organizational membership email I have access to as President of one of the statewide SS orgs this year.
I've been proud of my term as President, because while our org emerged from the ashes like a phoenix when we were nearly dead five years ago, this year as President I got more long term initiatives and things going than my four predecessors combined. And when I'm done in July, the President who follows after me (one of those predecessors going back through the cycle) is already planning to scale that up further. It's exciting!
Last summer, one of the first things that greeted me as I moved from President Elect to President, was the BLM protests. We wrote our first organizational statement ever. And in it we promised to continue the conversation, which we did a month and a half later with a panel discussion on teaching about race in the classroom. We've been proactive and it's great.
So on Thursday, I received a ton of thanks for the document we shared. I also received only one negative - from a catholic school teacher who had this to say:
Too bad this didn't come out about the armed rebellion over the summer. Instead, you made that all about race, and we all know that's not what it was all about whatsoever. Please take me off your list. I can't support or use your biased information any longer.
I waited 24 hours, consulted a few members of my board board, considered a lot of things, and then went with my gut in sending this reply:
“If you consider it biased to provide social studies teachers with tools to teach about a violent insurrection at our nation’s capital, perhaps you might consider teaching a different subject. I’m sure you’re a fine educator, but math, with its inarguable rules and theorems might be a better fit. Either way, the <Name Of Org Here> supports your decision to leave its membership.”
I just can't you guys - I just can't even with these people anymore.
So, I'm undergoing surgery on Feb. 2nd. Instead of getting a shunt, my neurosurgeon will perform a endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV). Unlike shunt surgery, an ETV won't leave any hardware in my brain. The surgery itself takes less than an hour, and I will be in the hospital for 1 night. This surgeon has operated on me twice before, and I like him both as a professional and as a person (for anyone who lives in the NYC area, you may have seen him in advertisements for New York-Presbyterian hospital). This will also be my 8th inpatient surgery in 18 years, which seems like a good sign (8 being the powerful number that it is).
However, there's a chance that the ETV won't work, in which case I will have to get a shunt in the following weeks. Because I've had surgery on the horizon for almost a month, a haven't received any Avastin infusions since September (Avastin can cause fatal bleeding in surgery, so it can't be administered 3 weeks within a surgery, and I had my regular 3-month pause from Sept. to Dec.) Going that long without Avastin I think has already affected my hearing, and if the ETV doesn't work, I'll go without Avastin until March, which will further endanger my hearing. My main hydrocephalus syndrome right now is poor balance. I'm exercising at home, but I'm not going on any walks outside. I'm also not driving until I undergo surgery, since hydrocephalus can exacerbate seizure activity. And this is all going on during a pandemic!
I'm not fearful. I've seen a multilayered medical trial coming since the spring, and I spent a lot of time over the past month in meditation, trying to shed light on my buried fear and anger (@tesseract The affirmations you posted a while back in the forum have helped). I just know what's at stake, so I'm naturally concerned.
I just read in depth about the surgery you are going to have. May your neurosurgeon’s hands be guided as he works. May the new drainage system he fashions be the solution to the hydrocephalus. May your hearing and balance symptoms stabilize and not increase as you await surgery.
I’m sending healing light to you, and to the inner sanctum of your brain where the surgery will touch.
Asking God to bless and use the hands of your surgeon to be His/Her instrument of healing and the hands of the nurses and techs and anesthesiologists to be steady and healing instruments and that ALL hands that touch be blessed to be loving healing hands. Lifting you in prayers and seeing you surrounded in the green and pink swirls of healing light and love light and the Divine white Light that is Creator holding you. Amen.