Post-Roe, I'm following...
Yes, I’m heartsick. So angry. And afraid. Nadia Bolz-Weber calls the feeling FRAGE (fear and rage), which seems about right. As you move with this change, here are a few offerings from spiritual leaders I trust. I’m following…
Danya Ruttenberg
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, for her clarity of purpose and lamentation. Bless her, she was literally rending her garments last Friday.
“May you always know that you are holy, sacred, and your will—your autonomy—matters, should be respected as such.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
Lutheran minister Nadia Bolz-Weber Weber, for her honest FRAGE and this rooted gratitude:
“I thank you for the generations of other women whose well of wisdom, and defiance, and beauty, and creativity I have drunk from; the waters of which have sustained me and set my shoulders back.”
Sarah Bessey
Christian writer Sarah Bessey, because she simultaneously holds space for anger AND welcomes joy:
“I want our passion to last longer than a viral hashtag. I want our work to be sustainable over the long haul. And I want that anger, that energy, that passion to be directed right towards peace-making and shalom-building and world-repair and so that means we also need to pay attention to joy.”
angel Kyodo williams
Buddhist Rev. angel Kyodo williams, for her equanimity and the call to compassion for all:
“We have to allow for the incompleteness of any of our truths and a real forgiveness for the complexity of human beings and what we’re trapped inside of, so that we’re both able to respond to the oppression, the aggression that we’re confronted with, but we’re able to do that with a deep and abiding sense of ‘and there are people, human beings, that are at the other end of that baton, that stick, that policy, that are also trapped in something. They’re also trapped in a suffering.’”
Valerie Kaur
Sikh activist and writer Valerie Kaur, for for connecting practical action to revolutionary love:
“I invite you to protect space to imagine. To focus not just on what we are fighting against, but on the world we are fighting for. When we imagine and dream together, we can begin to feel the world we want in our bodies. It becomes like a memory that we carry. It can become our North Star.”
adrienne maree brown
Healer, doula, “scholar of being, “scholar of magic” adrienne maree brown, for her wonder, for respecting other species as teachers, and for the wisdom of intentional practice:
You’re always practicing things. So it’s not like you go from not practicing to practicing, but it’s, are you practicing things on purpose? Are you practicing things you would want to practice, or are you practicing what someone else has told you is the right way to do stuff? And once you start practicing on purpose, then you can actually practice liberation and justice and freedom and — then I think you begin to have this contentment that comes from practice. Like, I know that I won’t see total liberation in my lifetime, but I also feel very satisfied with how I’m practicing liberation every single day and in every relationship.
I also trust myself.
Here is a poem and meditation that I wrote when news of the decision first leaked. And, artwork I created after the official ruling. Peace, friends. xo
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