Gaps We Ache To Close

 from 9 June, 2022 The Berkeley Times, Knox Book Beat, © Wyndy J. Knox Carr.

“Family is the psychological nutrient…”

Dr. Julianna Deardorff, Assoc. Professor, Community Health Sciences, Berkeley Public Health

Poems, tales, myths and dreams are so healing, truthful and vital that some subtle meaning-bending or a kind of “skewed” utterance is assumed to be present and tolerated “in translation.” Isla Negra or Kyiv may be thousands of miles away -- the point is that we deeply seek to listen and hear; to “grasp” each other’s’ words and experiences.

California Institute of Integral Studies’ online talk and book name two gaps we ache to close: “On Indigenous Voices and 

Restoring the Kinship Worldview.” Then they add one more: “Precepts for 

Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth”

 -- GOOD IDEA! There is no Planet B!

Wahinkpe Topa and Darcia Narváez brought us principles culled from his “applications for education, sustainability, wellness and justice” and her study and experience of “moral development and human flourishing from an interdisciplinary perspective.”

“Early life experience,” “sense of the living earth,” “movement and partnership with people, nature,” an “evolving nest system of care.”

“Non-binary,” “non-dominant” “potential for complementarity.” “Our species knows these things.” Words and ideas like soothing salves to aching hearts and parching brains.

California Institute for Community, Art,and Nature’s presentation with AIM participant Fred Short and editor Kim Bancroft also exemplified these concepts in Short’s real life journey of rough times growing up, foster homes, being a fighter and then when “my life started” when he got involved with AA, spiritual meaning, “good communicators” and “Indian causes.”

The Story of Fred Short – American Indian Spiritual Leader tells how elders, Indian ministers, sweat lodge, sun dance and other ceremonies; “hunting, fishing, hoop dancing,” “spirit walks” and the “running team” slowly but surely caused his “conversion” back to American Indian Religious Freedom activism and “a way of life” “of community,” “family as medicine.”

This is not to disregard cultural appropriation of Native wisdom.
“Elevation of whites once again to be the primary exponents of Indian (others’ indigenous) religion and culture,” (Vine Deloria, Jr.) needs to be constantly self-identified, released and exposed to fresh air.

Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 article, “WhitePrivilege and Male Privilege” named the blindnesses that warp global and local communities and relationships. 

It is still “an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.”

Underline systems here. Arbitrarily. Choose and we…

“Resist division of any kind,” Fred Short said.  

Persistently realign with recognition of shared values, goals and processes that will show  “gratitude for interconnectedness,” “pay attention,” let our “senses …see clearly…activate.”

“Everything and everyone belongs to Mother Earth and we talk to each other and that gives us joy.” 

Topa, Narváez and Short all kept echoing these Ancient / “New Age” Berkeley creeds.

A dense yet brilliant Cal “Arc Benders” Public Health panel also yielded up two echoing and global summations of human need: 

“Bold, broad and targeted investments in multilevel, interdisciplinary and intergenerational teamwork interventions with communities early on are strategies for optimizing wellbeing,” (Prof. Neal Halfon) and 

“Family is the psychological nutrient…delivered in the contextual environment.” 

(Dr. Julianna Deardorff ) 

We yearn to listen, understand, feel understood and heal. TOGETHER.

Rev. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said 

“Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.”

Restoring, rebalancing, reciprocity, remembering, relationship. 

Our shared “history” of six million years of evolution and 300,000 years together as homo sapiens is much longer and deeper than the quick blip of “digital” “nuclear age” time.  

Whether we know it or not; from neuroscientists to garbage collectors to agribusiness barons, we ache for more humane, connected, nature-based lives.

 

Yes. Every moment, every word. We are changing the world.  

Saving Her/It/Us/Them… We are a “kinship of relation ship, reci procity and renewal.”