Standing Rock update: this update has been long overdue..
These last ten or fifteen days have been among the most difficult that I have had in many years. Something continues to physically sap my strength and it seems to have to do with my lungs. But even if I were fit, the world is being revealed as such a hideous nightmare that it makes finding my footing very difficult.
It may be teaching me, it is teaching me, it may be teaching me important lessons that only such extraordinarily difficult times and conditions could do. We live here physically in a police state. Machinery of police violence deliberately encroaches on us closer and closer every day. We are not treated as Citizens by the state. We are treated as viruses. The state does not care about citizens it cares about money. Does anyone not see this?
Have I been wrong for so many years or is what I've been doing wrong for this particular time? What I'm questioning is this, has my way of being to place my body in the way of harm to the most vulnerable, has that been, or more importantly, does that for the future speak the best way for me to serve? Certainly I do not think that it has been either bad or a mistake and certainly not a terrible mistake. But is it the best way for me to serve? the good farmer may live on a floodplain and occasionally have to get in the way of the flood, but it is not the way of Being for the farmer to be in the way of the flood. It is the way of being of the good farmer To plant and tend good crops. the only crop in which I have any interest or hope is loving in the world.
It appears that for those of us that decide to stay in this Camp until the 22nd we are offering our lives to jail and or prison. Is that the best way for me to serve? I expect more informed information and Analysis will be forthcoming in several days to make the decision a bit clearer for me.
I don't know if it's cowardice, fear, wisdom, fatigue, worry, self-absorption, insight... that has me leaning toward moving on rather than jail or prison. All those negative things constantly work on me. Maybe the positive things work on me as well, they probably do.
Several years ago as I recall, I may have been deep into a hunger strike, I asked a question of future children that I have asked many times, What do you most want from me, from us? And all of a sudden instead of the usual answer, a habitable Earth, I heard a different answer. Give us more loving, in the future. Send us more loving. I know this to be the more correct answer and the more radical answer. It does not preclude fighting as I have been for a habitable Earth but it does not necessarily equate to doing that.
The most radical answer each second is to do that which might Spark the most loving in the future . of that I am certain.
That could mean that I should offer myself for prison on the 22nd. Right now that is not feeling like the way. as I have written recently for it to be clear that jail and prison is the best way to serve much more clarity in terms of strategy, facts on the ground, support, Would be necessary then is currently visible although that may come visible within the next few days.
Life here physically, materially, in this world that is in Hell Fire, is almost unbearable for me, but more than bearable each moment as I devote each moment to being love in the midst of this community as I do with each waking breath, hours of dishes, sleeping in the water shed tending fire so that the water does not freeze. assisting with Construction. Doing Duty in the compost toilet. Helping to clean up abandoned structures, refuse, Etc.
My beloved friend Joe, one of the most wonderful Souls I have ever met, a volcano of contribution, an architect and designer and Builder, has a vision for an Earthship which for each person residing there literally starves the black snake to death. He with help from people like me has been trying to help it get a foothold in this region and so far Petty jealousies and lack of Vision on the part of others has prevented this. The dream does not die Within Me. I want to see it happen and will do what I can to help if I see a way of doing so.
I am profoundly and morbidly afraid of the material future that awaits me. I'm not proud of this. But I admit it.