Do not believe them
when they tell you it’s okay.
Let their lies pass you by
like unwelcome road noise 
fading into the distance 
as you turn your heart toward 
compassion.

Do not believe them
when they tell you cruelty is justified
because of where someone was born
or because they oppose the powerful.
Listen to your own tender soul crying out 
to ease the suffering inflicted.

Do not believe them
when they tell you this is how it has to be,
when you know in the depths of your being
it isn’t.

As someone who grew up in the Christian homeschooling movement and spent most of my time in conservative/evangelical Republican circles, who walked away from that nearly 15 years ago, spent some time in progressive/liberal Democrat circles, and who now considers myself without a political home–as someone who reads broadly on a variety of subjects because I want to understand how things work and are connected, I’ve been thinking about what I wish more people on “both sides” understood and would take some time to consider.  

The Right and the Left might be opposing sides, but they are not at all organized or constructed as mirror opposites, despite many people seeming to think that they are. And in the U.S. we do not have a nation neatly divided into these two camps, despite many narratives claiming that we do. In the last presidential election, 31.5% voted Right, 30.6% voted Left, and 37.7% did not vote for either candidate. I’ve been thinking a lot about who benefits from us believing there are these two mirror-opposite sides and the construction of that “half-the-country” narrative we hear so often, when more people fall outside of the strict Left/Right divide than into it.

A massive amount of wealth and power have been poured into creating a Right that will rally around single issues and work with others who may have different opinions about other topics in order to accomplish political goals. There were architects of this as far back as Reconstruction, massively amped up after the Civil Rights movement, and then supercharged after Citizens United. The Right is so effective at getting even their most unpopular policies passed and their most unpopular politicians elected, partly because people on that side will overlook almost anything, even actions and policies that go against many of the other values they hold, in order to get policies and politicians that support their main issue–be it the 2nd amendment or abortion or whatever is the Christian-Right crusade of the hour. Endless resources have been targeted for decades to create an incredibly well-organized, Right-aligned voting block with influence and sway far outsized to their actual numbers. 

And while, yes, there is a lot of money and power out there promoting liberal/progressive ideas, the Left is simply just not a powerful voting block. People on that side are often not only unwilling to set aside differences on other issues to accomplish a policy goal together, but they often devolve into ideological attacks and in-fighting over those differences and accomplish very litte. There are some exceptions, but I have read many examples of this and have seen this play out as I watched these spaces. This is a major factor in why the Left fails over and over again to pass even their most popular policies or have broadly popular political candidates. And I know that many on the Right think Democrats are super liberal or radical or leftist, but the reality is that the vast majority of Democrat politicians are actually neoliberals (like most Democrat and Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan), who, while they might promote some progressive social views, are truly incredibly conservative when it comes to the majority of policies they support. Democrat politicians, almost without fail, vote in the interests of corporations and the ruling class instead of the citizens they are supposed to represent. Because of this, many people who oppose the policies of the Right are completely disillusioned with the Democrat party as well and have checked out of national politics altogether. 

I know it can be easy, if you’re on the Right, to think that the Left might be like your side, only with opposite views, but that is simply not the reality. They do not have the power and influence you are told they have. Are there Democrat-backed groups on the other side who might rally together around a cause or to call out something on the Right that they take issue with? Sure. Yes, there are. But these are groups of people, not a monolith. They are not representative of the entire other side and likely do not have the numbers to accomplish anything you are afraid that they might.

I know it can be easy if you’re on the Left, to be baffled by how so many people on the Right will support politicians and policies seemingly against their values and best interest, but that is because there is nothing equivalent to these single-issue coalitions on the Left. The ends very much justify the means in their minds, whereas the Left gets stuck in the means and barely ever accomplishes any ends.

And as much as we all like to think of “our side” as the good guys and the “other side” as the bad guys, the reality is that there are good and bad people on both sides. There are people on both sides who love their families and are trying to make it through life one day at a time, doing the best they can in their circumstances. There are people on both sides who behave terribly and harmfully and do all they can to demonize and dehumanize everyone they consider “other.” And there are good and bad people who fall outside of either side.

And I write all of this to ask, who is benefiting from this? Who benefits from us seeing the other side as though the worst of them is all of them? Who benefits from the Right, whose views and policies are often not supported by the majority, being such a powerful voting block? Who benefits from the Left being so disorganized and unable to accomplish anything, even implementing popular policies that have broad support across the political spectrum? Who benefits from the Right being so focused on only the areas where they disagree with the Left and the Left being so focused on only the areas where they disagree with each other? Who benefits from us thinking that our politics can be simplistically viewed as half the country vs. the other half of the country when the reality is that many have stepped away from both parties? Whose power and influence might be eroded if people on all sides focused instead on the areas where we agree and demanded policies to support those things? 

These divisions are deliberate. They are crafted to keep us fighting each other so we will not fight for each other. 

I don’t think it would be a bad idea for all of us to take some time for introspection. To perhaps step away from social media for a few, to go outside, to reconnect to our own humanity and values and evaluate who our beliefs are serving and if it might be time to make some changes.

At this point, I think finding our way back to ourselves and each other may be our only hope.

Cycle-breaker. Earth-shaker. New-way maker.
Whatever you’re calling it,
you’re not alone in that ache of isolation,
the pull of temptation to become mirror opposite–
just as dogmatic, but from the other side.
And yet.
You know, you know, you know.
Your heart says it all has to be different,
well up from a different place.

So you replace your armor with boundaries,
lovingly held.
Replace your reactivity with responses,
carefully considered.
Replace your binary thinking with questions,
welcoming complexity.
You replace control and punishment and shame
with understanding and help and empathy.
Even when it’s hard. (And yes, it can be so, so hard.)
And yet.
You know in your bones,
nothing will ever be as worth it.

Today there was a Gray Treefrog
tucked away in the Late Boneset leaves,
gorgeous and tiny and fragile,
like most living things, when you think about it.

The strands that weave us humans into the web of life are,
perhaps, less delicate than those of tree frogs
or butterflies or humming birds or fireflies,
depending on where we live.

Perhaps not,
depending on how much value our lives
are seen to hold as potential for extraction
by rich and powerful people who couldn’t possibly know the sheer joy

of spotting a tree frog
in your favorite shady spot on a hot July afternoon,
of observing butterflies
flitting between plants you let grow wild that others might discard as weeds,

of standing inches from a hummingbird
hovering over blossoms you grew from hand-me-down seeds,
of pausing to marvel at a resting firefly
illuminating flower petals in fading summer light,

of knowing the value of each life, everywhere,
is immeasurable and connected,
far beyond what the atrophied hearts
of oppressors can understand.

You were the girl who read and read,
would rather sit with your book
in an out-of-the-way corner
and lose yourself in its pages
than join with the other kids’ chaos.

And from a very young age you found books
on Anne Frank and Corrie ten Boom
and continued for decades reading all you could find
about people who resisted fascists and
hid targeted neighbors to save them from
concentration camps even though it meant
they increased their own danger and
had less for their own families to eat.

And while these seemed important historical stories
to commit to memory, you had this sense–
which you now know to be false–
that there were safeguards to prevent such things
happening within your own country.
You were taught that we have guarantees to freedom,
checks on power,
enshrined in founding documents.

And now you watch, horrified,
as those perceived safeguards crumple
in a crush of supremacy, power-grabs, and executive orders.
Protections and information destroyed,
a clean sweep of dissenters,
planes falling from the sky,
people rounded up.
And you wish for the days you thought
this could never happen here.

^{Content Note: Mention of cancer, medical situations, parental illness}

I read somewhere that
a woman develops
all the ova her ovaries will ever produce
while still in the womb of her mother,

so for a time,
the woman’s mother carries
within her body
both her daughter and the spark
of the next generation.

I do not know if this is medically accurate,
but I recall it now
as I take a turn sitting next to
my mom in the oncology unit,
as they pump her full of IVs that will potentially
both sicken and save her.

My body,
once within hers,
now beside,
would not exist
if not for the places in her body
where they found the cancer.

It makes me think how
discussing mothers,
daughters,
women’s bodies,
can be double-edged.

Joy and pain,
hope and grief,
love and uncertainty–
emotions so often
within each other,
beside each other.

I wonder now how I hold them,
along with my
mother’s hand and her hot tea,
here in this room
on a rainy December afternoon.

I remember the election cycle
prayer vigils of my youth.
The fasting.
The fear.

Scared people in
church sanctuaries
passing terrified glances
instead of peace,
begging God not to let
destruction fall on the
United States in the form
of a Democrat winning
the Oval Office.

I now know not all churches,
but the ones that formed
my first understandings
had these fears as
blocks in their foundation.

Many cycles later,
I sat in community with dear friends
in a different kind of church
and held space for our own
anxiety and concern.

Not because we
believe one party holds
the key to bring about
the world we want,
but because there is
so much fear,
so much division
so much hate
and we know
there are some trying
fan those flames into
an inferno.

Holding space in silence,
I couldn’t help but think
of all the other people
in all those other churches
still holding their vigils
like a presidential candidate
could take the place of Christ
as their savior.

How can entire churches
praying to the same God
as me be filled with people
praying for such different things
than me?

How are our only choices
a neo-liberal conservative woman
and a fascist man?

How is this
where we are?

How do we stop
looking to political parties
as though they
represent us,
care about us,
can save us?

How do we bring about
anything different from
what we’ve always had
if all we are is afraid?

How do we let go of
the fears ingrained in us
and see with clarity?

How do we remember
that we are not
separate from each other
no matter how much
those in power want us to
behave as though we are?

How can we
find the courage
to be “us” and not
the “me vs. you”
they want to maintain?

How?

Ribbons of sunlight shimmer
through multi-hued leaves
creating enchanted forest 
from unassuming trees.

Attention awakening awe,
conjuring wonder,
revealing reminders: 
the world is full of magic.

Sunlight filtering through trees
will always be more beautiful
than anything money can buy.

Only more trees are dying,
sun scorches,
earth’s systems collapsing

as we sacrifice everything
on the altar of endless consumption
in worship of billionaire gods

telling us to use faster what they
extract from our shared home
while they hoard the blood money.

The world is on fire and drowning
while some people drive more, fly more,
buy more, use more, take more,

get distracted by
deliberate diversions
of those who crave power.

All while the suffering of others increases
each passing year
despite not being to blame.

Yet more of us are menacing,
cloudy sky too near to the ground,
threatening to unleash.

This crisis requires collective action,
to learn to conjure courage,
even if all we feel is rage.

Your heart still beats
the same blood as it did
before you were told to pour her out
in the name of honesty
to people you knew could not
handle the depth of her.

They instructed you to
take up the sword of truth
to carve away what
makes you who you are,
even though you knew that was not
what truth was made for and
all they wanted was conformity.

They tried to teach you to fear
the parts of you that were woven
into your soul by the stars
before you were born,
so you learned to suppress
what you knew in your gut you
could not, would not,
relinquish.

You learned to present tamed-down versions
that kept the damage from cutting too deep.

They thought they could keep you
trapped within walls they made you
build around yourself,
but they didn’t realize you would
look up to the stars,
hear them singing your soul-song back to you,
and feel yourself remembered.

They didn’t realize you knew
the truths you learned to hide from them are wings
and now you know there is no roof
and you can fly.