Rev. angel Kyodo williams

"love and justice are not two. without inner change, there can be no outer change; without collective change, no change matters."

activism

Building a Politics of Care Online Summit

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The Politics of Care Summit (September 9 – 13) will be guided by brilliant leaders, spiritual activists, community organizers and cultural creatives including Ruby Sales, Rev angel Kyodo williams, Prentis Hemphill, Anasa Troutman, Michelle Johnson and more as we explore the everyday practice of politics so that we can build the country that we all deserve.

Each day will feature a morning session (11am ET) and evening session (7p ET) to help anchor our days in shared practice and courageous conversation.


Wednesday 9/9: Creating Brave Space

Evening: Creating Brave Space, with Micky Scottbey Jones, Michelle Johnson, Carinne Luck, and Kerri Kelly.

Thursday 9/10: Healing The Whole

Morning: Rase-based caucus, with Micky Scottbey Jones, Michelle Johnson, Carinne Luck, and Kerri Kelly.

Evening: Healing the whole, with Ruby Sales, and Rev Dr Jacqui Lewis.

Friday 9/11: Showing Up For Each Other

Morning: Honoring our collective grief, with Stephanie Ghoston Paul, and Michelle Johnson.

Evening: Showing up for each other, with Prentis Hemphill, and Francisca Porchas Coronado.

Saturday 9/12: Building a Politics of Care

Morning: Finding your place in the movement, with Carinne Luck.

Evening: Building a transformative politics: how we win, how we govern, how we create the future, with Nelini Stamp, Rev angel Kyodo williams, Anasa Troutman.

Sunday 9/13: Resilience for the Long Haul

Morning: Resilience for the long haul, with Micky Scottbey Jones, Michelle Johnson, Carinne Luck, Kerri Kelly and special guests.

Summer of Peace Telesummit Free Download

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Miss the Subtle Activism Summit? Still want to bridge your practice with positive change you seek to bring about in the world?

Rev. angel and other peacebuilders taught telesummit attendees about the science of subtle activism and how to bolster their activism through mindful practice. As a gift, we’d like to give you a special highlight of angel’s session – give us your email so we can stay connected, then check out the telesummit highlights.

Subtle Activism Summit

How to Lead Like a Spiritual Warrior An Interview With angel Kyodo williams

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williams_angel_kyodo_web_1An Interview With angel Kyodo williams

Zen teacher, activist, and author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace angel Kyodo williams says we can be the kind of leaders that reduce burdens not create them.

Omega: To be a spiritual warrior—an archetype in all traditions—you’ve said we need to “transcend the stories we make up in our own minds about ourselves and our shortcomings…. It’s the labels that we apply and that are applied to us that box us in, break us down, and wear us out.” How does this apply to women, specifically, who want to act in service to the greater good?

angel: We all get handed these stories, right? Every one of us—we’re born into a family, a time, a region, a culture. We get handed a story about what we look like. As we express our capacities we get stories about whether we are more or less capable. Not only do we get individual stories, we get collective stories. We miss a great deal when we only pay attention to the story that’s been handed to us and we’re not intimately connected to the deeper story of who we really are—as Buddhists say, before our mother was born. We come encoded with a deep memory of who we’ve always been but when we arrive on the scene our focus is turned toward the external. We forget we have that operating information about who we always are.

In this society and age—even as we have fought and pushed back and challenged it—women have taken on the story of being inferior to men, of the inability to accomplish things without men. Many of us have taken on the story of needing men in order to feel complete in a sexual or romantic way, and the story of the impact that the treatment of men and fathers have on us. This is something that we carry forward with us and there are limitless possibilities of what kind of stories those could be, good and bad.

But we have been uniquely gifted as women with an embodiment of receptive energy—the ability to be receptive where stillness can arise. Feminine energy enables containing and holding and opening up the space to allow more and others in. Because—whether we do it physically or not—life ushers forth, creativity ushers forth, from the feminine. And because of that we are intrinsically oriented against destruction of life and of creativity.

Of course there are natural, creative destruction cycles. But because creativity ushers forth from the space of the feminine we know that it isn’t our role to interrupt the creative flow. So it is women that are much more likely to insist on the justice that is necessary for us to have a thriving society that is spacious and equitable for all people. Because the energetic life force ushers forth from us, we understand that it all has a right to be here and a right to thrive until it’s natural, organic cycle comes to an end.

So women have a responsibility to set these stories—that hinder our responsibility and limit our role as the carriers of creativity, as the generators of a greater and greater container that can hold all of life—aside.

Because these stories are fairly random, right? I got born this time to these people in this culture in this society. And I would have been someone different had I taken up the stories of another time, another set of parents, another region, another culture, another side of the country, speaking another language. So how much really of that is you? So why don’t we start choosing the stories that we’re going to take on? Why don’t we choose the stories that most enable and empower us to meet the fullness of our role and responsibilities as the energetic force that supports life and thriving and creativity?

Omega: Is this kind of spirituality an antidote to the “individualistic materialism” you say has become a form of religion in Western culture?

angel: Yes. Like a spiritual warrior, you have to get trained in the skills to interrupt this incredible organism of destruction. So I’m not saying people should just run out and start doing any old thing, but rather develop one’s capabilities. The capacity of the heart and the skill sets to be able to say, “I’m not going to be slayed by playing the game with a fantasy that that’s how to stop it.”

When we withdraw belief in the destruction, it will collapse. We have a deep habit. All the new books in science say if you want to stop a habit the best way is to replace it with a new one. If we can begin to work on strengthening the habit of tuning into, and moving, in love and self-care—healing the places of generational pain and suffering; healing the places of division in our own hearts that keep us separate from the people in our lives, and the people across the road, and across the border—if we develop those habits it will be much easier to divest ourselves of the habit of belief in this system of destruction.

Omega: How do leadership, power, and hierarchy function together in an equitable and holistic community?

angel: I think we’re naïve when we try to flatten something. Hierarchy is a natural response to the diversity of needs that exist in society and the diversity of attention in social orders. In order to focus attention and advance the needs of societies, communities, organizations, homes, families, etcetera, true leadership is a relief. Because it frees each of us to pursue the things we love with a sense of being able to entrust the steering of the ship—not over the edge of the world but pressing forth into the glory of the horizon and the possibilities of new oases of nourishment and places where we can have shelter and be creative and thrive.

So the best placed leadership reduces burdens rather than being a form of oppression. That’s the relationship I have to leadership and hierarchy in its best expression.

In the best situations leadership is not a fixed idea—one person leads forever. Rather an emergent leadership in which whoever is most suited toward the task at hand is the leader, people that came before or have particular capacities in that moment, and we all are developed and well socialized enough to follow well, be responsive to that leader, and relate to leadership not as something that hinders us but something that moves us forward. So we give over our full resources to make that leadership successful because the leadership is acting on our behalf. It’s not separate from us.

In terms of like social organizations, any organizations that want to engage in a just society that is in any contact with people that are marginalized must have those populations within its decision making body. Not just to act or advise but in decision making, meaningful capacities to exact power. Or those organizations and institutions are irrelevant. They’re just waiting to find out, because they’re already irrelevant.

It’s a very Eurocentric Western paradigm—we know what people need, so we know how people think. No, we need to know how people move in a space, how they sit at a table. Do they sit in circles or across from each other or in rows? All of that teaches the cultural expression and diversity. Diversity opens new windows of insight into how can we organize space for the whole. Everybody gives up a little bit of room so we can all fit into the circle comfortably.

As it turns out, we all don’t need the same amount of space so it doesn’t have to be equal. It has to be equitable. We don’t drink or eat the same amount. Some of us need to be in the sun more often. Some of us need access to art. We’re really different.

If we’re willing to be complex in our solutions and our willingness to look at things, and not be slave driven by economic imperatives, and slow down and meet each other—we can do this.

We forget. I fully trust that the people that seem like they don’t want to meet us have just forgotten. And we should hold space for them so that when they come to their senses and they remember, it’s safe for them and we’re not against them. We’re for them.

Read the interview here: http://angelkyodowilliams.com/talks/how-to-lead-like-a-spiritual-warrior-an-interview-with-angel-kyodo-williams/

splintered road to gaza

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northern Sinai, Egypt. 30 december 2009. 7:50pm

here we are on the road to Gaza.

i am one of what ended up being 65. i was included in the original 100. i got the news that I was selected last night at 9pm. “pack your bags” my friend and coordinator of the media team said. “you’re on the list. you’re going.”

when they held a meeting to tell everyone, obviously it did not go down easily for many people for many different reasons. over 1300 people impossibly pared down to 100. and with only two hours to decide and make the selections. it could never be satisfactory. finally and still, we the 100 were to meet two buses at 7am.

we packed. wrote last email. some of us slept and woke again. but when we left our rooms at 6:15am, we were met with the news that the organizing team decided they’d made the wrong call in accepting the 100-person proposal without being able to consult everyone, etc. they were very sorry for the pain and challenge it had caused. so we would go to the bus, this perspective of the organizers would be shared and whoever still wanted to go would go.

long story short, the left thing happened. the people that felt we should all go or none of us should go began tactic after tactic to convince people they should not go. that they should get off the bus. that the foreign minister issued a statement saying the 100 chosen were selected because they were not dangerous but the remaining were. that the people would not want us to come. that the entire movement–all of the years of work–would be destroyed if we went.

it was not a conversation. it was not thoughtful. it was not nonviolent.

over the next 3 hours, much shuffling occurred. people getting off the bus. people getting on. people screaming that everyone should get on, screaming that everyone should get off. people just screaming. a few people took turns holding up a hastily scrawled sign that said “Get off the buses. Do you think 100 people represent 1400 Palestinians dead?”

very few of the people that had made it through the passport check already were firm all the way through. neither firmly on nor firmly off. there were a handful, though, that for whatever their reasons–and they were varied–knew without a doubt that they intended to go.

Zainab Salbi, the Iraqi author and leader for women offered, in a dignified and repectful way, “if you are here for humanitarian reasons, you should stay on. if you are here for political reasons, you should get off. they are both right.”

from the time I knew there was unsureness about whether fewer than all should go, I knew that if the bus went, I would go. if not, I would not.

looking into the ony heart that knows, I realize, with all the complexity, that I am not here for reasons humanitarian or political in the conventional sense. I am here by the call of Spirit. I am here as a priest. I am here in my role as a fellow human being Bearing Witness to what too much of the world has ignored for far too long.

so given the choice, if it were at all possible, I would bear this witness with my own eyes, being and heart.

having been a witness, perhaps my Jewish colleagues will no longer send me email telling of how well Palestinians are faring. perhaps when the debates are riddled with charecatuers and hyperbole about either Palestinians or Israelis, I will have the trust of my own, undoubtedly limited experience. perhaps i can be a credible voice that contributes to the voices raised for truth, even if that truth is just my own. and…perhaps the people will not want us there as was suggested by the off-Busers. be that so, I will Bear Witness to that, too.

what I bore witness to today was the hypocrisy that lives in our hearts when we speak of nonviolence, when we speak of choice, when we speak of basic respect. but I rest assured that my crossing the border to say “you are not forgotten” will not destroy a movement towards what we all–humanitarian, political, spiritual–wish for, to see the Gazan people, and through them all people, Thrive.

so I am ON the bus, and on a now-Splintered Road to Gaza. but my heart and my spirit are whole.

salaam.

ps, we just became 75. ten of some 30-odd folks that had come to Al-Arish hoping to get across the border but ending up on house arrest in a hotel were just transferred to our 2nd bus.

pps, i hear we’re officially 86.

—
copyright ©MMXI. angel Kyodo williams
changeangel: all things change. (sm)

angel Kyodo williams is a maverick teacher, author, social visionary and founder of Transformative Change.
she posts, tweets & blogs on all things change. permission granted to retweet, repost, repast & repeat with copyright and contact information intact.

Faceboook: Like angel on Facebook
Twitter: Follow angel on Twitter
Web: Find angel on the Web
Blog: new Dharma: live, love & lead from the heart
Train: Train Your Mind with angel

beyond the boycott

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60p-header1

telling whole foods you don’t buy it

a time for action: sometimes, no matter how many ways you try to describe a thing, you have to experience it to know what it really is. i’ve been talking about transformative change: what it is and isn’t. what it could look like and what it can make possible in the world. “beyond the boycott” is the birthplace of an experience of transformative change rooted in nonviolent action. rather than a campaign against Whole Foods, it’s a committment to real healthcare & wellness for all. it’s a campaign for a more “whole truth.” if you’re interested, join in the experience, and together, we’ll transform the world. -aKw

Two weeks ago, like now tens of thousands of others on Facebook, I ran across a post on Why You Should Boycott Whole Foods. If you’re like me, you may have experienced a deeply conflicted moment of some combination of shock, disgust, rage and, um…fear. Fear that you will now have to figure out where to get those admittedly pricey but picturesquely beautiful organic foods you’ve come to know and love and, for some of us, give your whole paycheck for.

I’m a stalwart soldier that can take a strong stand for what I believe in. The truth is though, I live in Berkeley, CA, the uber-progressive Republic rivaled only by my hometown of New York City for access to “whole foods” from places other than Whole Foods. As annoying as it might be, it won’t exactly be a hardship for me to go spend my dollars at Berkeley Bowl, Trader Joe’s and the stunning array of year-round weekly farmer’s markets.

But how true is that for thousands of us? Especially when Whole Foods is the only game in town—exactly what has made it such a national success—and exactly what I believe John Mackey was counting on when he wrote his now-infamous op-ed The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare.

Here’s another truth, sheepish as it may be: I Like Whole Foods. After kavetching like many about the high pricetag on everything from Abalone to Zinneas, and derisively calling it by its’ Whole Paycheck moniker every chance I could get, I surrendered to its wide open aisles, carefully stacked vine-ripened tomatoes and apparently happy-to-be-working-there-employees’ smiles. I do spend my whole paycheck, though not being able to afford health insurance frees up a little cash.

And since we’re on a truth roll: I like most of the eight points Mackey made in his piece. I certainly think they’re worth looking into. So I don’t think he’s evil and I definitely don’t think he’s stupid. In fact, I think he smartly calculated the risk of framing his plan as he did. I think John Mackey, like any businessman capable of building a $8B business did some accounting. He accounted for the risk of pissing off a central base. He accounted for sparking a firestorm at a critical point in the healthcare discourse, and I even think he accounted for some boycotts here and there. But he calculated that he would win. Why? Because:

  • Most Americans (myself included) have dwindled down to the attention span of a 140-character tweet.
  • Boycotts take time, patience and commitment to work. Understandably, we’re sorely lacking on most of that these days, and most impactfully:
  • Whole Foods IS the only game in town in too many places for a sustained boycott over an indefinite period of time.

So what to do? Something John Mackey hasn’t accounted for—take the Whole Foods Boycott to another level—tell Whole Foods “I Don’t Buy It.”

If given an invitation, they don’t respond meaningfully to the concerns of their offended core base and those impacted by his statements, we should all get together and go beyond the boycott. Sending peopleTO Whole Foods to SHOP, but DON’T BUY is an action that will get their attention. It’s time to increase the pressure and urgency on Whole Foods, leaving no doubt that we will not only withhold our dollars from them, but will take positive action to drain them of resources. But it’s also time for those of us pushing for change to do so in a way that actually seeks resolution, transforming the issue into an opportunity for real change: change that matters. Thus, any action taken should be thoughtful, respectful, measured and leveraged only if it is needed: if understanding where this is headed, Whole Foods won’t come to the table. Ignoring it away is not an option.

Just like it sounds, in a SHOP. DON’T BUY action, people would:

SHOP for groceries, then “pay” with a symbolic 60-Person bill and tell the cashier that their CEO, in effect, said this is acceptable:

  • that it’s OK that 60 people die every day without access to healthcare
  • that it’s OK that uninsured adults are 25% more likely to die prematurely
  • that it’s OK the lack of health insurance is the third leading cause of death for the near-elderly

Naturally they won’t accept the 60P so shoppers get to tell Whole Foods “I DON’T BUY It.”

  • DON’T BUY their food.
  • DON’T BUY their excuse for John Mackey’s irresponsible statements.
  • DON’T BUY any position that allows corporations to avoids responsibility for their leadership when offering a personal view under the banner of their brand.

Leave the store without the groceries.

This simple but powerful action can give us voice to acknowledge that, contrary to what Mackey suggests, healthcare IS a right. It is buying from Whole Foods that is a privilege.

Going beyond the boycott—which is hard to measure the impact of, potentially loses steam and often devolves into angry protest because people want to DO something—each of us can say “Whole Foods, I’m commited to take action because…

I don’t buy it that Mackey benignly used scare tactic phrases “socialism” and “government takeover.”

I don’t buy it that healthcare is something that every American shouldn’t have access to because “a careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right…”

I don’t buy it “that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health” even though a flawed system has sold access to healthcare from under the feet of 47 million people.

I don’t buy it “voluntary, tax-deductible donation” is sufficient to address that lack of access, and

I don’t buy it that even if “many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted” for the many reasons–systemic, market-driven, lack of information–that may be true, 60 people should die everyday.

And I don’t buy it for Whole Foods to explain this away as “personal opinions” because Mackey used his access and status as CEO to make his surprisingly irresponsible and self-serving statements, branding it “The Whole Foods Alternative…”

We can leverage our commitment to action for a more satisfying resolution to the betrayal of our trust in shared values. Now that their CEO has publicly stood against so many, what will Whole Foods stand for? In the absence of a meaningful response to their leader’s maybe personal, likely uninformed, but still irresponsible statements, love Whole Foods as we may—-in fact because we love them—-we need to hold them accountable. An organized, nonviolent Shop, Don’t Buy action can do that.

Finally, Mr. Mackey, I acknowledge that your “eight reforms” might work. But this is no longer only about lowering costs, it’s about life and our inalienable Rights—as a careful reading of the Declaration of Independence does reveal—to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. None of those are possible without our health. You’ve got good ideas but you didn’t have to slap us with them. Relationship repair starts with conversations. Can we talk?

Some powers that be, naysayers, talking heads and even John Mackey may believe Whole Foods can just wait out a boycott and continue business as usual without significant impact on their bottom line.

I don’t buy it. And you shouldn’t either.

Get details on Shop. Don’t Buy: http://bit.ly/idbi


—
copyright ©MMXI. angel Kyodo williams
changeangel: all things change. (sm)

angel Kyodo williams is a maverick teacher, author, social visionary and founder of Transformative Change.
she posts, tweets & blogs on all things change. permission granted to retweet, repost, repast & repeat with copyright and contact information intact.

Faceboook: Like angel on Facebook
Twitter: Follow angel on Twitter
Web: Find angel on the Web
Blog: new Dharma: live, love & lead from the heart
Train: Train Your Mind with angel

a more perfect union

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using our wholebody

Days after California’s Prop 8 was propped up by its Supreme Court, former vice president Dick Cheney unapologetically (of course) and righteously affirmed the novel idea that “freedom means freedom for everyone…people ought to be able to enter into any kind of union they wish.”

Many of us pulled the lever to cast our vote for an oddly hopeful promise of “a more perfect union” of our Divided States. We watch with our breath held, our hearts in our throats, ready to put our bodies on the line as our One Government lets individual Republics of imaginary divides decide one-by-one, state-by-state, who freedom means freedom for: our embodiment of a more perfect union catastrophically undone by an unwillingness to recognize our most precious union: the one of the heart.

In an historic constitutional referendum in Bolivia, the voters expressed their more perfect union through the powerful symbolic act of embracing a second official flag: the formerly illegal flag of the indigenous people and of the social movement that brought down the previous corrupt governments.

The seven-color Wiphala flag is arranged as 7×7 colors in a square:

Historically, it is the flag of the Incan territory that spanned Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina.
Culturally, it is the flag of the Aymara-Quechua Andean and Amerindian people.
Politically, it is pan-indigenous, multi-ethnic, cross-class and trans-issue. With it’s similarity to the Gay rainbow flag and use for urban social movements, it is becoming an international symbol for diversity and solidarity, equality and equity, dignity and reciprocity…all coming together.

A celebration of the order of cosmos, symbol of life and fertility, it’s rainbow covers the spectrum of colors and represents the honoring of all that should matter to a society:

  • RED for man and the earth
  • ORANGE for society and its expression through culture and education
  • YELLOW for energy and strength through collectivity
  • WHITE for time and community transformation
  • GREEN for natural resouces and the land
  • BLUE for the heavens and natural phenomena
  • Last, most powerfully and sanely, VIOLET for harmonious governance and self-determination of the people.

Taken as a whole and liberated from the neo-colonial closet, it represents that more perfect union that we should all strive for in our quest for a fair and equitable society.

Some worry that Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous President, may be inadvertently diminishing the symbol, as savvy politicians have been wont to do, putting a cursory end to movements of the people by absorbing their symbols and slogans into government. Our own Civil Rights Movement came to an abrupt, stunted and co-opted halt on Lyndon B. Johnson’s appropriative declaration that “we shall overcome.”

But as powerful as symbols, phrases and slogans are, they only derive their energy from the wellspring of the people they represent. People that don’t just stand in the truth, but express it through the way they live. And just as “words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights” the more perfect union we seek for this country will not arise from a speech, a bailout, or even a healthcare plan.

What it will arise from is the embodiment of that more perfect union by folks that know and act on what’s right: like the whites and blacks that fraternized in backwoods jook joints, using rhythm to find harmony. From learning how to dance together, they eventually found the ability to pray, sit and stand together “always at great risk.”

It will arise from the embodiment of principles in and by the people that show up every day to “narrow the gap” between the hope for our society and “the reality of (our) time.” It will arise through the embodiment of actions that manifest the longing held in our hearts, the vision that we cannot yet see, but can feel the truth of in our very core. Thus with great faith, we reach inward, act outward, and move toward it. Our more perfect union will arise from within the people.

Some think this union will come as the result of the broad view of Analysis: political, social, grounded. Others believe we’ll be brought together by the deep current of Spirit: fundamental, ethical, rooted.

In the end, it will express itself as nothing that we currently know of, but rather as a constellation, integration and distillation of all. It will be individually-particularized, collectively-driven and universally-appealing. It will be a social movement because we are social creatures that can form the shape that expresses what we wish to become. It will be a cultural movement because together we create the conditions in which new ways can thrive. It will be self-determined and other-honoring. It will be systemic, endemic and talismanic. More than anything, it will, because it must, be transformative. Our more perfect union will be neither this nor that. Leaving nothing and none of us behind, it will be WholeBody: a Third Way that embraces and embodies being fully Human: ever-evolutionary, ever-revolutionary, ever-dynamic and always Divine.

From there, state-by-state and heart-by-heart, in our more perfect union, we can get Dick Cheney’s wish granted.

Jai Bhim! We shall overcome…Si, se puede. A Better World is Possible. Venceremos…Yes, we can. By any means necessary: Power to the People. Power by the People. Power FROM the People.


—
copyright ©MMXI. angel Kyodo williams
changeangel: all things change. (sm)

angel Kyodo williams is a maverick teacher, author, social visionary and founder of Transformative Change.
she posts, tweets & blogs on all things change. permission granted to retweet, repost, repast & repeat with copyright and contact information intact.

Faceboook: Like angel on Facebook
Twitter: Follow angel on Twitter
Web: Find angel on the Web
Blog: new Dharma: live, love & lead from the heart
Train: Train Your Mind with angel

this is our time

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realamericanidols

will the real american idols please stand up

It’s our time.

Though it may seem hard to discern through the economic debris that is still falling, that so many of us are picking through the pieces of, this is our time.

For far too long we have labored for justice and lurched towards change with far too little resources, too little cohesion, too few wins too far and few between. But labor we had to—making do with what we had, holding it together best we could, savoring the wins and weathering the losses—thus lurch we did and change we made.

A Black Organizer is in the White House. Justice is getting off the bench and in the Game.

It’s our time.

The era of the lowly grunt that toils for justice being the under-appreciated, underpaid underdog is officially overrated. We are now the wunderkinds that can capture the imagination of our nation with our unwavering comittment to Hope, resounding call for Freedom and heart-stopping effort to reveal Truth, Justice and a truly New American Way. It’s Easy as ABC: rooted by Awareness, grounded in Balance, acting from Center.

We, the willing practitioners of a transformative social change, are the only ones who can shift the current paradigm. We are the moral & inspirational frontline of America. Like no other movement before us, we span the globe, defy description and transcend all boundaries: some of us wealthy in cash, some in culture, we are cross-class and transgendered, Caucasian and Cablinasian, neo-social and hyper-spiritual, we bow at the altar of Authenticity. Our movement has been moved by door-knockers and dreamers, academics and activists, poets and pundits, writers and rappers, EDs and PhDs: we are all One. We’ve been a Tribe with a Quest to self-liberate even the antidote of what ails us, because complete freedom is the only freedom that matters.

It’s our time.

Auditions are over. We’re front and center stage. We must stand up and stand out. We need to take our rightful place as the Real American Idols: the exemplars of excellence that know there is no justice if justice isn’t for all.

We’ll create a Mad World in which Adam can take home the prize AND Steve for a Union in any State of his choosing because there’s a Whole Lotta Love and this town is big enough for all of it. Our children will want to grow up to be aligned agents of change, not morally bankrupt bankers, broken-down mortgage brokers or exposed wizards of Wall Street caught with their hands on the levers of peoples’ lives. While they all lined their pockets with peoples’ pain, We lay the path for possibility and prosperity. We… are…the…champions.

It is our time.

We’ll lift every voice to sing.

We’ll dance with whole body, mind and spirt.

We’ll shine from the inside, radiating self-awareness, self-care and self-love.

The crowds will go wild. Sitting on the edges of their seats, they’ll cheer us on, spellbound by the marriage of head and heart, fierce commitment to humanity and strength of humility that wins where it matters, even when the scoreboard says otherwise.

They’ll tweet, twitter, digg, fan and follow the triple-threat talent that steals the show every time:

— Our courage to take on Responsibility for the work that needs to be done.
— Our conviction to be Accountable to our co-workers, communities, and most of all, ourselves.
— Our clarity of Purpose that is the container of our intention and the vision for our success.

This Radical Relationship to self, other and the Mother is ecological, evolutionary and embodied.

This is our time.

Well-coiffed and, dare I say, well-dressed, we ARE the bling, we are the Rock Stars, the Sexy Mothers and Mutha…(you get the drift), and Mike wants to be like Us.

When the viewers telly and the texts are tallied, we’ll be judged by true measures of greatness: how skillfully we exhibit grace under pressure, wield power with precision and receive feedback—even when it seems negative and harsh—with aplomb. Simon says: take what’s yours and release the rest.

And when the small wins elude us (as they will) we’ll flash our pearly whites and see the opportunity to learn from our missteps, sharpen our skill and deepen our practice. We’ll accept defeat gracefully as we prepare for the next round with abiding love in our hearts, joy in our spirits, compassion for others and equanimity in the face of it all.

Because we know that when met in this way, two steps back can propel us a giant leap forward. We know Victory is ours because justice has ALWAYS been on our side, and now, finally, we need only make it so for now, now now…

NOW is our time.


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copyright ©MMXI. angel Kyodo williams
changeangel: all things change. (sm)

angel Kyodo williams is a maverick teacher, author, social visionary and founder of Transformative Change.
she posts, tweets & blogs on all things change. permission granted to retweet, repost, repast & repeat with copyright and contact information intact.

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Blog: new Dharma: live, love & lead from the heart
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