Coming Home Meditation Tomorrow @ 9am EST ~ Happy Fourth

Back to our regularly scheduled program, folks

Hello Folks,

Tomorrow we’ll meet at our regular time for Coming Home meditation practice: 9am EST. I’m looking forward to getting back on a semi-regular schedule with practice and writing after a couple of beautiful weeks of travel and adventure.

I’m not yet sure what our theme will be. It hasn’t been clear to me tonight. Sometimes it comes in the morning. I was playing with the idea of FREEDOM, but haven’t been able to find the essence of that concept in the body, yet. I keep thinking about a Native American man I saw speak at the Brooklyn Museum a few years ago. He said (I am paraphrasing), “In our language there’s no word for freedom. When you are in touch with the interconnectedness of everything you know there really is no such thing as freedom from anything else. Freedom seems to require an oppressor; someone or something to be free from. It’s a funny thing to build a country on.”

I think I felt a little numb and disconnected to the celebrations today. I am—like many Americans—conflicted about who we are and what we stand for (if anything) these days. It seems like the idea of America is crumbling…maybe has already crumbled. Many people are still fighting for their idea of America. But, they don’t seem to be holding the same idea of what it means to be a place where “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are unalienable rights given to all humans by their Creator, and which governments are meant to protect.

Months ago, David and I held a funeral for capitalism. We did it on Clubhouse. It was beautiful, ritualistic, a piece of performance art. But, we meant it. We were ready to put it to rest. I wonder if it’s time for a funeral for America? Maybe we can lay to rest the idea of a country that we once held, but now seems has run its course…at least in the form we have now. We could eulogize America and pay homage to what IS and WAS great about it. We could honor it and then gently close this era of empire. With the burial, we get a chance to lay our differences and grievances to rest. And we allow all of it to go back into the earth, to be composted into something new and life-affirming.

Obviously, it needs a bit more thought. Or maybe it just needs some willing participants. Are you ready to attend a funeral for America? Are you ready to bury the past? Maybe start fresh? As with any beloved, we will miss her. We will miss this dream of democracy. We will mourn her. Perhaps, this is what is needed to really get in touch with what she still means to us. Maybe we can agree on something from this place?

I do notice one interesting thing that arises for me as I play with the idea…I feel a sense of panic about letting go of the story that America is holding the flame of democracy for the world, that if America falls, the whole democratic experiment fails and then where are we—then, maybe the specter of authoritarian rule that looms large; that America has kept at bay (or so we’re told) takes over. Is this actually true? Was it ever true? It’s a really interesting thing to think about. Scary, but fascinating. Are we clinging to an idea that is now out of date? Was it ever true? When we’re fighting for America now…what are we fighting for.

Here is a 100-year old war veteran in a state of disbelief and despair over the loss of what he thought he was fighting for. My own grandfather fought in WWII also. I’m curious what wisdom he would have to share with me today.

Mostly, I’m optimistic and I see this as a chance to come to a higher level of coherence around these beautiful ideas; to create new forms of governance in the process; and maybe even become a new version of America as it was originally conceived…the America we desperately need now.

After the funeral for capitalism, David and I began to notice separately and then shared with each other that we’d really cut a cord. We were really free (and still are) from the distortions and control levers in the self-terminating, capitalistic system that is running us into the ground. We liberated ourselves from that oppressor. Maybe a funeral for America would liberate us from the very idea of freedom—from oppression—that has us bound up, still fighting. It might just free us from what that Native American speaker was quick to point out…a funny thing to build a country on.