let's work together...

This may seem upside down, but here goes: NOW is the time for all people of good will to fortify ourselves with love, focus our attention on creative ways to circumvent the backwards SCOTUS decisions re: reproductive rights and gun control, follow the witness of Indigenous communities and African-American allies into new expressions of grief as well as solidarity (not appropriate their rituals and traditions but rather learn from them), fund alternative strategies so that NO woman lacks realistic and affordable options, face the fact that life in these United States is going to get worse before it gets better, and faithfully live into new expressions of community, trust, vulnerability, and resistance. There are options even as the religious and political right feverishly tries to impose their harsh theocracy upon us all. Our response to this brave new world will be costly on many levels. But, the alternative to accepting the status quo would be worse.

Over the past 50 years, I have witnessed an incremental loss of inclusive, safe, and creative places for progressive people to celebrate in solidarity, lament our shared pain, and renew our souls through relationships of trust and compassion. This is not true for the right wing of the Western world. They consistently find ways to strengthen one another in their mass gatherings. As was reported during the truckers blockade that spread like wild fire throughout Canada, many of those who participated confessed to being surprised at the loving welcome they experienced in these new societies of protest: there were rituals and songs, there were dances and feasts, too, so much so that a festival atmosphere of inclusion ruled the day. On the left, we tend to come together more like a circular firing squad than the Beloved Community. (Thank God Bobby Weir and others have taken Dead and Company on tour this summer! At least for a few hours everyone who shows up will be an equal in pursuit of peace and love.)

Don't misunderstand: I know there are hundreds, if not thousands, of small grassroots associations striving for solidarity and struggling to be heard over the bullhorns of our emerging fascism. But reality in the so-called progressive realm tends to favor ideological purity over strategic coalitions. With the exception of BLM and the Poor Peoples Movemnt, 2022 feels like it's WE (fill in the blank re: your discrete concern) against EVERYONE else. But as the semi-spontaneous protest currently taking place in front of the Supreme Court at this moment makes clear: we can no longer accept the MY way of the HIGH way approach to social change. How did Canned Heat put it right after Woodstock? "Let's work together..."

I genuinely don't understand why or how the forces of progressive engagement in the USA chose to abandon culture and spirituality; but for the most part the animating energy of creativity and the arts has died on the vine. Twenty years ago, Mako Fujimura, a theologically conservative visual artist, urged us to reclaim beauty again in the arts rather than naked self-expression. Not that our distinct charisms are to be buried, hidden, or censored, but that they come into birth in ways that bind us together rather than polarize in crude and/or sensationalistic ways. Another conservative religious and cultural warrior, the late Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, proclaimed to the world in his Nobel Prize speech that Dostoevsky was right: beauty CAN save the world. 

Dostoyevsky once let drop an enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world.” What is this? For a long time it seemed to me simply a phrase. How could this be possible? When in the bloodthirsty process of history did beauty ever save anyone, and from what? Granted, it ennobled, it elevated—but whom did it ever save?There is, however, a particular feature in the very essence of beauty—a characteristic trait of art itself: The persuasiveness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable; it prevails even over a resisting heart. 

A political speech, an aggressive piece of journalism, a program for the organization of society, a philosophical system, can all be constructed—with apparent smoothness and harmony—on an error or on a lie. What is hidden and what is distorted will not be discerned right away. But then a contrary speech, journalistic piece, or program, or a differently structured philosophy, comes forth to join the argument, and everything is again just as smooth and harmonious, and again everything fits. And so they inspire trust—and distrust.

(read the speech in its entirety here: https://isi.org/intercollegiate-review/solzhenitsyn-explains-ldquobeauty-will-savetheworldrdquo/#:~:text=It%20shall%20be%

20we%20who,the%20entirety%20of%20its%20purposes%3F&text=It%20is%20like%

20that%20small,a%20realm%20forever%20beyond%20reach.)

Like other artists concerned with cultural renewal in pursuit of a safe, sustainable society, I trust that this is more of a birthing moment than just a chaotic death sentence - but make no mistake there IS death happening all around us, too. That's a piece of what is driving our stagnant and retrograde politics: fear of living through the end of one way of being where mostly wealthy, white men call the shots for everyone else. You can see evidence of the new world struggling to be born. But it appears it's going to be a complicated and extended birth so we need to equip ourselves with resources that will allow us to hang tough during the long haul. 

Part of our small musical ensemble's raison d'etre is cultural and civic renewal of beauty as bread for the journey. If you want to join our small get together this Sunday @ 4 pm, there's still room for a few more. Drop me an email and I'll give you the details.