September 2020: Hope is a Discipline
Hope is a discipline. —Mariame Kaba
Hello friends,
Tomorrow is the autumn equinox, although fall feels like it’s already well underway here in the Catskills.
During these last days of summer, I’ve been remembering a line from Kathleen Norris’s memoir, The Cloister Walk: “God wanted me empty, alone, silent, and watchful.” That’s largely how I’ve passed these last couple months—communing with the Dark in all Her forms, with my own silence and solitude. Watching the Earth burn and flood; watching crimes against humanity unfold in real-time. Navigating harms I’ve committed and received. Appreciating nature, beauty, kindness and grace. Asking how I double down on my humanity in such a time.
I’ve also been doing some electoral work with Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)—a multiracial, majority-white network of groups and individuals working to undermine white supremacy and work for racial justice. They’re offering ready-made actions that anyone can take with a computer, a phone and a few hours on Thursday evenings and/or Saturday afternoons between now and November 3rd. They provide excellent training and support.
The campaign we’re working on is called Swing Georgia Left. Georgia is in play this November, with two open senate seats. SURJ is heeding the call of Black leadership and calling white rural working class and poor folks who aren’t typically organized by the Democratic Party, making sure they’re registered to vote (if they want change, that is) and getting them hooked up with a local organization called Southern Crossroads. (Do you know where the term redneck comes from? I didn’t!)
Feel free to reach out if you’re interested and want to learn more about how the phone banks work. Working for racial justice in solidarity with people from all over the country has been a powerful antidote to hopelessness, anxiety and despair for me.
To those of you who continue to support my work through generous donations and purchasing artwork—thank you from the bottom of my heart. Truly, it means so much to me.
In love and solidarity,
Shea (aka Zuiko Ikusei)
she/they [why is this here?]
What’s Inspiring Me Now
- Praying the rosary. No one is more surprised about this than I am.
- Now is the Hour of Her Return: Poems in Praise of the Divine Mother Kali by Clark Strand. He wrote these poems in 2011, but the book was just published last month, because…well, now is the hour of Her return. I read one and cry. And then I read another one and cry. It’s felt really good to cry.
- The documentary Disclosure. SO MUCH I didn’t know.
- The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor. I listened to Brene Brown interview Taylor on her podcast—wow. If you want to understand the connection between self-love and social justice, this is a great place to start.
- Mona Eltahawy’s FEMINIST GIANT newsletter: global feminist resistance to patriarchal fuckery
- adrienne maree brown and her sister Autumn Brown are back with a new format for their amazing podcast How to Survive the End of the World. Skills we all need for the apocalypse.
- The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain. Homo sapiens worshiped the Goddess for 30,000 years…and then stopped. At least in the Western world. A wild ride through one theory about why.
What’s inspiring you now? I would love to hear about it and include it in my next newsletter…
Tarot Card(s) of the Month: 9 & 10 of Cups
This is a combo I’ve been meaning to talk about for a little while now, after listening to astrologer Rob Brezsny talk about the 10 of Cups with Amanda Yates Garcia on her podcast.
The Cups are the suit of the water element—oceans, rivers, streams and swamps; emotions; intuition; dreams and psychic phenomena; relationships, nurturing, and care; and our connection to Source, however we understand that. If the Ace of Cups is the Holy Grail—what our heart longs for that sets us off on a Quest—the 10 of Cups is the completion of that cycle. What does it look like when we fulfill our quest, when we attain our heart’s desire?
I always think it’s interesting to note that the 9’s in all four suits relate to IX The Hermit, the ninth card in the Major Arcana, which depicts the archetypal journey of the soul. All the 10’s relate to X The Wheel of Fortune. And in the 9 and 10 of Cups, I think those connections are especially poignant and apparent.
The 9 of Cups is sometimes called the “wish-fulfilling card,” and the dandelion depicted here suggests that, too. Pick a dandelion, make a wish, and blow. They are the hardiest of hardy plants, able to thrive in adverse and diverse conditions. When we get to this point in the cycle of the Cups suit, our wishes are hardy, too, and the soil is fertile. Along the way, we’ve connected with others, experienced the challenges of relationship, emotional apathy and dysregulation, endured confusion and learned to walk away from what no longer fulfills us. By the time we get to the 9 of Cups, we’ve returned to our solitude (like IX The Hermit), comfortable with what we find there.
Jessa Crispin, in her Little White Book to the Spolia Tarot, has this to say about the 9 of Cups: “There’s a spiritual element here, as there is with all of the cups cards. Imagine this as ecstasy, a personal connection to the divine that needs no intermediaries.” We know for ourselves, and that knowing fulfills us, even when it doesn’t feel good. We love who we actually are, even when we might not like ourselves very much in a moment. What more could we wish for?
That’s where the 10 of Cups comes in. All the 10’s indicate the completion of a cycle…and the start of a new one (see X Wheel of Fortune). Life is a cycle, a circle—birth, growth, decay, death, rebirth. The Cups are about water: flow, movement, change, swelling and receding, changing form to fill the container. In this depiction, we see ten golden cups pouring their unique contents into a swirling, multicolored center, a spiral. Is it moving up and out? Or down and in? Yes.
In Genjokoan, 13th-century Zen master Eihei Dogen writes, “When the truth does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient. When the truth fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing.” To me, these words convey the essence of the space between these two cards. In our own fulfillment, we realize that something is missing. If the 9 of Cups depicts the joy and fulfillment we experience in our solitude, the 10 of Cups pulls us outward into a communal joy and fulfillment.
None of us can be free until all of us are free. But what is “free”? I think it’s a really important conversation to have with ourselves and with everyone in our life. What does liberation look like? What does it feel like? What conditions does it need? These are some of the most fulfilling conversations I have these days. Throughout the summer, I’ve been experiencing the way these two cards can form a loop, feeding each other. When I feel fulfilled and content within myself, I long to heed the call toward collective action. In taking collective action, I learn more deeply how to be in relationship with others, which deepens my relationship with myself.
Working with SURJ on abolition and electoral campaigns has been a deeply pleasurable experience. It feeds me and makes me want to come back for more. Before an afternoon spent phone banking, I’m usually nervous. When the action is over, I’m elated. Part of that is feeling good that I’ve taken action around something that’s important to me. And part of it is the nourishment that comes from learning new political and organizing skills, feeling supported in the work, and the feeling of being in relationship with people around collective liberation.
Since July, I’ve been working with a group of folks on planning, coordinating and facilitating abolition actions on a weekly basis. None of us have ever met in real life. We’re from New York, Oregon, Kentucky, and California. I know next to nothing about their personal lives. And the love among us—felt and explicitly expressed—is deep. We don’t need to know a lot about each other to love each other. The work we’re doing together, and the way we do it—with respect, support, honesty, clear communication, and accountability—is our love. Each of us pours out the contents of our golden cup and it’s always exactly enough for what we need to do.
Find out more about my tarot work.
