Card of the Day: Three of Swords
The image is clear, isn’t it? Pain, sorrow, heartbreak, betrayal. The thing all of us are avoiding in a culture that has elevated avoidance and distraction to a national religion.
It was Resmaa Menakem, a somatic experiencing therapist, who first introduced me to the idea of white racial trauma in his book My Grandmother’s Hands. It registered in my mind at the time as true. And surprising. Over the last year or so, that initial cognitive registering has been deepening into a visceral feeling. Last night I was taking in some homework for an online course I’m taking called Before We Were White. I was reading a piece by David Dean, one of the instructors, called “Roots Deeper Than Whiteness.” At a certain point, I closed my eyes and recognized the activation in my body—a surging and vibrating. I felt sick and heartbroken.
Over the past several months, I’ve been trying to find some history about what happened to indigenous Europeans—my deep ancestors. And here was this meticulously researched article laying out a clear and cogent analysis of the connections between racism, capitalism, and the way ethnic Europeans became “white.” When I got to the middle of a video lecture digging into the social engineering inherent in the US colonies’ first anti-miscegenation laws, that’s when the sick feeling washed through me.
It’s going to take time for me to really take all of this in. To metabolize the history of violence and betrayal and loss of my ancestors’ cultural, religious and social traditions—living in harmony with the Earth and the seasons, with pleasure, celebration, feasting and festivals. I mean, there’s so much that it feels absurd to even try to articulate anything about it.
In Sunday’s white affinity group meeting at the Monastery, a dear friend shared a teaching: “The more you feel, the more you heal.” Feeling this is big. I’m not sure I can, if I know how. I’m not sure I can do it alone. Nevertheless feeling the grace of being seen by this card today.
