What a juicy question! Thanks for offering it to me Christine Cruz Guiao, my dear friend brilliant activist spirit guide leader.
For a change, I'm thinking out loud since I haven't had the time to figure it all out and lay out my five point analysis....
Blessings are for everyone. Privileges are for some people or groups
Everyone is blessed but may or not know it / feel it / trust it. However, the power of accessing those blessings is up to us, which can often happen through gratitude and prayers. Privileges are bestowed onto groups or identities by structures - current and historical - and everybody who shares that identity has those privileges (of course it varies). For example, people of color with wealth experience racism and also class privilege. All people of color are different and may also have shared experiences, positive and negative.
This makes me think about how to define a Blessing. For me, it shows up as a moment when I suddenly see it all come together. I see a good thing that is happening, and I see how it is connected to a number of seemingly unconnected things. It appears like a "If I hadn't made this exact series of decisions, I wouldn't be here or see this or know this - good thing happening or bad thing averted." And because of that line of thought, I see the work of God. Like magic, but real.
A privilege is like getting into a fancy club for free, and feeling you are a special individual because of it, or because of your unique specialness you got in. But it's not actually free, you just paid for it in a myriad of diffused ways - by accepting that others deserve less, or believing that you deserve more, by taking credit for work that is visible but was done by a lot of people who may be more behind-the-scenes. To get into and stay in a privileged club, you have to accept there is an "us" who belongs here and a "them" to keep out. If you try to give up the privilege, usually that's not possible because it's not actually yours, it's the structural fountain that will keep giving you more, asked or unasked. And if you try to share it more broadly, then it can open doors that create a dissonance in the "us" and "them". This should happen! Yay! But also, you can't exactly "share" because like I said - it's not yours inherently. And the sharing can make you seem like a benefactor to "them" which has a strange way of reinforcing us and them.
Unlike blessings. Blessings are abundant and endless. I truly believe that. Privileges also operate a lot on a material level, whereas blessings can do that but are also actually creating change at a deeper spirit level. I think it's hard for us to fathom the infiniteness of God's presence, attention and love. When we work on getting or giving up privileges, we are still stuck at an earthly level and actually struggle a lot. We feel our differences acutely, we feel powerless, we feel powerful, we feel confused. When we are working on knowing our blessings and believe that we are ALWAYS blessed, we confront our own selves. We confront our own barriers to loving, own sense of deserving and how it has been shaped by the world, our sense of can and cannot, our potential. When we face our selves internally, we realize our depths. We have the potential to realize our own infiniteness. We dwell in our dignity. We revel in our interconnectedness. If we have felt this, it changes our relationships to ourselves and others, and to the concept of privilege. The things that divide human beings from each other and from the alive body of the earth are the illusions, and our connectedness, self-love, and dignity is real. (So much of this is informed by spiritual teachings by family, community, and books, and recently by somatics).
When we know what is real, we are delighted to do the "work" of unearthing this golden healing light so that others may thrive in it, as we have. Who can ever doubt that the sun reaches everyone and has enough warmth for all of us, right? This is what knowing my blessings feels like to me. And it feels different from the ways I hear social justice work being talked about in the movement. What I'm starting to hear integrate the two is really in the realm of spirit, it's been the missing link.
///
Now, an update on the commitment. This is hard! and good! if I hadn't committed, I wouldn't have written tonight. Something about this daily writing thing helps me to keep it moving, which is what Zara Chaudary taught me and is one of the best things I've ever learned. I'm not pausing forever on the previous question, or re-writing a post or adding to the conversation it started. I'm just pondering out loud, it's a process in process, and then I'm on to the next question that engages my heart.
Also, given that I usually write first thing in the day with a fresh mind, or last thing in the quiet of the night, I'm starting to blog so late that I have a mental "gotta finish in 20 minutes" attitude. This mindset is actually helpful for keeping it speedy. At some point, I'd like to get deeper, but hey! that's what books are for not blogs :)
For a change, I'm thinking out loud since I haven't had the time to figure it all out and lay out my five point analysis....
Blessings are for everyone. Privileges are for some people or groups
Everyone is blessed but may or not know it / feel it / trust it. However, the power of accessing those blessings is up to us, which can often happen through gratitude and prayers. Privileges are bestowed onto groups or identities by structures - current and historical - and everybody who shares that identity has those privileges (of course it varies). For example, people of color with wealth experience racism and also class privilege. All people of color are different and may also have shared experiences, positive and negative.
This makes me think about how to define a Blessing. For me, it shows up as a moment when I suddenly see it all come together. I see a good thing that is happening, and I see how it is connected to a number of seemingly unconnected things. It appears like a "If I hadn't made this exact series of decisions, I wouldn't be here or see this or know this - good thing happening or bad thing averted." And because of that line of thought, I see the work of God. Like magic, but real.
A privilege is like getting into a fancy club for free, and feeling you are a special individual because of it, or because of your unique specialness you got in. But it's not actually free, you just paid for it in a myriad of diffused ways - by accepting that others deserve less, or believing that you deserve more, by taking credit for work that is visible but was done by a lot of people who may be more behind-the-scenes. To get into and stay in a privileged club, you have to accept there is an "us" who belongs here and a "them" to keep out. If you try to give up the privilege, usually that's not possible because it's not actually yours, it's the structural fountain that will keep giving you more, asked or unasked. And if you try to share it more broadly, then it can open doors that create a dissonance in the "us" and "them". This should happen! Yay! But also, you can't exactly "share" because like I said - it's not yours inherently. And the sharing can make you seem like a benefactor to "them" which has a strange way of reinforcing us and them.
Unlike blessings. Blessings are abundant and endless. I truly believe that. Privileges also operate a lot on a material level, whereas blessings can do that but are also actually creating change at a deeper spirit level. I think it's hard for us to fathom the infiniteness of God's presence, attention and love. When we work on getting or giving up privileges, we are still stuck at an earthly level and actually struggle a lot. We feel our differences acutely, we feel powerless, we feel powerful, we feel confused. When we are working on knowing our blessings and believe that we are ALWAYS blessed, we confront our own selves. We confront our own barriers to loving, own sense of deserving and how it has been shaped by the world, our sense of can and cannot, our potential. When we face our selves internally, we realize our depths. We have the potential to realize our own infiniteness. We dwell in our dignity. We revel in our interconnectedness. If we have felt this, it changes our relationships to ourselves and others, and to the concept of privilege. The things that divide human beings from each other and from the alive body of the earth are the illusions, and our connectedness, self-love, and dignity is real. (So much of this is informed by spiritual teachings by family, community, and books, and recently by somatics).
When we know what is real, we are delighted to do the "work" of unearthing this golden healing light so that others may thrive in it, as we have. Who can ever doubt that the sun reaches everyone and has enough warmth for all of us, right? This is what knowing my blessings feels like to me. And it feels different from the ways I hear social justice work being talked about in the movement. What I'm starting to hear integrate the two is really in the realm of spirit, it's been the missing link.
///
Now, an update on the commitment. This is hard! and good! if I hadn't committed, I wouldn't have written tonight. Something about this daily writing thing helps me to keep it moving, which is what Zara Chaudary taught me and is one of the best things I've ever learned. I'm not pausing forever on the previous question, or re-writing a post or adding to the conversation it started. I'm just pondering out loud, it's a process in process, and then I'm on to the next question that engages my heart.
Also, given that I usually write first thing in the day with a fresh mind, or last thing in the quiet of the night, I'm starting to blog so late that I have a mental "gotta finish in 20 minutes" attitude. This mindset is actually helpful for keeping it speedy. At some point, I'd like to get deeper, but hey! that's what books are for not blogs :)
No comments:
Post a Comment