REALITY UNVEILED - January 6, 2021
“Like the exposed roots of a tree, reality unveiled can be many things at the same time: sharp, smooth, ugly, beautiful, painful, and healing.” Richard Rohr
Yesterday, before the watching globe, a brutal swath of reality shockingly unveiled the darker side of our humanity. Our cultural struggle to control the sinister shadows of power, violence and hurt-ego materialized in a psychic and physical assault of massive proportion in the attack on the Capitol in D.C. We will be reeling in the effects for generations. Curiously, despite my initial knee-jerk reaction to retire back to Canada, I write here to mark January 6 as the day I became an American citizen, joining our democracy in heart, soul, and body. Why?
Yesterday unveiled some of the shadowy sides of my being and now holds me accountable as one who has up until now mostly eschewed my role in politics and in social justice issues. It is now time to struggle out of the silent majority and speak. It is not Trump who scares me most, it has long been clear to me that his tragic broken persona would eventually decompensate into some form of self-imposed narcissistic destruction. It is Mike Pence who most challenges me. I have often wondered how Pence and millions of kind, Christian friends could follow along silently or join as enabling partner with such a ghastly caricature of godly leadership. Yet, a significant part of me has stood in the sidelines of privilege watching, often mocking, considering myself uninvolved in this country that welcomed me as an alien ten years ago. Instead, I have sheltered under the banner of being a ‘global’ citizen and kept my distance in the wings of power and entitlement. There is a passive side of my being that says “not me” in order to avoid the obvious collisions in the fight for freedom to support liberty and justice for all. I have known we surely can do better together with all our differences; I have known without a doubt that we are One for a long time!
Last night my emotions unraveled as we watched a multitude of real bodies attempting to find their way to express the authentic core of their unique beings. While the actions of both the mob outside and the political fracas inside were outlined in play-by-play television moves, I felt some tide turn inside me. I turned to wonder about my own response while my husband and I who lean into center from either side of the proverbial aisle, mindlessly chugged down a good bottle of red wine. It’s painful to say it, but one of the elephants in the room was that one of his colleagues lurked somewhere in Washington in this chaotic uprising of pro-Trump supporters.
As Richard Rohr said reality unveiled can be many things at the same time: sharp, smooth, ugly, beautiful, painful, and healing. Today I choose to live from the wholeness of all this darkness and all the light. Why does it often take a firestorm for us humans to be true to our better selves? As much as it is bittersweet to watch the political lemmings run out of the White House at the final hour, I was truly grateful to finally hear a clear voice issuing from Mike Pence. I trust yesterday’s reckoning for him and for all of us, will open the way for a renewed democratic process where every kind of voice can be heard, respected, and also questioned. Last evening on the floor, we witnessed so many shattered beings of Light trying to find words to express their better selves. Let’s not wait for the next uprising to show our angels of real self. It is time now to unfurl our multifaceted voices and ask all the questions we have been privately mouthing as chameleon-like beings of belonging. Let’s show up in all our resplendent colors of beauty and pain, to stop, look, and deeply listen to each other.
Speaking on my own behalf, I have danced on the edge of many authoritarian power systems all my life. I was born, educated, married, and gave birth within a caste system of unique privilege. I will die and pass on this legacy in this unchallenged system unless I find a way to reconcile all my unconscious bias as a woman with white religious skin who was taught to remain subservient and docile, yet who also quietly and strongly manipulates her world for her own good and for that of others. Like Pence, I have been a nice-enough person who serves well, who works hard to please, and often in protecting myself from conflict, I have unconsciously resisted the darker shades of experience rather than to wildly risk upsetting the apple cart I feed off. I am deeply distressed that Trump’s psychic-dead-world has been propped up by the life-support of much of my world - my family, my people of the Book. Will the church, the synagogue, or the ashram continue to birth a fear-based cocoon for violent men of all colors and for frightened women to run back to the safe harbor of community-as-we-have-always-known-it? Or, out of this devastating time of upheaval, can we re-emerge as a welcoming community of struggling, broken-open humans ready to learn from our shadow-selves?
Today I speak for my own soul’s sake and shout boldly to a generation of ‘Mike Pence’ women and men who from bubbles of denial have been complicit in supporting the strongholds of dominant systems awash in self-righteousness and hierarchy. Lenin once called those people who hang around the periphery of a revolution “useful idiots”, because they blindly support and unintentionally reinforce whatever extremist actions are happening on the front-lines. It appears that this could be a picture of what has been happening in my country for both parties, and for our globe. Violence is being provided a place to flourish in a cocoon lined with a nest of well-meaning people.
I will continue to offer the same form of Circle work into the world, providing, safe and challenging space for the soul to show up, but it is significant for me to realize that fear of my own fierce, feral power as a deeply mystical female has often kept me privately sheltered in a shadow-self world, where I popped out spasmodically to rally against male patriarchy and the voracious hunger of human colonization on our precious planet. I choose to continue to more consciously unearth “she who quietly judges, condemns and criticizes the other” – because they are not ‘like me’. Today I take a step out of the shadow of fearing attack or hiding behind an emotional isn’t-this-awful fragility. I refuse to take up the arms of conflict, but I need the combined courage of a diverse community who hold each other’s hands to go forward as One into the shadows that envelop us.
In leaning in over the past years to listen and learn from the fierce, indifferent qualities of Mother Nature, I seek clarity about my unique relational nature with all beings of this planet. I will continue to disentangle my need to be loved and accepted away from the fear of releasing my own powerful voice - which I note feels rather thunderous this morning!
Despite the probability of more intense unravelling days in our country and on our planet, there is an eldersoul emerging in me who is excited and cautiously hopeful. One who ‘sees’ what could be. Using the language of my tradition, and my deeply lived experience of 48 years of traditional marriage, I can sense a paradoxical meeting of both ‘Father God’ energy and the multiparous ‘Divine Feminine’. A coupling in a fresh union of opposites, of multiplication, and fresh birthing of true incarnation through our present human state of spiritual labor pains.
Will you join me in mid-wifing that unfolding of Mystery?
Will you keep that sacred fire of authentic conversation churning as we each weave together our full heritage of shadow and light?
Will you hold brave space with me in the hope of an emerging culture of caring compassion and true democracy?
I wonder what “sharp, smooth, ugly, beautiful, painful, and healing” Reality waits to be revealed – together in our greater Earth community.
Carol Kortsch, 1/7/2021
eldersoul.org
