{i woke up this morning thinking i want to get the hopi 11th hour prophecy tattooed on me. its long but it feels truer than anything else i have read. well – maybe an earthseed poem too…}

i am going through a phase of researching yemaya non-stop. i think this is because i have picked up a swimming practice, which has reminded me that i am part mermaid. when i was a scuba diver in the south pacific i knew this, but then i got landlocked for a while. whenever i am near the ocean i can go out in it and not be afraid, even though it has many of the things that scare me – darkness, heights, undertow. someone called me yemaya in passing recently, after a swim where i was flipping around in the water and hanging upside down…and it started me down this path – yemaya’s characteristics are lover/producer/creator of life; adorer of children, provider of comfort…these are aspirations i can live with.

this is also relevant because there are other yemaya-women in my life. recently my girl shira, and dream hampton have both brought to my attention that they are mermaids. what i see in other mermaid-women is a spaciousness for many convergent lives and understandings, an ocean of space for the world as it is.

perhaps women like us are just the most recent water doulas/midwives of the True World emerging from the current one…

it’s possible i am moved to say this after spending a few days in DC, which seems the epicenter of a world without flow, the ground zero of joyless bureaucracy, circular disconnected debate, crucial compromise and masking. i know very good people IN dc, even a few real radicals – bless them for holding that line, and even loving that place. i spent the days dashing from one of them to the next and trying to maintain and slip my true self through the walls of business-casual coffee carriers. maybe there’s no residue, or maybe that’s what made me wake up this morning thinking of the words: “there will be a river flowing very fast, and people will be afraid and try to cling to the shore…”

the ideas of a liberated life, of a system aligned with the needs of the planet, of economy based on relationships and people rather than profit and greed, of meaningful survival…these ideas excite me, they are swelling all around me. i think all political work should be tugging us away from the shore of current corporate systems, and towards a post-profit existence.

even, perhaps, a post movement existence. movements entail…containment. two sides, inside and out…that there is content, ideas, people within and then content, ideas, and people without – or opposed to. but the existence i am thinking of – it’s an all-encompassing thing. no person, nothing alive would be outside of it. its LIVING, being fully present to your life and communities, and learning, knowing, how to live the right way.

we have been thinking like lakes and ponds, but now we need to think like oceans – how would yielding to our natural and inevitable interconnectedness help liberate us from current oppressive patterns? and who would be outside of that connection? how much compassion would it take? for yourself, for your family, for every one you meet?

my friend ilyse and i got to catch up yesterday. she says since i moved to detroit i have been going all yoda. but i think i have been going all yemaya – in the small i see the whole.

and i am reflecting on ruckus, and on the us social forum process as well. in the small work, the daily tasks of supporting people desperate for change, i see the whole of humanity – potential and realized, miraculous and mundane. it is only in the attempt to do things really big that i see the fragmentation, as we try to build ideas without building up the community support to hold and implement and grow those ideas together. but in the small puddles and pools across this country, we feel pulled to the ocean too.

the full thought is: the need to be big, fast, is the reason we don’t have movements in the u.s., though there is a lot of movement. and maybe that’s fine. maybe right now we need to be lakes, ponds, tributaries…just flow to each other and sense the ocean is coming.