When I woke this morning, all I wanted to hear was the sweet sadness of Dolores O’Riordan, whom I listened to every day during the sweetest saddest period of my young womanhood and who died yesterday, only days before my 47th birthday, which really is the death knoll for any young womanhood no matter how well your people age (and mine age pretty well, dammit). When I listened most to Dolores and her Cranberries I was living with a man who took care of me but did not love me and whom I did not love. We had been performing a twentysomething fascimile of an old married couple and, really, it had been draining both of our life forces. We were just scared of everything else, especially of who we really were. Him: gladly, glamorously superficial. Me: a witch, not meant for anything but what I could conjure from the ashes of purple violets and patriarchy. Continue Reading →
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Our National Holiday
Yesterday I heard Freedom Fighter Ruby Sales speak about social justice activism, including her time with SNCC and her interactions with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Movements are not cozy,” she said. “The FBI targets you in movements. You are jailed in movements. You take bullets in movements. You do it because you are part of something bigger than yourself. You do it because you feel and see and know something worth saving that came before you and will outlive you.” This is the legacy she shares with Dr. King, who left us with his words, his love, his spirituality, and his profound model of resistance. We in America are mere shells without this legacy.
The Church of Ruby Sales’ Radical Love
Today I had the great honor of witnessing legendary freedom fighter Ruby Sales talk with Middle Collegiate Church Reverend Dr. Jacqui Lewis in a Q&A entitled “Redeem the Soul of America.” On the docket: Martin Luther King Jr., the SNCC, #blacklivesmatter, the spiritual void of racist capitalism, the colonization of African-American music, and the history of patriarchal white supremacy in the GOP. Miss Ruby took us on such a profound 90-minute journey that it’s impossible to enumerate all her points—she’s against social media-sized reductions, anyway (read books! she said)— but one statement rings in my ears. “I’m not about breaking glass ceilings. I’m about building a new roof.” Listen to this clip of her revolutionary love here.