As a result of reading John Beckett's latest thoughtful post, I have just re-read the great Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.'s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, and there are some quotes from it which I consider particularly relevant to what is happening now:
“This ‘wait’ has . . . been a tranquilizing
thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to
an ill-formed infant of frustration.”
“Let us turn to a more concrete example of just and
unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority
that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other
hand, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow, and
that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
. . . There are some instances when a law is just on its face and
unjust in its application.”
Despite that frustration, the overwhelming majority of protests have been nonviolent.
As mentioned in the eulogy that John Beckett's post links to, there are marches with more whites than blacks, and as I've seen in the videos, some whites are protecting black protestors from the police.
This does have the sense of being a moment of great change - one that has been attained on the shoulders of those protests and movements which have gone before, but are we actually going to see some real change for the better? Will that also happen here in Australia, as well as in the USA?
Time will tell, but it is up to all of us to keep working at it, as hard as is possible. (Incidentally, one part of my work on that is doing candles [like this one] timed for sunrise, sunset, the midpoints between each, and 11:11 in Washington - the time conversion is tedious so, in my best engineering way, I have made a spreadsheet [my partner laughed when I told her that ☺This is tied up with the concept of astral tides - I may add an extra sigil for each candle for the elemental energy it is bringing in].)
And on that, Laura Tempest Zakroff has posted “5 Ways to More Effective Magical Resistance”, and a “Sevenfold Waning Moon Spell - Magical Resistance”.
And at this point, I will also start to consider other matters, beginning with an interesting post by Mat Auryn which recasts the “To Be Silent” part of the Witch's Pyramid along the lines of “To Be Still” - which actually makes sense to me, unlike keeping silent (the order of the pyramid is also strange, in my opinion, but that's a matter for another post).
I have found a fascinating interview from a few years ago with Karla McLaren, author of “The Language
of Emotions” (Pub. Sounds True, Boulder, 2010, ISBN 978-1-59179-897-2, Sounds
True, Amazon,
Readings) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVjltYNgU6s.
That has led to a few other links, but I'll start with a couple of mine:
- https://gnwmythrsglossary.blogspot.com/2015/06/emotions.html;
- https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/search/label/emotions;
- an interesting movement promoting empathy: https://www.empathytent.com/, https://www.youtube.com/user/EdwinRutsch/videos, https://www.empathytent.com/empathy-circles, and https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxsaXN0ZW5pbmd3ZWxsYm9va3xneDo2NGFkZGM4YjM2OTU5MTJh; and
- a chart on emotions for kids.
