There are a lot of links on this blog. Please save and refer back if you would like to, I will update it here:
(https://expresiveartswork.notion.site/Mutual-Aid-Wednesday-b6d9676c568f467d9212d11be8ebea8b) on my notion link.
I am here asking you to consider sending me a small amount of funding/funds/currency/money ….. so we can support a Black woman I know who needs a car. Also, if you have a large amount of money that is awesome too! This woman works so incredibly, tirelessly hard at all she does. She is a member of the meditation collective where I meditate each week. This is a mutual aid effort to support her in buying a car. If you don’t know about mutual aid here is a link. Mutual aid takes many forms of care, this one just happens to be financial. Every little amount helps.
Please read on to learn more. Or simply allow funds to flow through if you can.
or Zelle, @650-539-4325
Here is a little history, a personal story, and why I think this work fits well with my own path toward unlearning white supremacist culture. It is “my lane” so to speak. I was raised with fundamentalism all around me. Though my family attended a methodist church the FSA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) was a towering influence. I long ago left those church rooms and early AM prayer circles; I find myself joining a non-denominational meditation community every week for over two years. I have spent hundreds of hours in these zoom rooms meditating. It is likely equivalent to the amount of time that I spent in churches and at church camps. I am a very spiritual person, I just don’t choose Christianity at this point. I know there are a few churches where I could be (!) mostly at peace, but this path is my path. I respect your path, I hope you might learn something from mine?
In rural Tennessee, in 1980 I was a young child and my mom had a list of folks' names from Church (and their phone numbers) taped to the inside cabinet near our yellow rotary phone. I am guessing some of you also had this kind of phone and that list in your house? I recently made my own list of numbers, (handwritten)…in case I need to refer to that one day. It just felt important to do. To have a group around you is such a gift. If you have this group, hold them, dear. If you are growing that list, I totally support you in that kind of growth! Many folks call these practices, care networks. I, like my mom, spend hours speaking on the phone with my community each week.
I feel very lucky that many of the folks on this handwritten list I met are in the "no big deal" space. What is "no big deal” (aka, NBD)? It is a meditation practice space where we "sit". This practice can be called “stillness intention training” (SIT) and it can be invited in so many places in our lives. It is a zen-point practice. We meet online, we share these tenants, we come “as we are”, “we leave as we must”, we “mind our business”, it is “no big deal” and it changes lives. We also center folks of the Global Majority: People of Global Majority(PGM)/ Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and we are a queer-loving space.
This practice follows me through my week even if I don’t attend as many days as I used to at the height of the pandemic. It has truly changed the way I see the world, along with other influences and learning/unlearning over these many years of the ongoing pandemic and the continued racial reckoning in this country (America aka Turtle Island).
This NBD (no big deal) space is lovingly curated, created, and held by Rev. angel Kyodo williams and many co-keepers. It is very unique. It is unlike anything else I have been a part of.
Rev says"