October 16, 2012: How do we say “NO!”?

On the other side of way too much busyness—life doesn’t string out our Must Dos over a reasonable amount of time, does it—and feelin’ good. Feeling present. Feeling liberated from those Must Dos (until a bunch of them gang up on me, again.)

So able to sit and to be and to ponder.

Here’s a sampling of what’s now rattling around my less-stressed-out mind:

First, the promised report re sharing NO! with Friends Meeting at Cambridge children. It didn’t quite happen. Or should I say, MY plans didn’t happen.

What did happen was that I had a brief interaction with 3 JH/HS students re the upcoming Textron meeting for worship. And one young man pushed back, declaring that 60 or 70 Quakers sitting in silence outside a factory that produces cluster bombs “a political demonstration.” Hmm. THEN he said, in effect, “And, besides, that’s those people’s job.” Double hmmm.

What would you have said to him?

Second: Vis a vis gearing up to submit op-ed pieces (one of the inconveniently-timed but amazing things I did this past weekend was to attend an all-day symposium at Simmons given by the Op-Ed Project), am pondering a bunch of stuff! For starters, “Do I, a white, privileged woman, have the cred to write about our racist, immoral criminal justice system? How do I, in 750 words, say ‘NO!’ to our status quo Tough on Crime mentality?”

Now do you see why I need some time to wade through such questions?

 

Join the Conversation

1 Comment

  1. to question 2 – yesyesyes! you do, you do! Without reservations! and if you doubt yourself – do you not let yourself write books because you’re not tolstoy?

    to question 1 – maybe, if I could ask from genuine curiosity, “tell me, what do you think about the connection between individual work and national politics? How should that or shouldn’t that get expressed?”

    love, as ever –
    me

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.