In the Lord I take refuge.
    How then can you say to me:
    “Flee like a bird to your mountain.
    For look, the wicked bend their bows;
    they set their arrows against the strings
    to shoot from the shadows
    at the upright in heart.
    When the foundations are being destroyed,
    what can the righteous do?”

I remembered this psalm by King David today, maybe because I’m tired of reading the latest news about our government and its war. Like many people, I found myself praying: Can I plea-ea-ease have a day off from these gross, costly shenanigans!

Nevertheless, they’re part of the landscape where we live now. If I thought that Memorial Day weekend would protect me somewhat, at least in the name of decency and respect to those killed in wars defending this country, I was quickly disillusioned: A new policy making it harder to get a green card (you have to leave the country, for heaven’s sake), the ousting of more Republicans who aren’t diehard Trumpists—but then, does that really matter? He seems to have made both House and Senate irrelevant, even negligible.

“When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

I went to visit an ailing student who came to this country from Guyana. She has that beautiful high-pitched lilt in her voice; each time she opens her mouth, music begins. I have always loved hearing her stories about growing up in a Guyanese village, where she knew everyone and they all knew her.

“There was a couple who lived close to us. She had the worst voice in the world, she couldn’t carry a tune at all. Her husband had an affair with another woman who was their neighbor. After he died, his widow with the terrible voice would lean out the window and sing at the top of her lungs towards the neighbor her husband had slept with. In Guyana, we always had our windows open. She sang so loud everybody heard her, but she aimed that terrible singing straight at that woman’s house.”

We both laughed, she in her bed and me sitting beside her. You want to fool around with my husband? Here’s my song!

What a creative way of getting revenge, I thought. Instead of sending his DOJ to sue everybody (including the IRS), I wish Trump would try more original methods. What about sending E. Jean Carroll, who won big damages from him for sexual assault, a Big Mac with fries every single day till the end of her life? The US Marine Band to play Hail to the Chief every election day outside Hillary Clinton’s window? Sing You’re full of blarney, Carney, to Canada’s Ireland-descended Prime Minister. A cloak of invisibility to Iran’s new chief ayatollah, who hasn’t been seen since the start of the current war?

DON’T JUST SUE, GET CREATIVE.

In the quest to resist tyranny, America has two humdrum, diehard ways: Arm yourself and join a militia, invoking the right to carry arms, or sue the bitch or bastard, hoping to crush the enemy under a mountain of legal bills. But these are the times when we need to use different forms of creativity not just to defeat some opponent, but to remind ourselves and others that a different moral order exists alongside this one, a different way of being.

Buddhism has a term, alaya vijnana, which is often defined as the storehouse consciousness, comprising the stream of consciousness that contains the seeds for everything that arises in our consciousness, depending on conditions. As I wrote once before, I think of it as an enormous Amazon warehouse, the biggest ever, that contains everything in life and is organized according to some unknown algorithm.

How do you locate something in this warehouse? By shining a light on it. And that light is usually your own attention.

I met yesterday with one-half of the wonderful musical duo, The Enchantivists. John Genyo Sprague has been a spiritual seeker his entire life and is now a Zen teacher. He’s also a superb musician who has brought musical  instruments into the zendo.

Yesterday, he told me of something he’s started to do. He always carries a small drum or his flute with him, and when he’s at airports or walking down the aisle of a plane, he takes one out and plays it.

Imagine what happens. People are hurrying all around, carrying overnight bags and holding on not just to little children but also to the accompanying stress and scramble, and a minstrel walks alongside them and plays a flute. Or else you’re hurrying to get off the plane and, in between checking incoming texts and craning your neck to look what’s holding things up, someone is tapping on a drum or calmly playing a flute.

Doesn’t it take you out of your head, out of the anxious wave of activity and the grinding rush? What is he reminding you of? What is he asking you to use your attention for? It’s as if he’s turned the light on in that warehouse and you notice this moment, the ethereal nature of this day, this flight, of you yourself. You don’t have to read the price of this warehouse item, you know it to be priceless right away.

What John does, among other things, is his way of resisting the onrush of anger, the frustration of things not going according to plan, missed flights and opportunities, lives going awry. Come back to yourself, he’s telling everyone. You have and are everything, but you need to turn the light on in order to experience that in yourself, or else you get confused and stressed.

You are that warehouse, so am I, so is everyone. We contain seeds for everything, and depending on what comes up—the people we meet, the situations we find ourselves in, body, mental, and emotional states—some seeds will sprout and some won’t. What do you want to sprout in you? What do you want to nurture in yourself, at this time in your life and in the life of the world? We’re nurturing something every time we shine a light on it, mostly with our attention.

What is it? Rage? Indignation? A feeling of impotence? Or the virtuous energy of life which we sometimes call compassion? Bearing witness to what is, and realizing what I can do.

Thank you to all of you who donated to our drive to send 15 children to camp this summer for 6 weeks. We will soon have enough, but not yet, so if you wish to shine the light on kindness, possibility, and bountifulness, please donate to send immigrant children to summer camp, thus relieving the anxieties of their parents who work on farms for long, hot hours. You can do so by using the button below, Donate to Immigrant Families.

John got me thinking. So many things prevented me from nurturing certain seeds in my own life: confusion, a sense of obligation to family and tradition, and most important, insecurity. The lack of confidence to just follow a song, a melody, a story. Manifest who I am in all that fullness.

The good news about growing old is that you may be ready to take on more risks. I mean, who cares any longer about what the world thinks? Your parents are no longer alive, the voices of solemn authority are no longer so loud; in some ways, you are freer than you’ve ever been.

And if you’re young, why wait to get old in order to experience this? Manifest and bring to fruition the seed that’s been there all the time, the skill, talent, and passion that has been there and now, giving it light, you can let flower.

I always identified as a writer, even when over so many years I did other things. Now, more than ever before, it wants to come through the ice, the indifferent snow, the earth that hid it while giving it protection, and finally become visible. Stop hiding behind a façade of humility or modesty, give it attention.

In that spirit, let me tell you what I’m writing in addition to these blog posts.

Last October we had our second No Kings Day and Lori and I made our way to Greenfield to participate, holding signs and American flags. We waited at the Commons and watched as the long parade made it way towards us, led by big banners and a woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty. We were surrounded not just by signs proclaiming No Kings in the US, but also by signs warning of the catastrophes accompanying climate change.

Looking at all this, I thought: What if we did have a king in the US, but he was our king, someone who uses war powers and dictatorial prerogatives—not to make himself and his family wealthy, not to demand all the attention in the world, but to fight for our earth, for our children and grandchildren, for all species? What if our current democratic form of government doesn’t allow us to take the massive, drastic steps we need? What if having a king in the White House does the work that we urgently need?

The next day, a Sunday, I went to see a play written and directed by a very talented and experienced friend. During intermission I mentioned my idea to him. He nodded and said: “Write some lines of dialogue and send them to me.” The next day, Monday morning, I sat down and wrote some lines. Sent him a drafty draft of the first act in January, he and his wife gave feedback, and I’ve been working on this play ever since.

When talking to others, I refer to it as my other project and don’t discuss it. Why not? Why hold back at this time in my life? Why not give all the light available to this seed? Why not give it every chance I can?

With this in mind, what grows in you? What doesn’t? What are you being invited to manifest now, after so many years?