Welcome back to The Golden Boat.
I began today with outreach to a dear friend. She too creates for Substack.
is the vision and voice of which I encourage you to explore. Ageing is among that long list of common and unifying conditions we greet daily. In my message to her I offered: “You inspire me in my stillness as I quietly await that higher guidance towards how best to give in this time, and as I rest with the discomfort of those extremes of overflowing fullness and sheer empty.” I thanked her for shining as a beacon upon truth. Someone who knows how to name a problem and thus open a doorway towards conversation, action, and the potential for change. I then found myself writing a mini-essay in response to an inquiry she posed at . I surprised myself in this act of expression that felt counter to that prolonged state of “stillness” I spoke of. Something was stirring.On the heels of that, an opening presented. Through it, a trickle followed by a gentle rush of silent recognition that I was, yet again, in reset towards drawing down the gold. That gold that each of us can access at will, when ready, and under contract that it is not ours to hoard, yet rather a gift to be given.
A tumble of recent experiences co-mingled with reflections upon my past. Bridges formed between unexpected sources, demonstrating companionability between teachings that arrived on earth from wildly divergent forces. Yet of course that connective tissue made sense. Different delivery systems crafted around differing human themes, yet ones that we will, if conscious while here, undoubtedly either directly experience, witness, or feel.
My spouse and I recently watched the new documentary that premiered at Tribeca and now streams on HBO titled Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print. It carries us back to the origins of Ms. magazine in the early 1970’s and onward upon the revolutionary path that Gloria Steinem along with the team of founders and myriad collaborators through the years, laid down. They figured out how to “name the problem” which remains the ethos of Ms. today. How to call it out and in doing so, pull it out of the realm of secrets and frame it as tangible. With the problem on the table in full view, a movement towards change can begin at long last.
I was a kid in the 60’s and 70’s, caught in the bubble of youth and fairly oblivious to the fact that Ms. was the movement that gave actual name and visible, tangible shape to the problems of domestic violence, pay inequity, and sexual harassment—among so many other issues— and that we continue to address and call by those very names today.
This vital doc reminds us that when we feel utterly powerless, that’s exactly when it is time to do something, anything, no matter the scale of that right and just action. It reminds us of the actions our predecessors took through the civil rights and social justice movements of the 60’s and 70’s, and helps us to remember that we too find ourselves at a dire inflection point today. So many problems to tackle yet so many of us hearing the call and poised to invest our time, energy, wisdom and creativity towards doing something, anything, that is just and right in the face of the enormous wrong weighing down hard and fast. Inspiration towards activation. Towards movement. Towards change.
And now a brief pause. This nugget serves merely as the first half of a conversation. Let’s dock for just awhile before traveling in time to the decade I spent working with Fred Rogers, his advocacy for federal funding for PBS in 1969 in support of quality children’s programming, and the unexpected bridge I draw between the radical and revolutionary movements brought by both Ms. and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
In bookending this ride, I thank you Jane Barrett for the nourishing rain and shine that your gardens of expression pour generously upon mine, calling me back to the act of cultivation. We recall that BEings rise stronger together than on islands apart.
Rest easy now co-riders. We shall float together again most soon upon The Golden Boat.
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