Songs of Resilience
On the night of the recent US election, after helping to drive fellow Detroiters to the polls, I gathered with a few spiritual friends for an evening of meditation and mindfulness practice. We connected deeply to a place of peace, unity, and love, feeling supported by one another and by countless ancestors.
Although I wasn’t completely surprised by the results the next morning, I certainly felt the shock that so many voters in our country had chosen to support a leader who has demonstrated time and time again abusive, bullying, and dishonest behavior, and by the fact that our country had fallen back on the false sense of security it has so often sought in white supremacy and patriarchy.
I had hoped that we could collectively awaken to the reality of our interbeing; the fact that we need one another as siblings and relatives across lines of race, class, nationality, gender, ability, and sexual orientation. I had hoped we would elect the first woman, and woman of color, as our president. I felt grief at the lost opportunity. I still feel that grief and I still have that hope. In spite of the election results, I know so many are already awake to our common humanity and interbeing.
Whoever won the election was not going to solve the problem of our country’s continued investment in the military industrial complex and our support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We are in need of collective awakening and non-violent liberation for all people. How do we get there?
On the Monday following the election I found myself singing and sharing reflections with a college class. I was reminded of the power of songs and music to help us connect with deep wells of ancestral resilience and nonfear. I was moved by the openness and willingness of the students to be vulnerable and sing and share together from their hearts. Collectively we moved through layers of shock, grief, sadness, and despair into a space of creative empowerment.
I remembered what I am here to do. To love, and to share love and build inclusive community through songs and music. And I am just as committed as ever to continue to do so. I recognize that this is my part of working on the solution, and one way that I can contribute to healing, transformation, and collective awakening. This is how I can be the change I wish to see in the world. By embodying our interbeing in song. And I know that I am not alone in offering my artistic expression in service of building Beloved Community. I thank you for your creative contributions to our collective healing.
This experience inspired me to ask my Dharma mentors Larry Ward and Peggy Rowe Ward of the Lotus Institute if we could do an online program called Songs of Resilience, now scheduled for this Friday December 6th. I invite you to join us for an evening of song, mindfulness, and poetry as we sing our way back home to our true selves.
These insights have given me renewed motivation to keep working on the completion of my new album, Learn to Love Again. Thank you to all who have contributed generously to the album's production. I will be releasing a single, Day of Peace, very soon, and am still accepting donations towards the album release if you haven't yet made a contribution (we are currently at 86% funding).
Let us sing. Let us gather. Let us make our voices known. Voices for peace, for justice, for inclusiveness, for love. When we do so, we find that our separateness is only an illusion, and that our interbeing is a reality unsurpassed.
In gratitude for community and music,
Joe
