Tracy Wharton

On Remembering Your “Why”
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On Remembering Your “Why”

by Tracy Wharton, PhD

I’ve been reading one of Father Greg Boyle’s books. G, as he is called, works with gang members, young people whose entire mindset is centered on violence and group identity. He shares stories about times that he got angry, frustrated, shaking his fist at the sky, and helplessness — not knowing what to do next. I was thinking about his stories and also about conversations I had with Dolores Huerta, a community organizer who has taught hundreds about meaningful equity and how to make meaningful change. These two people have what appears from the outside to be an unlimited energy, an insurmountable drive. But the truth is that they are just as human and subject to the emotional fallout of the actions of the world as the rest of us.

I remember one year during the 2016 election cycle, Dolores came to the university where I worked at the time. She was leading one of her famous get-out-the-vote tours and had come to rally our young adults. This civil rights icon could have filled the stadium for her rally, but she had been assigned a relatively small auditorium in the back area of the student union and the crowd spilled out into the hallways and central balcony area as people crammed shoulder to shoulder to hear this tiny force of nature. She and I found ourselves quietly waiting in a back hallway, listening to the crowd, for her entrance. “Can I ask you something, please, Dolores?” “Of course.” “My students talk about burnout,” I said, with tears unexplainedly starting to rise. “They ask how we keep going. I don’t know what to say. It’s so hard sometimes. Everything is just… so hard. And it just keeps going. How do you keep going? What do I say to them?” I asked as I tried not to let my own emotions rise to the surface. She paused, turned her body towards me fully and looked up at me with the deep compassion of a mother who has raised children and an activist who has rallied cities. She took my hand and patted it. “I see what has happened,” she said. “Your country has broken your heart.” I was stunned. We stared at each other for a heartbeat. “Don’t worry. It won’t be the last time. So get angry. Scream and stomp your feet. Have your pity party — that’s ok. …Then get your ass up, brush it off and get back to work.”

I recently had the opportunity to visit the foundation that she started with her daughters in California. They live and work in the same place where Dolores led grape worker strikes all those years ago, now a deeply “red” political district, kept that way by redistricting every time power from the people rises too far. I met vecinos (community members) who had learned English to be able to testify about poisoned water, youth who had led a campaign to install sidewalks near schools, middle schoolers who led get-out-the-vote campaigns; and I walked with Dolores and her daughter Camila in the field where she had first taken up a megaphone. We talked about “just doing the next thing,” and how there was always something else — sometimes small, sometimes enormous, but always equally important to the people in the way. The work was not just about clean water, vaccines, and voting, but also about swimming pools and soccer fields — places to find joy and fun. Equity and community are not just about keeping hate at bay — they are also about building good lives for people.

At the end of the day, after a full agenda of business meetings, walking tours, and photo ops, we were leaving from dinner. Dolores turned to me and Liz, who was going to give us rides home, and asked “hey- do you want to go see some jazz?” Liz and I looked at each other. “Jazz?,” we asked, “really? I mean, it’s been a long day.” “There’s this group that gets together every Tuesday night to jam, and tonight there are some students that I know sitting in. It’s on a patio — great space. Want to go? I mean, if you’re too tired, I understand. The times zones and all…” Liz and I agreed and we headed to jazz night. We got drinks at the bar — Dolores asked for the good tequila — sat near the back, and we had a thoroughly lovely time for a few hours. I asked Dolores how often she came and she told me “as often as I can. You have to do fun things and this is soo good.” As we got up to leave, a group of women across the room noticed her as the crowd parted and came rushing over, asking for photos and autographs. Now nearly 10pm on a Tuesday night, Liz and I looked at each other, wondering if we needed to help her escape, but Dolores moved towards them without an ounce of hesitation. I watched as she shook each hand, made eye contact and asked “Hello! What’s your name and what do you do for your community?”

What a profound and simple question — what do you do for your community? And not just that — name yourself and take credit for what you do. Don’t seek out recognition, but don’t shy away from it either. As she spoke to every person who came up to her, a growing line as we watched, she greeted every person equally and without an ounce of hesitation. I watched from just behind her right shoulder. I saw genuine curiosity, and a knowingness that her question prompted something important that immediately told people what was important to her. And every response — every response, no matter how seemingly insignificant — was validated with a smile and encouragement.

There is something central and important here about how we do things and what we choose to do. The call to action is to do something. Anything. It actually doesn’t matter how small, because lots of small things add up to big things. Everyone doing something moves us in a direction, and we can see each other in how we relate to and support one another. Our differences are there, but so are our relationships, and those relationships give us common ground. Sometimes it’s just an inch of common ground, but it’s there.

The other important lesson from Father G and Dolores is to do things that make you happy and don’t forget the joy in the world — go see jazz. Be present and enjoy the good tequila. Remember why you fight and what you are fighting for. You have to remember your “why.” There is just so much happening in the world, and while we all take breaks from the news barrage, turning away is not an option. It is easy to feel helpless in the face of so much hatred, death, and destruction. I found myself bolstered by knowing that Father G sometimes feels helpless, sometimes doesn’t know what to say. I found myself reminded that Dolores knows exactly how I feel; she has felt it too. And both know that change is incremental — it’s a long game, sometimes very long, but that the time scale of the world doesn’t always match what we want it to be, and nothing happens if we do nothing. Sometimes we are just doing “the next thing,” the small thing in front of us in our little corner of the world. But we cannot lose sight of our “why.” We cannot lose sight of the impact that we have when we take action, and what is at stake. When you lose sight of that, it’s all just paperwork and responsibility, and it’s heavy and hard. Knowing your “why” doesn’t make it less hard, or less heavy, but it does remind you that you are not alone and that you are not carrying anything by yourself. Community becomes a magic word. So — What do you do for your community? What’s your ”why?”

All photos © Tracy Wharton

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Of Crows and Rain

by Tracy Wharton

photo by Moira Ashleigh

I was invited to write something for this blog back in May and I thought what could I possibly have to say that would have meaning enough for my community to spend the time to read? What of my life carries an important meaning that should be shared? What lesson would I pass on?

As I stood in the medical tent at the Occupy Detroit rally, putting together health kits, listening to a squawking murder of crows complain about the rain, I finally got it. What my friend Chris Lafond calls the “universal clue-by-four” (you know, that piece of wood that slaps you upside the head when you just aren’t seeing the obvious).

Crows.

Now, to be clear, I’ve never been part of Crow clan. I’ve been many things at Twilight Covening: Sphinx, Panda, Butterfly, Tiger, even aspired to the as-yet-mythical House cat clan, but I’ve never been a Crow. For those who haven’t had the experience of Twilight Covening yet, the long weekend is arranged around small group study and activity and each clan, animal themed, takes on a different intensive topic. The Crow clan is about service to community. The Crows hold space for us while we journey and make sure that there is space for us to return to from our travels, both in and out of the world. They enact spirituality through holding the community strong and safe.

To those of us who attend the activities of the Crow clan are mostly out-of-sight and we generally have no idea what they are doing most of the time. But they are there, doing what needs doing. This is what suddenly struck me.

There are many in our community who are great and wise voices in the world. There are a number of us who bring artistic beauty into the world, or stand and advocate and build bridges in a world too often fractured by artificial lines in the sand. There are those of us who teach and build the skills of others so that we may grow our communities, both in our home places and in our tribe. But there are just as many of us who simply live our lives, going about the place and doing what needs doing, usually without any attention or fanfare and generally out of sight and not thought of by almost everyone who isn’t directly involved.

I have said for over two decades that I live my life in service to others. This, for me, has manifested in both artistic ways, giving a break to people’s reality for a while and literal ways of service: as a social worker, a therapist, a human services manager, a researcher, a teacher, a priestess, a crisis worker and whatever else I might be doing at any given moment that gets some kind of nifty title. There have been hundreds of times when I’ve felt so small in a great sea of need, when I’ve wondered how my one small contribution could help change the world, or do anything at all. As I sat in the med tent, I thought about how I wasn’t carrying a sign, or laying down in the road for the police to carry away, or camping out long-term in the park like so many of the brave people who were genuinely taking a stand. I challenged myself about my convictions, how much I really believed in what was happening around me and thought long and hard about why I was there. Then I saw the crows and I realized that my belief in the nature of the world, my spirituality and the very fabric of what I am made of, is grounded in what I was doing and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. It was exactly what I needed to be doing and exactly where I needed to be when I wanted to stand and be counted.

You see, when the protesters that we see on tv call for a medic, someone usually appears. There is always someone who steps forward with water, tissues, bandaids. In disasters, there are those who appear with food, with mops, with fresh garbage bags, with tarps and hammers and chainsaws. When the tornadoes hit my hometown of Tuscaloosa, people came from around the country with trucks and chainsaws to help clear trees and debris and haul away the mess so it could be rebuilt. They just did what needed to be done and that act gave space to those who needed it to do what they needed to do.

My point is that sometimes carrying our spirituality out in the world isn’t a grandiose thing. Sometimes it isn’t sign-posted and sometimes it isn’t even clear that it’s what’s going on, but when we stop and do what needs doing for the greater good or in support of something that we believe in, we are enacting what we aspire to. We have a chant we sing in EarthSpirit that goes like this:

Carry it home to your children, (NB: many of us sing “Carry it on to the city” for this line)
Carry it out on the street.
Carry it on to the ones you love,
On to the ones you meet.
Carry it light on your shoulder,
Carry it deep in your soul.
For we have been blessed with magic,
And the magic will make us whole.
(by Betsey Rose)

As I listened to the complaining crows and the sounds of rain on blowing tarps, I realized that “it” is what I was doing. I carry my spirituality deep in my soul and carry it everywhere as I go about doing what needs doing and right then, I was carrying it, literally, out to the city and the streets, as I put cough drops into little baggies so that people could soothe their throats after shouting and spending the night in the cold damp park. And that is the point, isn’t it?

Our lives are woven of small actions. It is the interaction of all of our lives that forms the tapestry of what we experience as “Life.” Just as the web that we weave each spring is made up of a thousand little knots and ties, our lives interact with one another to form the whole of what we experience. Some people hold the great spokes of the web and some people dance underneath and weave. Some people march on the front lines of the journey and some people stay in the tent and hold the space to keep them safe. One cannot survive without the other, both are needed to make something happen and there is space in our lives to take a spot in both places, sometimes in the front and sometimes not, but not all at once.

What is the lesson that I would pass on to others? That carrying it out into the world may mean that you do something huge, but sometimes it is a small act, something done without fanfare or credit. Sometimes we are called to hold space, to support others, to protect their journeying and that is every bit as important and valuable as any other role. The web doesn’t hold together if you start pulling out strands; our lives only become the tapestry that we want them to be when we hold all the strands as beautiful and valued. It is our interaction with others that gives life meaning and that is worth passing on.