Response-Able in Current Events

I explained to my coordinator, my friend, that I felt disturbed about seeing him so broken yesterday, and I didn’t understand why until I got home. I think I learned something about you that you didn’t learn about yourself here… you have limits

I drew him a Venn diagram. We are either going to have a breakdown or a breakthrough. I got him to describe what a breakdown could feel like. Then, I showed him how both sides still experience those. Emotions have mass. They’re heavy. I assigned it 100 lbs. We need to treat it like strength training. To grow strength, we need to have a plan. We need to stretch. We need to diet. We may need a spotter or a fitness trainer. Most importantly, we need to let ourselves recover. Recovery is when the body builds muscle.

I then explained our God-like superpower. Response-ability. It is pure, unconditioned potential. Our ability to respond to anything is infinite. Our capacity to respond is not. Life is coming from us. We are co-creators. We are making the choices that make us weak. We need to make the choices that can make us strong. Most people failing at life and health are not victims. They have weak characters and make bad choices. [Self-awareness and introspection required for this journey]

Then we got into the self-care plan for himself. The breakdown side was the bad choices he is making that made 100 lbs hard to lift. The breakthrough side is the better choices he could make that could make a 100 lb easy to lift. He will have to decide for himself what he wants to do with that reality check. I went through a lot of other concepts with him. He was definitely inspired after my pep talk. My open mind surgery was a success.

I set up the backroom for us. The war room, I called it. Put a Meeting in Progress sign on the door. Once our part-time mentor came in, we started our brainstorming. Then, our Elder came and joined us. Things are definitely going to change. Then we went to our private boxing session without our kids so we adults could blow off some steam.

Our Elder is going to get started on our spiritual work right away. He understands that Andy and I don’t know the ways of our people, which is not uncommon because of the residential schools. We are going to learn the spiritual practices from the ground up and quickly. We are building a lodge in May. We will know how to run our own lodge by then.

The gist of my understanding so far is:
Our God doesn’t have any rules. Just ceremonies that help us understand him better. Rules don’t exist in reality. Just the laws of nature that we are all subject to. We must maintain a balance with nature. Nature is our church. Everything is energy released. Energy at rest is creator.

Today, our program is unavoidable. We have someone coming in to teach us and our participants a song so that we can showcase it at a Round Dance next Friday. It should be another day of recovery before then.

I am going to do my second community walk over lunch. I signed up to volunteer at a shelter and join them on community walks where they feed the houseless. They do it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I can only commit to Thursdays for the time being. It was a deeply disturbing experience when I went last time. People living in the debris along the river. Houses boarded up. Buildings burned down. Inside, the shelter looked like it was full of refugees. Felt like I was in a war-torn city. I am mentally preparing myself for that experience again today. A little suffering is good for the soul. Jonah is numb to it. I’ll get there.