art

the new sanctuary coalition

Thinking of the world
Sleeves wet with tears are my bed-fellows.
Calmly to dream sweet dreams–
There is no night for that. ~Izumi Shikibu (Diaries of Court Ladies of Old

https://vimeo.com/299371315

The New Sanctuary Coalition’s call for action:

We are resolved to form a U.S. Caravan of supporters who will meet the Central American Caravan in Mexico, witness their movement, and accompany them into the U.S. At the border, we will assist those seeking entry with their demands to enter the US without losing their liberty

Hate speech and violence have crept into our communities with the targeting of synagogues, churches and other houses of worship and murders of their congregations. We want and need to stop this violence and we are calling you to stand with us, to put your bodies on the line.

The right to migrate is fundamental. Without it, the right to work, to be free, to live, cannot be realized. We reaffirm our conviction that every member of the Central American Caravan has an inalienable human right to flee from violence and poverty and toward better economic and political conditions elsewhere, regardless of national boundaries. We submit that they possess a right to enter and remain in the U.S. equal to anyone born there.

It has become amoral to engage in neutrality or silence on the right to migrate. On this issue there is a right side of history and a wrong side – but there is no middle. Each of us is morally obliged to choose such a side. The law will either make human beings illegal, or it will legalize equality, but it cannot accomplish both. The world is asking you to choose a side.

The New Sanctuary Coalition is resolved to choose the side of liberty and equality. We are resolved to sacrifice in solidarity with those leaders of liberty and pioneers of equality who are nonviolently asserting their right to migrate by moving their caravan of brave souls across the U.S./Mexican border.

If you are a lawyer, join our legal community. If you are a faith leader, join our clergy group. If you are a person of conscience, join our local organizing in your state. Click here to tell us how you would like to get involved and we will connect you with an organizing community that matches your skills and interests.

Sanctuary Caravan at NSC
http://www.sanctuarycaravan.org/

early morning readings

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“I suggest that… Although healthy persons communicate and enjoy communicating, the other fact is equally true, that ‘each individual is an isolate, permanently non- communicating, permanently unknown, in fact, unfound.’” ~ Winnicott, The Holding Environment

“…What was really incomprehensible was the discussion, as it was called. Cast into and enclosed in the gray lead frame of polite empty British phrases, the people spoke perfectly past one another. Constantly they said they understood each other, answered each other. But it wasn’t so. No one, not a single one of the discussants, showed the slightest indication of a change of mind in view of the reasons presented. And suddenly, with a fear I felt even in my body; I realized that’s how it always is.  Saying something to another, how can we expect it to affect anything? The current of thoughts, images and feelings that flows through us on every side, has such force, this torrential current, that it would be a miracle it it didn’t simply sweep away and consign to oblivion all words anyone else says to us, if they didn’t by accident, sheer accident, suit our own words. Is it different with me? I thought. Did I really listen to anybody else? Let him into me with his words so that my internal current would be diverted.” ~ Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon (pg 136-137)

“…It is a joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found.” ~ Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment : Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development

early morning readings

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“… in the big room they now entered, time had stood still. It was furnished with ascetic sparseness. At one end, facing the wall was a desk and a chair. At the other end, a bed with a small rug in front of it, like a prayer rug. In the middle was a reading chair with a standing lamp and next to it mountains of messy piles of books on the bare floorboards. Nothing else. The whole thing as a sanctuary, a chapel to the memory of Amadeu Inácio de Almeida Prado, doctor, resistance higher and goldsmith of words. The cool, eloquent silence of a cathedral prevailed here, the impassive rustle of a room filled with frozen time.” ~Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon (pg. 108)

“It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these things, though I saw more of them in the first moments than might be supposed. But, I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could.” ~Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

early morning readings

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Nikon D750   f/5.6   1/400s   135mm   400 ISO

… You press your mind, your forehead, against the beginning of a book, the cool cover of it, appreciating its impenetrability. It is rectangular and thick, heavy enough to stop a bullet or press a leaf flat. It will, you think, never let you through. And then you begin to lean into it, applying little attentive pressure, and the early pages begin to curl back with a soft, radish-slicing sound, and you’re in. You’re in the book. The thick, segmental chapters fan out into their component pages, and each turned page dematerializes itself, once read, into the fluent, cajoling voice its words carry. …When you reach the last sentence, there rests under you left thumb a monolithic clump of paper through which, it seems, you could not possibly have traveled. ~N Baker (preface), A Book of Books