A Message to the Federation.
As spring has sprung, I have returned to a periodic yoga practice. The other day, in my first time back since the snow began to fall and paddle board yoga ended for the season, we were hanging out in pidgin pose and I was trying to feel into my very tight hip. It had been giving me problems all winter, and so I finally decided to see what was going on. (It’s rarely actually a physical problem, though it is always very real physical pain and movement limitations.) I began ranting in my head about our prescription insurance. Thanks to Kroger and Express Scripts making bottom line decisions, I now have to drive a half hour to a pharmacy that takes our insurance, even though they will still make me pay for my drugs until we meet a stupidly high deductible. Hearing my therapist’s words in my head, I felt the feels. Well, first I named them: Anger, Frustration, Powerlessness, Hopelessness. Then I felt them. The only way past is through.
To be honest I’m still feeling them. But what I realized is that our division is not about values or religions or politics. We are all angry because every one of us feels the negative consequences large organizations make in which we have no voice, no power. We can all point fingers at those who’s decisions have made our lives harder, our survival fragile. But we cannot stop them. So we take our anger out on people we don’t know on SM and in real life. We find someone at our level of powerlessness, or below, and make their lives harder. We inflict our emotional devastation on them. It’s a good distraction. If I’m worried about who you have sex with, I won’t be thinking about whether or not I can pay my rent or mortgage. If I focus on your gender identity, I don’t have to think about what a shithead my boss is.
Of course, this is just hurting us all and allowing those in power to continue to keep us down.
Sometimes in my historical novel research, I come across something so well said I have to share it. A Message to the Federation by Julia Ward Howe speaks to our division and our compassion and our power. Like the strides that the many underdog movements of the past have made in moving us towards justice, morality, and compassionate community, we too can band together to help each other, support each other, and perhaps remove the boots of our corporate and government oppressors off all our necks.
“I esteem myself happy in being commissioned to say a few words of welcome to this peaceful army which inarches under the flag of good will and charity to all mankind. Its battalions will array themselves only against the evils which always threaten society, and which too often devastate it. An army of women, and men, from all parts of this fine city, armed only with justice and with patience, intent only upon promoting the public welfare, the common good. We still are children in a school, engineering problems of human destiny, and we make and shall make many mistakes; but what new vantage-grounds have we gained?
Let us begin our work from the true starting-point, so as not to go back to the starting-point of fifty years ago. We have had great gains in education, great gains in social status. We have acquired the right of independent thought. We are dealt with now as if each of us had her individual conscience to regulate her life's work, and not merely a rule of external import, borrowed from a foreign source. This conscience gives us a standard by which to judge our objects and our efforts. The wonder is that our consciences, in dealing with any capital problem, are sure to agree. With all our diversities of circumstances and of temperament, we are brought together here by one desire, by one impulse, the desire to do what we can to further the best interests of society. Surely, the harmony of intention, which has brought us together, will still avail to keep us in sight of all that so high an agreement should aim at.
I will take time briefly to state two points, which, in my view, it will be most important to keep in mind. One of them is the advantage, which we should gain from the diversity of our gifts and talents: the other is the unity of spirit and endeavor with which we should make this diversity helpful to the objects we have in view. We may hope, through this large coming together, to attain a more extended sense of nationality, for, though we are of all Cities, States, and Territories, yet, when we say ‘Our Country,’ we do not mean any single city, large or small. We mean one broad continent in which, fortunately, free institutions prevail, and no tyranny of Church or State has leave to work for their overthrow.
One night, recently, I experienced a sudden awakening. I had a vision of a new era which is to dawn for mankind, in which men and women are battling equally, unitedly, for the uplifting and emancipation of the race from evil. I saw men and women of every clime working like bees to undo the evils of society, to discover the whole web of vice and misery, and to apply the remedies and also to find the influences that should best counteract evil and its attending suffering.
There seemed to be a new, a wondrous, ever-permeating light, the glory of which I cannot attempt to put in human words, — the light of the new-born hope and sympathy blazing. The source of this light was born of human endeavor, — the immortal purpose of countless thousands of men and women who were equally doing their part in the world-wide battle with evil, and whose energy was banded to tear the mask from error, crime, superstition, and greed, and to discover and apply the remedy. I saw the men and women, standing side by side, shoulder to shoulder, a common, lofty, and indomitable purpose lighting every face with a glory not of this earth. All were advancing with one purpose in view, one foe to trample, one everlasting good to gain. I saw them advancing like a mighty army, laden with the fruits of their research, their study, their endeavor, in this battle with the powers of darkness, and ready to tear vice from the earth, to strip away all selfishness of greed, of rapine.
Then I seemed to see them stoop down to their fellows and to lift them higher and higher. Men and women, a vast host whom none could number, working unitedly, equally, with super human energy, all for the extirpation of the blackness of vice and for the weal of the race. And then I saw the victory. All of evil was gone from the earth. Misery was blotted out. Mankind was emancipated, and ready to march forward in a new era of human understanding, all-encompassing sympathy, and ever- present help.
Let my message to you be this: — Start from the present. Follow the straight way. Hope for every good thing. Trust no easy-going methods. And may God keep your hearts.”