MY NOVEMBER 6 INSTAGRAM POST:
Eight years ago, I spent the day after Election Day at Hopi with a group of wonderful individuals from around the world. We began the day stunned. We ended it in hope.
Hopi is the oldest continuously inhabited place in North America. The Hopi are called the people of peace, but they have witnessed war, violence, displacement, prejudice, and so much more. Yet they are still here. As our group stood among these ancient petroglyphs and potsherds, we felt the courage it would take to face a new kind of future — and we vowed to embody the Hopi way of humility, cooperation, respect, and universal earth stewardship.
Eight years later, as half the country celebrates while half the country feels only fear and foreboding, every one of us finds ourselves at an even greater turning point.
There is a Hopi proverb: “If two different bowls get the job done, then what difference does it make if one bowl is dark and the other light?” But what if neither bowl seems to get the job done and we end up with only potsherds? We can keep choosing and using and switching bowls. Or we can enact a new old paradigm and learn to think like the Hopi. Before we make any decision, we can consider its effect on the next seven generations. We can recognize that all dreams spin out from the same web. We can acknowledge that some pots cannot be mended, yet their remnants can serve to remind us of a broken (albeit beautiful) past and exhort us to become better potters.
Above all, we can affirm that we are still the ones we have been waiting for — we (as in all of us) — and seek new ways to come together in healing. We must all take a breath of this new dawn and make it part of us. There is not a red dawn and a blue one. One dawn. One day. One world.
“Work hard, keep the ceremonies, live peaceably, and unite your hearts.” There is no other way.