For Darryl, Kate, Jerry and Cassandra
Yesterday, I walked into the corporate offices of a Title Company and, signing my name a dozen times to legal documents, liberated three acres of land from the speculative real estate market.
I was sent into an empty boardroom to wait. Eventually, a woman came in, did not acknowledge my presence, placed a stack of papers on the empty table before me and nodded at the pen I was to use. Her expressionless face frightened me and I found myself assuming a ‘healer’ role.
“Want to know what’s happening here?” I invited with a warm smile. She barely nodded. This wasn’t going to be easy. I felt for her, though, because if it were my job to come to this soulless office every day to sell off portions of the Earth to people with enough money to buy it, I wouldn’t be too happy either.
I picked up the pen but not signing, told her the story of how I bought this small farm in order to give it away.
“I wanted to find a way to put land into the Public Trust,” I confided. “It’s taken two and a half years and a bunch of people working on it, but we’ve done it!” I gave her a triumphant grin and waited for her eyes to show interest.
Finally she lowered herself into a chair and offered a small smile. Thank you. I signed the first sheet and asked her a question before turning to the second sheet. Then I stopped and commented on her pretty bracelet, signed the next sheet and asked if she’d worked there long. She took a shaky breath. Between each signature I chatted casually and as soon as the whole document was signed, I carefully put down the pen. She jumped to her feet, grabbed the stack of papers and ran.
How different this was from our lively, loving band of five visionary volunteers who have been meeting together in the farm kitchen these last two years, dreaming up land reform by working out how to change the assumptions of private property ownership. Our goal has been to create a non-profit organization assuring the protection of land that also would provide affordable housing in perpetuity.
For me, the speculative real estate market selling off the earth, on the one hand, and a merry band of friends dreaming up new ways to live with the earth, on the other hand, is the difference between wrongness and rightness.
And I know about wrongness!
As a child helplessly affected by a family that dealt in harm instead of health, my body knows the numbness and shame that ‘wrongness’ feels like. I recognized myself in the posture and dull energy of the woman at the Title Company. Like her, I used to keep my eyes lowered and my face stony, as if I could hide.
I am reminded of when I was eighteen and took a summer trip to Scotland with a group of students, partly to escape the unwanted attentions of a persistent boyfriend. Somehow, he followed me and showed up at our hostel in Edinburgh! How he found us I will never know. My body went numb when he walked in, and I forgot how to speak.
He lured me off to Princes Park, an engagement ring in his pocket, and literally forced the ring on my finger just as the gatekeepers announced closing time. I tried to run but he held me down and we did indeed get locked in. As night came on I was held hostage and could do nothing but go limp, a rag doll with a ring.
I wonder if we are collectively in a similar state now, that limpness. The wrongness numbs us and spreads into every aspect of our lives, like a catatonia, and we feel stuck with a shame that goes so deep we no longer even know how to speak – to each other, to the earth. Back at the hostel later, after we’d been discovered in the park, chastised hotly before being let out and he’d been sent on his way, I was literally unable to form words, overtaken by shame of the utter ‘wrongness’ of what had just happened.
We, all of us, have also been living with this feeling of shame and wrongness about the world for much longer than just this last election. It did not start with Glumpf.
There are so many unacceptable realities we passively allow, complain about but feel helpless to change: being defined as sinners because Eve supposedly sinned with Adam; the extraction of oil from our precious earth; pollution of our oceans; humans enslaved and sold for profit and so-called “witches” burned at the stake; food being allowed to rot while people starve; children of color hosed for going to school and immigrants refused haven…and the list goes on.
None of this is new! It is being ramped up now so that, just in case we missed it, we can see it! Mister T, in his outrageousness, is our wake-up call!
So how do we foster ‘rightness’ and take back our souls when we feel the wrongness in our very beings?
My friend Cynthia Winton-Henry writes, “When we lose easy access to any aspect of moving, speaking, vocalizing, rhythm, thinking, rest, or affection it can indicate a bodily response to trauma. It can also mean our soul is malnourished.”
Perhaps we cannot fix the world, but must do the work of recovering our souls!
The way through may not be easy, but we can start with simple things that delight rather than depress us. Here’s what helps me recover my balance when the wrongness feels all pervasive and makes me mute: (sung to the tune of ‘These are a Few of my Favorite Things”)
Dancing and singing, and dogs chasing balls,
Forests and feathers and fields without walls,
Friends and falafels and gardens in glory,
Weeping and laughing and making up stories,
Long walks on seacliffs and deep conversations,
Buddies to cry with who trust me with secrets,
Being in love with people who love me –
These are a few of my favorite things…
We may not be able to save the whole world, but we can save our souls with the deep play of being alive on the Earth just when she needs us to be.
And many are the ways –
Welcome to the CommonSpace Community Land Trust!
