Wishcasting Wednesday

It’s been a long time since I wishcasted on a Wednesday. Jamie Ridler used to host, but once she stopped offering a prompt, I stopped writing them. But today I feel compelled to make a wish, a wish for change, and to suggest one way we could start to shift things.

There are plenty of things gone wrong, lots of work to be done, changes that need made in ourselves and the world. People are dealing with all kinds of suffering on a personal level, and as a human society we deal with multiple forms of dysfunction, struggle, and violence — so much that it can feel overwhelming. We can identify what’s wrong, but It’s hard to know what to do about it.

I wrote a post a few weeks ago on being an ally. In it, I suggested that we must educate ourselves, practice compassion, and love harder. Brilliant Author, speaker, social justice activist, tender, big-hearted Patti Digh is offering something that grants my wish.

It’s a FREE 4-week online seminar, Hard Conversations: An Introduction to Racism, Unconscious Racism, and Silent Racism.

This short course is merely intended to provide a spark of awareness and a more helpful set of questions. There are many steps that must be taken after awareness, and we will include resources for further discovery and future action.

…

We will hear diverse voices, we will ask questions, we will tell our own truths, and we will become allies – and not just allies, but effective allies.

…

I am hosting this series of conversations simply to provide a safe place for dialogue about race to take place, to provide vetted resources for White people who want to do something to help eradicate racism but don’t know enough about the impact of racism, its history, or their collusion in it, to do so effectively. I am working in concert with diverse professionals in the field to ensure that this is meaningful, fair, and safe for all involved.

I wish people would share this opportunity with everyone they know, that they would take advantage of it themselves, that we would all show up with open hearts and learn something, and then be able to take what we learn out into the world and through right action make things better.

from Jamie’s post

Today, and for the last time, Jamie asks, “What do you wish for?” It’s taken me all morning to be able to show up here, attempt an answer. I’m sad, for all kinds of reasons, and this is another — Jamie is no longer going to host Wishcasting Wednesday on her site. She’ll offer the practice in other ways, but this version of it is ending. I didn’t expect that, not today, and even though change is inevitable and sometimes even for the best, I’m feeling tender about it.

This season is always rough. There’s not as much light, the days are shorter and colder, the sky is gray and dark more often, everything in nature going to sleep, there are no more flowers or fruits, green has turned to gray and brown. I don’t travel to visit with family (we go in the summer), so my tiny little family is alone for the holidays. I am reminded of everything, everyone we’ve lost, we miss. In the rush to prepare for various celebrations, crowds of people gather but in their hurry they can be so rude, so mean to each other, so unkind. I understand that feeling of overwhelm, of irritation. I’m feeling it myself. There’s so much left to do before tomorrow, before next week, before next month, and sometimes I just want to slow down, to stop, to hibernate, to rest, to forget. It’s a season of letting go and it’s hard.

Don’t get me wrong, I love twinkle lights and pie and warm sweaters and hot apple cider and Christmas music and snow as much as anyone, but there’s also something really sad and lonely about this time of year when it feels like everything is changing or so far away, over or gone.

I’ve wished with Jamie 68 times, and I’ve wished with other people who were also practicing. I am so grateful to Jamie for continuing to guide us, provide prompts and a place to share, for as long as she did. I wish along with her for open space where new ventures can grow and new adventures can begin.

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. ~Gilda Radner

I wish to remember that as Ram Dass said, “we are all just walking each other home.”

I wish for us all to remember that we are fundamentally whole, basically good, inherently wise and compassionate, and wish that we can forgive ourselves and others when the way we act is not in accordance with that truth.

I wish for us to know that every being just wants to be happy and safe, loved, but that we get confused sometimes about how to make that happen.

I wish that we all begin to ask “where do I see suffering?” and do what we can to ease it, in ourselves and in the world.

I wish that we keep our hearts open, to joy and love and suffering, that we meet what arises in the moment, allow it to touch us, and when the time comes, let it go.