Getting closer to flowing water, trees, and birdsong always helps me feel closer to my deeper, more mysterious, and imperfect self - ultimately helping me expand compassion for others.

If how we love ourselves, how we treat one another, and how we take care of the planet lives mostly through sensational media, political binaries, and religious loyalties, then how could we not be... fucked. Manipulation instead of guidance. Separation instead of connection. Poison instead of medicine.

The ongoing and recently escalated events that have terrorized communities in Minnesota and across the county are, to me, signals that the general public is only getting further and further from the kind of guidance, connection, planetary accountability, and mental health medicine it desperately needs.

I am forever going to fight to help protect our planet. I am forever going to advocate for human rights. I am forever going to fight for immigrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking rights. Have you seen this 2-part mobilization training happening on January 20th to show up for immigrant communities?

I am forever this way because I have walked alongside hundreds of people who are directly impacted by oppressive policies, enforcement, and beliefs. I am this way because I have walked alongside hundreds of animal, river, and mature forest ecosystems trying to adapt to and survive human-powered devastation.

I am this way because I have walked alongside hundreds of people who have immigrated to the United States from war-torn countries looking for a new start.

"As the walks come to a close, words of gratitude in English and in Arabic move between us. The women smile and are grateful to rest...

Walks like these profoundly change me from the inside out. It's a practice of giving oneself to what can be learned or gained through experience and not just ideas of the mind. Once this embodiment takes shape and begins to live within you, the mind often has no choice but to let go and adapt. You move with, cry with, and laugh with the story and song of who you walk with...

There is no turning back to what were only ideas.

Because of this walk, I am forever connected to older women, to refugees from Iraq, to the U.S.-Iraq war, to the many expressions living within Muslim life and so much more, in a way that i would have never imagined. No article or book or political lean would have educated me in this way."

- WALK book pg. 22

The photo and quote above reference a weekly walk I helped host alongside an incredible community of mothers and grandmothers from Iraq who have started new lives here in the U.S.. You can read the full story in Chapter 1 of WALK titled, Shoulder to Shoulder.

Yesterday and this morning I hosted two live invitations titled "Nurturing Anger and Grief". I started both gatherings with deep breaths and slowly reading this short poem from Nikita Gill three time over.

Not only do I hope for this terrorizing agency (I.C.E.) to melt all the way down to the ground. I also hope that we can continue cracking the walls that keep us feeding ideas of separation - from one another and the planet.

"Now if I hear the sound of the genuine in me, and if you hear the sound of the genuine in you, it is possible for me to go down in me and come up in you. So that when I look at myself through your eyes having made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me and the wall that separates and divides will disappear, and we will become one because the sound of the genuine makes the same music."

~ Dr Rev Howard Thurman, Sound of the Genuine Commencement Speech 1980

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"Integration Practice: Re-Spect and The Second Gaze: As you move, take several minutes to be with the root meaning of the word, respect. To re-spect, to look again. When you are out moving and you see someone approaching, sitting on a bench, leaning against a front porch, or waiting in their car at the traffic light, honor their dignity by noticing and going beyond your first reaction. Honor this same invitation with plants, trees, and animals. Move into a practice of intentionally seeing for a second time and drawing out more curiosity, presence, and connection."

~ WALK book, pg 23

Thanks for being here.

Trying with you,

Jonathon