The First 30 Days of a Dictator
Taking up the in-between as a spiritual act of dissent
When I was in the thick of raising babies as a stay-at-home mom, I kept a daily journaling practice. Once those babies got older and life moved at a faster pace, my ink on the page dried up. I didn’t lose the words. I simply lost the need to document and process every single thing through journaling.
I think about those quiet rhythms and chaotic days often. The camera was always in my hand. Nature was my greatest teacher. Now, as a working mom of teens and young adults, my world isn’t any less stressful. It is only different. The needs of our home have shifted. I’m not swirling to figure out all my inner workings on the page. In my 40s, I’ve settled into my skin.
BUT the world swirls weird. Things are unsteady and unsure. The rights of so many people (my people too) are being threatened. Those of us who can see it - are one part numb and one part terrified. How do we navigate the steps ahead well when so many different groups are coming under attack from very real threats in our nation’s highest offices of leadership.
If you don’t know anyone being threatened… you aren’t paying attention.
I listen to the folks wise about history and politics. I block the voices of godslobber.
I’m not sure what comes next. Today, a potential dictator will be sworn in to the highest office in USA govt leadership. Voters chose a rapist and a fraud as their leader. And the rest of us who see him for who he is - are faced with the consequences of the harm his leadership will bring to everyone.
When you deconstruct your faith - colonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy should come right with it. Folks often forget these steps. As I dismantled faith, as a USA citizen, I’ve also had to navigate what it means to have not only bought into the white evangelical propaganda of my youth BUT also the colonialist/white supremacist/imperialist progaganda of the USA. “We were not founded as a Christian nation and we are not the greatest country in the world,” were just a few of the many things I had to dismantle from my defaults. It has been interesting to dive into what other countries study about the USA propaganda we are raised to believe as true. We’ve been duped.
I’m not going to hand you a list of books to discover. Smarter folks than me have a whole long list of great books from amazing writers who have been trying to get us out of our warm numbness and into the painful reality of living in the light. As a light-dweller, all I know is what practices to take up to be ok as the world swirls around me.
There are many proactive things we can do in resisting. Do them. Me too. Be informed. Build community. Support people doing the work - you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Someone is already doing the work you want to do. Don’t simply hand over and quit before we even know what is coming.
But I also need a way to remain steady during the inbetween.
God in the Yard
A quick disclaimer before I go too far. When I say “God” in the next little bit, I don’t mean GOD as is typically understood in a “I go to church and read the Bible or whatever other holy text and believe in this specific deity” type of way. I mean god, universe, nature, spirit, nothingness, silence, stillness, dark/light, and all the other words you use for it. I call it - the inbetween. It’s that space where nothing can touch us but everything can touch us because we are flesh and blood and life. It is the pause between an inhale and an exhale. The “kumbhaka”…is what some call it.
I haven’t studied yoga. What I know about breathing comes from losing it. During the days following the birth of our last child, I developed a pulmonary embolish which is a blood clot in the lung. I had a partially collapased lung, infarction and pleurisy, plus some other side effects. Every single inhale was excruciating. Every hiccup. Every cough. I could not sneeze fully for months. I couldn’t sleep in my bed for 9 months. It was terrifying to lie flat.
The only relief I found was inbetween the breaths… the pause.
Over the next 30 days, I plan to intentionally pause. To sit with “god” in the yard. There is a book floating around about this type of practice by LL Barkat. I didn’t really connect with the book when it first came out, but the idea of sitting with god in the yard over a course of time - to intentionally meet whatever it is I need to meet - has stuck with me.
I’ll attempt to write once a week here to share what I find there. Not everything but perhaps a glimpse as I hold space for the unknown restlessness.
I’ll share a few pictures on Instagram. I’m most often on Threads.
What I won’t be doing is making a guide to help others walk through it. No more How-Tos. We have enough coaches, therapists, and wizards of guidance to seek out the how and why. What we often lack is the intentionality in actually practicing what our soul needs.
If you don’t believe in spirit or soul, choose a different word.
Whatever we call it, I know my spirit needs to reconnect with earth and unknown and silent listening because the voices of treasonous harm have been very, very loud. And I can’t live in that headspace anymore.
30 days. I’m giving myself 30 days of inbetween with “silence in the yard.”
J.
