Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 99

We’ve both been working all day and in the early evening decide to go for a walk, our usual lap around Hackney Downs.

As we make our way around the park we notice a large gathering of at least a hundred people in our favourite spot. At first I think it might be a protest of some kind.

As we get closer we also see a parked car, an archway of white balloons, a small marquee and a table set up with food and drinks.  

The gathering is predominantly made up of Black folks. Hip Hop music is playing and everyone is dressed to the nines, standing around drinking and talking and clearly enjoying themselves.

It is also clear that this is a gathering about something important, something worth celebrating. There is a palpable sense of love in the air.

We approach and start making our way through the crowd, towards the path that leads on to the other side of the park. I stop to ask a woman who is probably about my age what is happening.

She flashes me a big smile and says that it’s a Nine-Nights. She explains further. In the Caribbean tradition, nine days after a person dies, their loved ones celebrate their life with a big party. It usually takes place in someone’s home or in a hired hall but because of coronavirus…

I tell her I’m sorry for her loss and thank her for sharing with me. I say it’s good to see so many people enjoying themselves. I immediately realise that I haven’t seen a group of people, and especially not one this large, enjoying themselves in a really, really long time.

She says no problem and wishes us a lovely evening.

It reminds me a bit of Dia de los Muertos, the Latin-American holiday held on the 2nd of November to celebrate the dead.

Both traditions involve laying food and drink out for the dead, inviting them into the home, and enacting various rituals to support them to make the transition to the afterlife.

I’ve always preferred Dia de los Muertos to Halloween. I don’t believe in demonizing the dead. I prefer to be in relationship with the ancestors, staying open and receptive to their guidance.

 It strikes me that, just like when I came across a Muslim family celebrating the end of Ramadan, these religious holidays and cultural celebrations have moved outdoors.

Growing up and spending most of my adult life in parts of the world that don’t have a big Muslim or Caribbean population, I didn’t know much at all about Ramadan until I moved to the UK and I didn’t know anything about the Nine-Nights until today.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to be an effective and supportive ally to the Black Lives Matter movement. One thing I need to keep reminding myself is that I can’t possibly know everything there is to know and I will never completely understand what it’s like to walk this earth in a Black body.

I am reminded of the words of one of the greatest Buddhist teachers to ever live, Padmasambhava.

I do not know

I do not have

I do not understand

I am not a naturally humble person. And on a bad day you could easily and quite justifiably call me arrogant. I have to work hard sometimes to remember humility and practice it with grace.

I also have to work hard sometimes to remember that some white folks are also on a learning curve right now. As one of my friends reminded me recently, quite a steep one.

That is not a judgement. It’s an acceptance of how things are. And what I need to keep doing is resting my awareness in an appreciation of their willingness to show up to the conversation and at least try to understand.

Because we all need to try to understand right now.

I’ve been getting deeply triggered and frustrated with some white folks in my life, Buddhist community, and work. At times over the past few weeks I am sorry to admit I’ve lost my patience and even become quite angry.

But I need to remember that my anger is not the same as the anger I know many of my Black friends are feeling. How could it be? And to give into that anger is to betray myself and to fall off “my seat.”

Not that there is anything inherently wrong with anger. In fact, anger has been a guiding energy for me in my life, a compass pointing me in the direction of my own integrity and helping me to stand up for what I know deep in my bones is right.

But when I indulge in or suppress my anger is when I get into trouble. So I want to commit to more consistently coming into a right relationship with anger so that I can keep harnessing it as energy in pursuit of the good.

Tonight we stumbled on a beautiful expression of Black joy in the park and it’s left me feeling that I want to do better. It’s left me feeling humbled in the wake of my own ineffective efforts to be a “good” ally.

I go back to the koan of Black Lives Matter. It holds up a deep paradox for me, for all of us, right now. How to acknowledge that of course, from an ultimate perspective, all lives matter, but right now, in the relative world, Black people are hurting and calling out for a recognition of their own dignity, from how they are treated on the street to the policies that govern public life.

As a human being I can practice radical imagination to feel into what it must be like, but I can’t ever know that experience directly. There is a commonality to each and every person’s experience being human, and a uniqueness, a distinctness to each person’s individual manifestation and how the world responds to that manifestation.

On the Harriet Tubman course we heard from a few Black women who were speaking deep wisdom from their lived experience on this earth. One was sharing how she views all people as indigenous. That we are all indigenous to some land, somewhere, even if over time we have lost that connection.

We can all touch the earth with the perfectly imperfect condition of being human and this can always be our starting point and what we return to again and again. Over and over and over again.

This is how we might move forward together. This is how we might evolve.