I was pacing nervously. I had just purchased a chocolate French cruller. My favorite donut at my favorite donut shop. Suddenly a big black cruiser pulled up. Two armed guys in black with face masks and dark shades jumped out and grabbed a Latino man just standing there minding his own business. He made a sign of the cross and I could read his lips saying “Dios mio.” My God. You could see from the calluses on his hands, here was a working man. In the hubbub, someone snapped a picture and it went viral.
Another kidnapping on a quiet suburban street east of Los Angeles. We might as well be in Pinochet’s Chile or the dark days of the Guatemalan civil war. State terrorism. Putin’s KGB. Hitler’s Gestapo. Trump’s ICE. People came HERE seeking asylum to escape being disappeared. To be disappeared here, in this country, right in front of my eyes, in my own community.
No official ID presented. No arrest warrant. No Miranda rights read. No due process. The man was thrown into the van and they drove off. Street traffic didn’t even slow down for a lookie-loo. Nothing to see here. Such a scene has become normal.
And this AFTER 5 million peaceful protesters rallied for No Kings day. The King is still in power. Has nothing changed? The sweet chocolatey taste of my donut went sour as the pit of my stomach clenched tightly. What could I do with my outrage? Who do I call? Where are the ICE Busters? Sullenly, I slipped behind the steering wheel of my car and drove to the park. I sat on a bench to stare at the mountains in the distance. I could see a touch a white, snowfall from a late spring storm.
Near the top of the mountain, I could just make out the figure of a person, sitting silently… I felt drawn… I could feel my very soul leave my body. As I glanced back, I saw myself still sitting on the bench. Yet I ascended the mountain…
The figure was a man. He was seated with eyes closed, back straight, breathing long and deep… I walked around him in a full circle until I stood directly before him… He seemed to be meditating… He took no notice of me… I felt an inchoate rage rise within me… Not at him, but at the scene I had just witnessed… With the rage rising from deep below, rising to reach my throat, I roared at the top of my lungs…
“How can you SIT there so calmly and DO NOTHING?! At a time like this?!”
“Shh,” he whispered. “You don’t want to start an avalanche!”
I glanced up to the banks of snow and ice above and behind him. “Okay,” I said in a lowered voice. “How can you sit up here, meditating or whatever, when our country is being torn apart at the seams? Stormtroopers on American streets in broad daylight?”
“Hmm. Yes, it does seem contradictory, doesn't it? Why don’t you sit down. Let’s talk.”
I wasn’t at all sure about this. I wanted to go DO something to stop the madness. My mind mapped out all kinds of scenarios– and not all them peaceful! But I figured, what could it hurt to hear him out? I sat down.
“I appeared to be meditating,” he murmured, “but I am actually contemplating.”
“There’s a difference?” I asked.
“It’s subtle, but yes, there’s a big difference. Meditation is quietly opening yourself up to your own thoughts. An elaborate self-reflection. Digging deep within your own being. Opening up your channels. Waking Consciousness meeting Dream Consciousness meeting Deep Sleep Collective Consciousness. To awaken yourself and to let your Ego drop away.”
“Okay, that all jives with what I’ve heard about meditation. I ask again… How can you meditate at a time like THIS? We need to take action, push back against the horrific sweep of authoritarian power.” He went on as if I had said nothing.
“There’s a physical, emotional, and spiritual balance in play. You control it through your breathing and your posture. As you breathe in, it is as if you rise against the force of gravity. As you breathe out, you don’t sink back down, you suspend. Eventually, as you find your rhythm, you rise higher and higher, as if levitating. Try it for yourself.”
“Okay, I’m breathing in, I’m floating.”
“ That’s good. Now, breath out, but stay suspended. Hover above the mountain.”
“I’m hovering.”
“Spiral higher and higher. Stay with me now, here’s where we shift into Contemplation. It starts feeling natural. It’s starts feeling as one motion. You keep breathing, but instead of in and out, it becomes WHOLE. Ask the Question you came here to ask: how do we draw the GOOD out of this horrific situation? Now you enter silence, in stillness, and you just LISTEN.”
“Listen to what?”
“Everything! The wind. The birds. The leaves. Your heartbeat. Notice, and let all the sounds go by, like clouds. Listen, and see.”
“You’ve lost me. All I see are images of my life, like dream sequences.”
“Let it become a dialogue of stories forming. You are here in a state of mind with all the stories of those who have come to this country for work, for family, for America. Freedom.”
“Okay… some words are coming to me… Ancient words… A voice upon a mountain… “And if a man from another country is living in your land with you, do not make life hard for him: Let him be to you as one of your own countrymen and have love for him as for yourself.”
“Hmmm… those are Biblical words, both Old and New, from the laws of Leviticus and the lips of the Lord. Did you know you knew the Bible?”
“Not really. The sentiments feel like natural law, common sense. Morality this country ought to be abiding by. That’s what we should mean when we pledge allegiance, to values like this!”
“Well, there you have it. Meditation is the inward reflection. Contemplation is participating in the cosmic dialogue. You have your answer. You have your action plan.”
“I do?”
“To those who claim to espouse the Good News, this is Biblical Law. Hold them to it. Shout it. Whisper it. Write it on signs. Help them see their hypocrisy. Put flowers in the barrels of the guns.”
“It seems hopeless. Their brutality seems overpowering.”
“It’s not easy. We have to reverse the osmosis. Tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth, right? Well, tell the truth often enough, and it becomes the TRUTH! Tell it! Live it! Write it! Enact it into law! We each have to find our own individual way, while also showing the strength of our collective solidarity, like the No Kings day.”
“It seems futile.”
“To draw the GOOD out of a bad situation takes strategic effort. Why do you think I’m here on this mountaintop? Contemplating my navel? I’m strategizing for my next case. I’m a lawyer working on the very problem you have brought to me.”
“Oh…”
“So figure out what YOU can do in the World out there! Whatever it is, big or small, make a difference!”
Just then, my body on the bench seemed to summon me. As I swirled off the mountain, I waved to the meditating lawyer.
“Are you okay, buddy?” I heard a voice say as a guy was shaking me awake. “You seemed unresponsive there for a moment.”
“Oh, I must have drifted off while I was in a state of Contemplation. I was thinking how grateful I am for the strawberries I had for breakfast this morning. I was thinking about ICE, chasing the men and women who picked them especially for me. We shouldn’t be making life so hard for them.”
“I’m with you, amigo. Carry on. Reclaim the Stars and Stripes for true freedom.”
Action plan? What can I do? I write, I educate, I perform. Carry on?
New poems and stories, new lessons, new shows. I’ll do my best.
What’s YOUR Action Plan?
Midnight: at this late hour, we have learned that Trump unilaterally, without respect for the Constitution, without Congressional participation, has entered the war on Iran by sending B-2 bombers against three nuclear sites.
The New York Times reported the following comments: “President Trump misled the country about his intentions, failed to seek Congressional authorization for the use of military force and risks American entanglement in a potentially disastrous war in the Middle East,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said in a statement. He said the President “shoulders complete and total responsibility for any adverse consequences that flow from his unilateral military action.”
I agree: we are experiencing potential civil war within the country; and now an actual hot war beyond the country…
Again, I pose the question: What’s YOUR Action Plan?