 Good to go on the recording and again, welcome everyone. Thank you so much for being here. Love chatting with some of you who were here a bit early getting to know a little bit about more about you. And if you're here for the first time, welcome if you're returning welcome to you as well. And yeah, we're just really excited to gather here together. These calls take place every other Wednesday. And I'll show the link in the chat later on for the next call you can register for but as we have started in the past, we'll start with a grounding. And tonight, as you likely saw in the email invitation, we're talking about grief. And so we're going to start with a song from the banks and who are a couple who makes beautiful music together that I know for me personally, it helps me touch into new possibilities for new ways of being together. And since we'll be talking about grief tonight. This is a song called joy and grief. And I'll share a link to the song in the chat later on, as well as in the follow up email to tonight's call. Before we get into the song, let's just take a moment to take a breath, feel into our seats. This is the last time if you were here with Reverend Angel Kota Williams at Centering Practice, feeling our lane, which is connected to our dignity. Our with and our connection to our community and our relationships, our depth connection to the generations in the past before us generations yet to come with an exhale dropping down into our heart space into maybe our bellies landing here together, landing in our bodies. And I'll share the song. Start. Yeah, I love the bank. What does this line behind you, Jody say, I will not raise my children to kill another mother's child. And if everyone doesn't recognize it it's a line out of the Mother's Day proclamation by Julia Ward how that call for all the women to come to DC to for the great cause of peace after the Civil War. So Emily, you wanted to ask folks something. Sure. Yeah. So those of you who were here last week we talked about care. And as we left the call we kind of asked that over the next two weeks before this call this the homework if you will is to spend some time noticing who in your community can give some care to over the next two weeks. And how did it feel. What do your psyche and your soul was uncomfortable about it, and how maybe you made space for that as comfort, as you accepted and enjoyed care. And I can put that prompt in the chat but I'm just curious. I would love to hear from people who are here. What happened and what did you notice over the last two weeks. And if you weren't here. But you're here in the past or even if you, this is your first time just what's been alive for you as you've been engaging in this local peace economy practice for yourself. For the last two weeks. Okay, well, if nobody wants to share right now, they'll be time to share when we break out into our smaller groups later I know that sometimes easier. So today. And Macy who's with you. This is Virginia. You've been to two, she's been to two meetings. Yeah, I'm going to leave early but I'm next month I've canceled my band guitar so I can see the whole meeting. Watch the recording. So sorry, I, I now recognize you. Macy, Macy, the cats are on the out of the bag. We heard all about you earlier. So, if nobody wants to share right now then I want to start what we're going to talk about today. But before I do that, I want to share I always like sharing what I learned and and I just think one of the most important things about a local peace economy is that we're always learning. And that's, you know, the part about the war economy is it shuts down learning it shuts down our creativity and our innovativeness, and I learned something very cool this week. And I'm gonna. Don't know if everybody can see that. Okay, so see the circle at the top. It's a big circle and it says, next to it, this is concern. And then inside there's a little circle, and that says influence. That is called a healthy psyche. And I this I really want us to kind of feel into this because this is the local peace economy. And it's where we're healthy in our psyche, and concerns can be our values, they can be our concern about the planet, they can be our concern about life, our concern about our fellow human are concerned about what holds us, you know how the strength of the community is and how it holds us, and how we in our concern, take care of that that we're all weavers and what we're concerned about. You know, look at that circle is like how we as a human engage with our concerns right and that we have a little tiny sphere of influence that we connect with that helps in that concern. Look at the next circle. That's a circle of a billionaire that see the big giant circle that's a circle of influence. That's a tiny circle that's a circle of concern. You want to know why shit's fucked up. There you go. That is an image of the problem, because if your influence is greater than your concern. It makes you have a nuts psyche. The bottom is a picture of Netanyahu, where it's just a circle of influence with no concern, and that basically a psychopath has to win with impunity that is. So if you watching right now. I just want to say that as we deal with the grief from, you know, watching the psychopath every day that what our role is is in our circle of influence to not let him get away with murder. So, so because I hope I think we get healthier when we know how to relate to something when we know, you know, because the war economy wants to overwhelm us and and, you know, give us that sense of powerlessness. I felt like today we could start by just being healthy in relationship to the moment that is bringing us so much grief, because sometimes it's just finding the healthy relationship. I just wanted to give you your circle of health that you have a concern. You have a circle of influence, and being able to not let the monster get away with it with impunity is something you can do in your circle of influence, and that is all you can do. So I just, you know, like, as we move into talking about grief today. One of the things is in grief. And in my experience with grieving so much of my life has been to find how to have a healthy relationship inside of the grieving process. And I say that because I lost my daughter when she was two and a tsunami. And for many years, I couldn't even find a way to be in a healthy grieving relationship, because to not feel the pain. I lived in shame and guilt. We're not useful to the grieving process. They were places I would hide out in, so not to feel directly the pain. And so what I learned in the process is to have a healthier relationship to grief, to shame and guilt and find out where they useful. And if they were not useful enough, I could not have a healthy relationship because you can do something about shame and you can do something about guilt when you can't. Then they're not, it's not, you know, that's not really where they belong. And, you know, really being able to be present with the loss was where grief was available. And so, you know, I wake up grieving every day. It is my practice because I can't do my work in the day. If I can't really look in the eyes of these beautiful children that are gone and just feel the eviscerating pain that that is for me. Eviscerating. And I look at one child after the other. I look at them alive and then I look at what the white packages look like that they have become or the bag. And I'm looking both at life and at death. I am looking at horror that is on the planet in this moment. And I witness, and then like that song, I move into engagement with other humans to be in support of life, to be engaged with life. And I'll just explain like one of those was the other morning I woke up with the, I had gone to bed with the images of Aaron Bushnell and I couldn't sleep. I got up that morning with not very many hours of sleep. And immediately, it became doing memorials to him in LA and San Francisco and DC and New York. And it was like, as soon as that happened, I felt alive again. And I have to say, at the one I was holding in LA, everyone came up and gratitude for the space being held. This reminder that we're in the cycle of life constantly and being able to be in the cycle. We've talked about this now, you know, a couple of times, how to remain in the cycle of life. And, you know, even as we talk about co-option, it's like, what are the things that take us out of this cycle? And how do we weed them away? You know, it's just like a garden. How do we weed those things away? And what is the thing that I can do in the spirit of influence that I have that is just local. And all I did like literally I did this at, you know, eight in the morning, by five in the evening, there were hundreds of people. And do you know what I did? I just stepped aside and let everyone offer what they wanted to offer. And it was just everyone came in the same way local peace economy is with the peace they could offer that wove us together so beautifully. Jew and Palestinian Christian and from Orange County to the Valley to, you know, like wherever they were coming from, they knew they needed this for their heart to grieve, delight the candle. Everyone created multiple altars with different messaging and, you know, just creating the space for the offering. So I thought this week being about grief that, you know, it is in every day, especially if we're live now, it is for the planet. It is for the people it is for who we walk next to in the street that has no home or that the family member you know that grief is with us every day. And the practice of grieving having the tools to share, because really the local peace economy at root is nurturance. It's creating the container the home sweet home we talk about. What is that for that nurse and kindness that is so missing. That's going to happen. You know, like, we are in. You know, we're focusing on Palestine now but we know how far progressed this climate catastrophe is. And you know that those things are happening. Cancer too much cancer is happening from all the horrible things that we take in that the war economy makes money on so that you know it's going into our body it's creating the spaces we live in. So just like why grief I wanted to start out with that sharing and and Jan I see you're having raised so maybe you can share before we move to Emily. Yes, I would love to share my experience and just getting this book I'm so glad that I just purchased it immediately when I saw it. The book were engaged in the local peace economy workbook. My husband and I want we love it. We love it. We were in such a place of grief just unbelievable sorrow, unbelievable sorrow that we woke up with every single day because of the women and children and men of Palestine and no one doing anything about it every day. It was just like the day before we were consumed with grief. When we read this book we said oh the local community, and I realized that there's a food bank. I mean I started thinking about the food bank right down the street from me it's it's on the two blocks away. And so I went down and took a picture of their of their. What is it called the place where they can put a message out in front of their of the. The bulletin board. The bulletin board. Yeah I was called a bulletin board. And, and I took a picture of it with my phone, and it shows all the things they need they need diapers they need to know they need peanut butter. And so I took a picture of it and I haven't done it yet because my granddaughter granddaughter lives here too. I'm just going to take her to the food bank and we're going to, because I have the picture of all the things they need. Or we maybe we'll go and take a new picture because that might have changed. But then we can go to the store and get those things. And I have a couple of things that I have purchased for her that for some reason I was not smart enough to use them online without duplicating them. So I have a couple of things that she can give for paper dolls a set of paper dolls, I got two sets. And then we have a Earth Day puzzle. So I'm going to take all of this down with her, and we'll stop at the store and buy the things that we that are needed, and we'll share our lives with with them. So the next thing, Jan, is that I hear you doing this. But the next thing is to reach out to the community and have them go shopping with you and come with you to make, you know, I get that the two of you and your granddaughter are doing this. But you want to pull others that probably live two blocks away and that's a very good idea. All over the place, get them do the same thing. And maybe they are already doing that because you have no idea to reach out. It's like that it's like all about learning. Like what happens if I do this, and then like bring, because, you know, you coming to this made you aware of that you then going out to others. It's like it our awareness. When we bring our awareness locally, we see all these things, you know, it's it's kind of, you know, the, the mapping part, you know, like, what is there like Macy, you know, we're going out to map Olympia and seeing what was actually there that we haven't got to the mapping part yet, but you've started mapping a little bit about like what is there what is in my community that I saw but didn't see that I've become aware of. And, and that is, you know, for me my biggest lesson in grieving is that I could never heal my own heart. My heart was always healed when I was hearing for others and just finding where that that place is when my husband died at my husband of 38 years. I took my two children and we tracked in the Himalayas serving these communities that live like three and four days hikes from each other, serving a medical team for, you know, the once every year that they got a doctor that came to serve them. And it was like checking all day for nine hours a day in a silent meditation, and then service that, you know, I think that the three of us came out of it and not in a much healthier way now my son's a Buddhist priest out of all that walking and meditation so what better way to serve a community than to bring it more present so I also decided that I can go to the food bank and volunteer my time. Yeah, like we say you know the best way to learn a local peace economy isn't being in relationship one because it's it's like you learn a lot about your community and about what people are living with that we aren't. We don't get every day, and the capacity to have both three for it in the in the country we live in that is one half of the citizenry that lives at the brink of poverty. And you know, and then, because we're weaving together the future. And so to know that you're in the weaving that you're like think of your knitting and it's, you know, it's just starting. So Emily maybe if you could share yours and then we can move into breakout groups. You'll hear me okay. Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah, I just wanted to share some of my own reflections about my experience with three. And I'm like 30 said we'll move into breakout rooms. But like so many of us, I learned a lot about grief during the pandemic. At the start of 2020, I had four members of the eldest generation of my family, which is my grandparents generation still living. By the end of 2020 all four of them had passed two of them from COVID. And the second person to pass was my grandfather and my last living grandparent from COVID in April of 2020 a month into the more official social distancing and I was looking from home at the time, and I was living in Washington State far away from my family on the East Coast. And from this experience, I learned so much about what my grief needed, because not only was I grieving my grandfather at that time, I was also grieving the end of a relationship in addition to the various, various types of losses that we were all experiencing in different ways at the time due to COVID. And during this time I experienced my grief like a river running through me. Sometimes I needed to walk up to the river and dip my toes in. Sometimes I needed to jump in and swim around. Sometimes I needed to stand on its banks and just look at it. And sometimes I needed to walk or to run in the other direction and just know that it's always there for me to come back to you when when I needed. And if I was willing to listen, my grief could tell me what it needed. And because of the social distancing and isolation during that period, we were not able to have a full funeral for my grandfather with my whole family like many people at that time. And so we had a zoom memorial shortly after his passing, which was immensely helpful. And for my grieving process at the time, but without the ritual of the funeral and being together with my family in person, I felt my grief still frozen in place and needing to move in the months that followed but not, not knowing how to do that and not knowing how to kind of create that, that passageway. So on the one year anniversary of his death, I held a funeral ceremony for him in my apartment. You're still distancing at that time. And in the days before I planned a Catholic ceremony honoring his Catholic faith, and I chose readings and songs from that tradition that spoke to the grief I was feeling and that honored his life. And then I held the space for the ceremony, witnessed by one other person who was with me, and I knelt on the floor in front of the altar I had set up for him. And I cried, and I wailed, and I let my grief emerge and move, and it was so painful and it was also profoundly healing. And the grief I feel for him is of course not gone, but it is no longer stuck and able to touch into a more expansive experience of my relationship with him, because I listened to my grief. In that moment in those days and offered it what it needed. So the story that I have shared is one about physical death. We're also as Jodi was speaking to so many other kinds of losses that we can and must grieve especially within the war economy culture, which is taken so much from us. And so when we have the courage and willingness to touch into our grief for these losses, it can inform our paths toward the culture where a piece economy flourishes. So, with that, we'll go into breakout rooms. We'll break into Jodi had groups of three, I think great three to four, and maybe take a little more time. So, would people prefer three or four, raise your fingers. Three. Okay, we'll break into threes then. Great. And I'll put the prompts in the chat but the prompts to reflect on our, what is one thing grief has taught you what is one way grief has changed you. And then the second prompt is do you feel you have something in grief to me in this moment. And we'll see you back in a 10 minutes. Everybody's come back. Welcome back. If you wouldn't mind muting yourself. I'm muted. I'm talking in your breakout rooms. Just to minimize the feedback. All right, so we almost everybody back. Does everyone know how to do the in the reactions to raise a hand. So let's get your hands raised and we'll start calling on folks what did you hear feel learn want to share. Ronald, thank you. You want to start. Yeah, good unmuting. Well, I experienced grief. More than 10 years ago, but I It all kind of came back listening to Jan and the other person speaking of their immediate grief of their loved ones. Right now. In a In a recent past. When it comes back up for you. Do you feel like we've been able to give you some resources to be helpful for that? Yes. Okay. Good. Anyone else. Marjorie. Yeah. Thank you for. For the pasta chance to speak. In, in our group. I was describing. How I attend a Quaker, a Quaker group. And they're they're in New York, and I'm here in Massachusetts. So I attend by zoom. And they're a group that I've worked, worked, you know, known for many years. And I find I find that. I don't know why this is, but. I've started to speak a little bit more about what's going on in Gaza. In the United States and Britain and Germany and Israel and. And I've been kind of surprised that they haven't been raising this issue. We had this, this Quaker meeting had a school in Rafa that they were. They were supporting over many years. And I don't know. So, so. I, I share some of my. My viewpoints on. Both things that we can do, like write letters to. Our, our elected people. And, you know, signing petitions. I don't know. And I'm hoping to get it. We have a Google Google group of Quakers. And I've spoken with a friend about that. And I'm hoping to become a part of that before I can share more. And, and it caused a little, a little bit of. A Russell in the. In the Quaker meeting on Sunday when I said. I voted in Massachusetts. We don't have uncommitted. We have no preference. And I just mentioned that. I voted no preference. And. There were two or three people who rose up and said, that's like a vote for Trump. You know, I don't know. I don't know. It's the primary. Right. What, what. Well, I think that, you know, one of the things that this. Moment in time is here to remind us is how many people operate in fear. And I think even as we're talking about grief that we. I shared how afraid I was to feel the pain. And I, you know, I. That response to you about something very deep and real. Was to be afraid of something else, you know, the diversion, like how we divert away from the gaze of life and what is happening. And I just always counsel, especially to a Quaker. It's just like your offering is your offering their responses, your response and just hold with your offering. It came from your heart. And, you know, it's like people will find their way there when they find their way there, especially in intimate, you know, groups of relationality that, you know, and if, if something moves you to ask a question. I always think when that happens to ask a question. You know, if you're moved that there's something that you're going to face about like, you know, because, or even just to say, you know, I did it because I want another world and your opportunity to stand with that. You know, but it's the, you know, because we don't live in a democracy. This is I always say just because we don't, because rich people have too much money. They control everything, including the media and they give, they give elections are a $4 trillion industry. But this is another one where people don't vote their values anymore. They vote to win. And when I just taught you about psychopath. I think there's a very important lesson in the psychopath. That we vote our values instead of to win. I've always done that my entire life. I have voted for who had my values. No matter, I, you know, never voted for Hillary Clinton or, you know, like even Obama, who was for a good war. I'm like, can't do that. You know, those are not my values. So I think that, you know, that is like as we find our way back, you know, as we're laying these breadcrums of how lost we've gotten. I think that that's an important one. Yes. You know, it's like whoever you're going to vote for, I'm going to vote my values. We'll see what that looks like on November, whatever it is, you know, it's like, who knows what's going to be offered and what my options are, but I'm not going to vote in fear. Because that's brought us to this moment voting in fear. And the, you know, the lesser of evil has brought us to a very evil moment. So, you know, you could just, you could just offer your place of like, I know I hear you and this is how I, as a way, you know, to be in communities to share. So you shared and they shared and you just keep sharing until you can get people off, you know, because living in fear is part of what is really dreadful about the United States here, supposedly the richest country in the world and in fear. I'm not, you know, not that's what we're looking at with the war economy, that how it makes us live in certain ways that we're not even aware of. That's why the pivots, they do pull us out of fear. I want to say that if you practice the pivots, one of the things they pull you away from is the fear that we're driven to. So when it doesn't mean that we can't be concerned and be able to witness to where we are in the world, we can't be witness to, you know, where the planet is or witness to too many nuclear weapons, in the hands of too many stupid people, we can witness that. And then what do we do in response to it is, as we saw with that drawing, it's like, what keeps you healthy? Is that healthy relationship to understanding concern and understanding what your level of influence is. I think living in an empire, we have our idea of our influence has been inflated, like so many things when you live in an empire, thinking you're special and important and all those other stupid things we're taught. But I think staying with the level of influence that is healthy, I think, I never saw that before, but that is the local piece of economy work. And it's what's healthy. So, you know, the process of the war economy is one that is a process of psychopathy. And so, you know, finding these way out and learning them is core. So thank you, Marjorie, and you know, you're saying this on a day when I found out that, you know, the historical Quaker Association in D.C. hasn't called for a ceasefire. And I was just telling my team what a shock that was. And why is that? And that's, you know, so fascinating that we, it's always good to look at these things as, wow, I live in a period of time where, wow, that is so different than 50 years ago, we're getting arrested with them. And they were speaking out quite profoundly. So it's just to recognize, hmm, what keeps people silent and afraid, right? And having heart for that. Yeah. So I see Moji's got a hand up. Moji. Are you trying to find your unmute? Oh, hi. Hi. Thank you, Marjorie, for bringing up something that is very much a focus of propaganda of the military industrial complex that is to divert people away from what, in part, the 25-year-old child called Aaron gave his life for. And to create that fear of a monster called Trump. And then to say, settle for a person that is our current president and is going along with the genocide. And I believe that I wrote an op-ed with a Jewish brother who is gay. So a Muslim Jewish op-ed, which hasn't been published anywhere, of course. But in it, we are arguing that, well, I wrote it and he actually made it even better through his edits, that when you are given a choice of genocide and whether you are complicit in it or you resist it, then even if a monster called Trump gets elected, then you don't vote for Biden. And that's what people in Michigan did last night by that beautiful vote of over 100,000 people. And that's a moral choice. So this op-ed, which, Jodi, if you want to, I can send it to you. I think it should be published somewhere. Well, we can publish it. It could pink if you'd like it on our pink tank. Absolutely. As long as it is, as long as the voice of a Muslim, it's called the Muslim Jewish voice for peace. Fabulous. Thank you. Moral genocide is a moral red line. Yes. Thank you, Moji. Thank you so much. And thank you for bringing up Aaron again. Yeah. My heart is so broken. Yes. I mean, and I'm so proud. A child gave his life for other life to be preserved. Well, and just to say so intentionally and profoundly consciously, and that we watch, you know, people that have no values, not know how to have a relationship with it in the same way Marjorie start, you know, it's like we're watching the mainstream media just not know how to deal with those deep of values. So before Cecil, one last person before we like. Just a moment. It won't take me long. I mean, I'm one of those people who. The year is voted against rather than four. But I cannot vote for either of these two. And I've become a pariah. Because of that. So they people go around it with petitions about, you know, supporting Biden and I say, I won't, I won't sign. Cecil, you're just a teacher. You're not a pariah and certainly not here. So. Well, not here. I'm not, but I am in certain, you know. Yeah, we know, we know. It's just, but I cannot. I cannot vote for either of those two guys. No way. So we have one minute left. Laura, I want to hear your voice. Thank you. I appreciate it because this is extremely painful for me. This is extremely difficult. Okay. As I said in my little group. I'm Jewish. I have been appalled by the trajectory of Israel. Since I was a young woman. I'm also appalled by the rise in anti-Semitism that has occurred recently. And I have to say this. I am appalled by what this has done in terms of the Democrats versus the Republicans. So I, you know, it's not for me to criticize other people's positions, but I am appalled by what has happened. And I think that Hamas has created a monstrous situation. That has rippled out into the world in ways that have been very harmful to many people. And that is not to say that I accuse Netanyahu. I do think he's a psychopath. That's totally, totally dreadful. And I don't have an answer to any of it. But I have to say that there are many of us who are Jews who are tremendously paying tremendously conflicted about what has happened, because it's war crimes on all sides. And it's people. Hamas was created. Okay. So, so for, for next time, I'm going to post what we want to work on for next time. So the next piece we're going to look at is the stories because, you know, sometimes we say peace economy. We don't know what that looks like. And it's important to see some of the stories. So you're writing a story by walking away from the war economy into the peace economy. And so, wait, I, I, I'm trying to, our practices against war economy made very, but the shared the same goal to end genocide salute a hundred times. Thank you. Yes. So, so let's talk about stories next time. And, you know, Emily's going to post some links and you'll get it in the follow up email of, you know, where our stories are. We have a whole wiki of stories. And you're writing a story as you walk out of the war economy, you're writing a story of the future you're creating the future. So, you know, maybe look at some of them and see what inspires you. What's missing from the stories that you read that you want to know. And what story are you writing with your life? What, what, when you think about, you know, that I am planting a new seed for health to grow for, for healthiness to grow, which I think speaks to Cecile and Marjorie and Moji and Laura were all looking for health. So what is the story that you want to see or that you want to write or what's missing in the stories you see? Let's talk about stories next time. And if you want to get ready, Emily will post, you know, where you can see our stories. And also she's going to post here and in the follow up email, some other pieces that you can work on with grief. As grief is something that is part of life, it will be always with us, especially if you're, you know, my age, it's the constant. And so until two weeks from now, please take care of yourself. Take care of those around you. Expand your relationship with your community. Be peace. Be love. It's nourishing. And I love you all for coming and for caring and for all the work you do. Thank you. And thanks, Emily, for holding us all together. Thank you. Thanks for in the chat. We'll be in a follow-up email as well. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Two weeks. Two weeks. Good, good one. Thank you for that.