Keeping the Dream

Last night I attended a reunion with fellow grassroots activists to share our experiences concerning Chinese detainees from the Golden Venture with Patrick Keefe. Patrick Keefe is writing a book on the Golden Venture as a follow up to a New Yorker article.

It was a wonderful evening. First, it was a pleasure to meet with Patrick. He shared the journey he took that brought him to writing this book. I was interested in meeting him and hearing about his experience and more than happy to share mine.

But what I was really looking forward to was seeing my old friends again. It had been years since I had seen a good number of these people. It was like coming home.

There’s something about being in the company of passionate and caring people. We are all so diverse in our political and religious views, and yet each one of us unapologetically offers who we are to one another and wholeheartedly accepts this as the gift it is.

I walked away from the evening’s experience and stepped into the night infused with an energy and vitality, a renewed sense of hope.

A lot of things were triggered last night…memories, lessons learned, inspiration that sustains me to this day. I was reminded not only of what I believe, but that I am not alone in those beliefs. There is not only great comfort in that, but strength.

I think I will spend the next few days going over some of these things, sharing them with you. Because when you give and what you give to another strengthens it in you.

Sometimes I get so drained. Being a single homeschooling mom, I can get overwhelmed by addressing the needs of my child and just making ends meet. I’m always looking for some kind of community, a social network for my child and myself to belong to. We do have friends, and the homeschooling community in this area is strong.

But thinking on this this morning, I realized I have another one. It’s not a homeschooling community. It’s not a church community. It’s this very beautiful fluid community of people who, with all our diversity, share a common foundation - compassion and a deep respect for our fellow human beings. And perhaps even more importantly, act on those things, making a difference.

Yes, it felt good to come home.

I have just found the most amazing website: Global Voices Online It is one of the most exciting endeavors I have come across in a long time. Global Voices Online is a media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

How Global Voices Works:

Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online - shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.

Finding one’s voice is the heart of the healing journey. It’s part of my passion as an individual and a singer/songwriter. It’s the topic of so many of the songs I write. But being heard is the realization of that healing, or at least, the real catalyst for it.

What good is a song that is never heard, a story that is never listened to, a life that is never acknowledged? These things are meant to be shared. And what’s true for the individual is true for a community, a people.

When you are heard, not only is it now possible for others to respond, but you, knowing that you, your situation, your feelings have been acknowledged almost become a new creature.

You are invigorated with new strength. A sense of esteem for yourself is born or strengthened and suddenly, you feel you have value…and most important, hope.

Invisibility is the devil. No matter what someone has done to you or what you’ve gone through, if there is no acknowledgment of the experience, that blindness and deafness to you becomes equal to or worse than the crime, itself.

Even if someone is contemptuous or apathetic of your experience, while hurtful, that’s at least admitting it happened. Invisibility, also, permits the atrocity and abuse to continue with you and/or to find other victims, unabated.

Global Voices Online is a gift of empowerment, where people ignored by the general media, can speak and be heard. Where situations can be highlighted and made known.

I’m embarrassed and ashamed of what passes for news in America. We know more about our spoiled rich kids and what they wear and how many times they’ve been arrested for DUI or other stupid stuff, than what’s going on with our global neighbors.

I’m woefully ignorant of what the world outside of my own is really like. I’m changing that. I’m going to start by listening to bloggers around the world, just like me. Individual voices of regular people, comparing and integrating them into larger synopsis written by reporters.

Because I’m a part of it. And whether I’m silent or vocal, whether I speak words of ignorance or awareness, I’m contributing something to the world - whether I like it or not, whether I would be proud of it or not. It’s that way for me and it’s that way for you.

“All voices, everywhere, to be heard”. What a beautiful affirmation and a wonderful effort to make that a reality. This is idealism at its best - setting the goal, the ideal and then making it happen.

I contemplate on this. I know the stories of many of my brothers and sisters around the world will be sad. But for this moment, I will allow myself to be grateful. Grateful they have a channel to voice their pain, their fears

And maybe, together, all of us, we can find a way to kindle that hope, and through individual and communal effort, give them reason to hope, so that one day they may have reason to celebrate.

This writing is based on correspondence I had with someone a few years back from within China - someone very young wanting to know more, eager to take a stand and desiring to know how to honor the students of Tiananmen Square. ~ Demian DreamSinger

To Honor the Dead

“To My Young Friend,

Your time to speak freely, to fully spread your wings and fly will come. That I truly believe. But for now, you must fly in your heart. And I and others will be here for you to encourage you and be inspired by you as well.

You are especially precious and very important to your people because of your brave spirit, your beautiful passion to learn and to know more than just what others would have you know. But you must be wise and pick your battles carefully.

There were many people who stood up for a dream when you were cradled in your mother’s arms, and paid for it with their lives. To honor them…or their dream…to honor the sacrifice of those giving up their lives for a principle or an ideal, means embracing the ideal first - even and especially if you can’t embrace the people or the cause openly by name.

The students of Tiananmen Square wanted to live in a world where their voices could be heard without punishment, where thoughts could be freely discussed because they believed in the worth of every individual, therefore to honor them you must value yourself.

Whether you know what actually happened or not back then, if you honor your worth as an individual now and hold that vision for all in the future, you honor the students even more than someone who vocalizes their support but carries cynicism in his or her heart.

I support your desire to seek information and to know the truth, because that’s important. But what I’m trying to say is the reality of who you are is even more important than the facts of what has been.

It’s when you become so angry you lose the ability to feel compassion, or so guilt-ridden that you become numb to the sounds of your own heart beating that those who fell in Tiananmen Square are truly dead. While you live with hope, they live with you.

So live. Where they can no longer reach out, embrace. Where their eyes are closed, see. Where their ears are deaf, listen to the sound of truth all around you and within you. Perceive with all your senses the richness of the beauty and the potential for good in all humankind.

Do not be blinded to the ills of our world…but do not be blinded by them either.

Now their mouths are motionless with silence. Let yours move to speak words of kindness and love…for these are the greatest truths, greater than the greatest political speeches.

And where they no longer walk, dance.

In this way you honor those who died. Those who honor them as you do in spirit, whether consciously in their name or not, will find you as you will find them.

And the dream will unfold through your lives and those who follow. Nothing will stop it.”