Miami Dispatch: 11/18

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MIAMI -- We are out in the backyard of the Pagan Cluster House, holding a training for the cluster. I'm tired, and my right shoulder blade is tied in a tight knot that all the massage therapists at the Unitarian ritual were unable to undo, but I'm grateful to have a slightly relaxed morning, where we can train in our back yard instead of running off to deal with a crisis somewhere.

We do a quick role play -- the police are raiding the house -- what do you do? The group is scattered, confused, but makes some good decisions and some not so good. Juniper and I play the cops, run around to the doors and bang on them. The cluster locks the doors and doesn't let us in. A small group comes out on the sidewalk to negotiate with us. I send Juniper off to the side, tell them, "Look, I'm your friend here. There's no problem unless you create one. Officer Juniper, she gets a bit out of control. I wouldn't want to let her loose in your house. But all we need is a bit of information..."

They don't buy it, demand to see their lawyer, claim they are just visiting and have no keys. Then Scott walks up, late, walks up to the house, and pulls out his key. I snatch it out of his hand and head for the door. Song grabs it away from me and I beat her with my baton, made of rolled up newspaper. It doesn't actually hurt, but the point is made. We stop the role play and debrief, about what to do if the police were to come, why it's not a good idea to talk with them, (and a worse idea to snatch things out of their hands!) teach the magic words, "I am going to remain silent. I want to see a lawyer."

We do some of the grounding and awareness techniques, then move on to some energy work. I put people in pairs, to speak for a moment or two about something they feel passionate about, and silently cheer for each other. Then I talk about how that silent cheering is energetic support, and it's a gift we can give each other and give to our groups, a way to create an atmosphere of support and appreciation and joy.

We form a circle and I suggest we create a space in which we consciously support each other's strong emotions, whatever they are. We might visualize that as cheering, or as sending a flow of water, or a beam of light, or whatever each person wants -- but as a group we create an energy base that can give us room to express the feelings we haven't yet had time to deal with, grief or fear or rage. Even as we begin, a few people are crying. One by one, people step into the circle and speak from the heart. "I'm new to this, and I'm completely terrified." "I'm absolutely enraged that we have to be doing this." "I feel this incredible fear and incredible hope, and I'm overwhelmed with the responsibility of helping to make this transformation happen. There's so much at stake." Some just cry, others ask for a song, Around the circle we are sobbing. Something has happened to me since Cancun: I'm not stuck in the state of calm fatality that is so useful when preparing to go dance into a line of riot cops. I'm fully feeling my own well of grief, the pain that I can so easily stir up if I let myself think too much about Genoa or Palestine or just the everyday level of force I've seen used against us. Or if I let in the pain of the homeless woman on the street or the millions, the billions, she stands for. I want to go into the center and say that I spent weeks of the summer crying alone every day about what I'd seen in the spring in Palestine, releasing the grief I'd held from supporting the teams who'd been with Rachel Corrie when she died, and Brian Avery when he was shot, and Tom Hurndall when he was shot in Rafah. I'd trained Tom, just a few days before, running him and the group through role plays, teaching them to ground and stay in wide awareness. I know rationally that nothing we might have done in the training could have kept him safe, running into gunfire to save some children who were being shot at by snipers from an Israeli gun tower, I still feel some deeper link of responsibility, a grief so sharp that sometimes I feel as if my bones were literally aching with it. Someone steps into the center and says, "The worst that could happen to me is that I would die in this action, and I'm okay with that." And I think, "No, no -- that's not the worst."

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