Tag: 2021

Who are we? And, who do we want to ‘be’ and ‘become’ in this new year, 2021?

Becoming with an ellipse in parenthesis (…) indicates that each of us are to fill in the word that we are striving to “become” this year. On this note, Pat, Lynn, and Cristina center January 2021’s discussion around stories of being on the hero’s journey – in light and dark – and sharing stories that illuminate our path. Becoming (…) for each of us is different and ever-evolving, but we found that it is within and through story that we hold space for one other within the darkness. Darkness here is leveled, meaning that it does not depict just evil or fear. It can be nurturing like a seed that is planted and then gestates within the womb of Mother Earth before it cracks open to extend both its roots into the earth and its branches upward toward the sky. Part 1 begins with Lynn’s poetry titled, “Becoming (Blessing): The Divine Algorithm” where she interweaves the stories told by those who joined us in December 2020 for the last meeting. Cristina then talks about story by introducing Dr. Bertrice Barry’s work and as connected to a story about Representative Andy Kim of New Jersey who unceremoniously helped workers to pick up debris left in the Capitol Building on the infamous Insurrection Day: Wednesday, January 6, 2021.

In Part 2, Pat shares an accordion book she made that is inspired by the Lord of the Rings, specifically by the following quotation said by Sam Wise Gamgee to Frodo at a time of turbulence and peril:

Sam: It’s all wrong By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?

Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for. Subsequent conversations, not showed in this video, connects the Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 to the battle of light and dark in connection to the hero’s journey.