Hello, dear ones. Hello! 

First, the question that always comes in right away: where am I? I am in Illinois just south of Chicago, moving through Joliet and Plainfield and heading towards the Mississippi River. I am about to celebrate my 61st birthday on this walk - August 5th!! I know, total Leo moment. Whoo hoooo! I plan to hang out at Shabbona Lake on the 4th and 5th. This is land that is in the process of being returned to the Potawatomi people. The land was stolen when Chief Shab-eh-nay was away visiting family and the US government went into this treaty-protected land and stole it, auctioning it off to settlers. Visiting this land means, for me, talking with other campers about the fact of this landback moment, honoring the land and praying for its good and loving return. There is so much that I don’t know, as is always the case, and along with that, I have been learning about and visiting sites related to the forced expulsion of the Potawatomi people from what is now Indiana and Illinois. Also remembering and continuing to deepen my learning of the Seven Grandfather teachings and the many Potawatomi people who blow me away in the present moment including Robin Wall Kimmerer. 

Reflection

The further west I have gone, the friendlier and more curious people have become. No disrespect to beloveds in the eastern part of Turtle Island, but these land-locked ones, strangers I am just meeting, have been more likely to pause and ask me questions, offer me water, and even sometimes a place to stay. As I walk, I keep asking: how do we live on this land in a good way together? I ask people: what are you afraid of? What is in the way of collective care, collective safety and why is it there? 

Right now I am moved by what is similar between people’s stories more than the obvious political differences. I hear about the end times. About the Book of Revelations and how God has a plan and it is currently rolling out. That those who have accepted Jesus will be ok. And I have also heard descriptions of the end times that focus on late stage capitalism, climate chaos and the end of empire. I sat in a park and talked with a 16 year old about how afraid he is for the future, about how he and his friends can’t decide if they should just party their asses off since the world is ending or have lots of babies quickly and start building a farm and a bunker. He said that mostly everyone he knows is afraid. 

And yes, there have been a few people who have told me that anything about the end times or chaos or disaster is just drama and things are going to continue forward in the same way that it always has.

I keep thinking about Joanna Macy’s reflection that there are three survival ways of being right now: people who focus on business-as-usual with the assumption that human ingenuity will rise up and take care of any problems, people who focus on the great unraveling where their fear and worry and extreme focus on the many many different examples of chaos and, well, unraveling define how they respond to things, and those who focus on the great turning which, as I understand and remember it, means not ignoring what is violent or terrible or chaotic but at the same time, listening and feeling for other ways of being. Opening to the possibility that we can become someone other than the ones who cause and experience harm. This is, after all, exactly what the Seven Fires Prophecy points to: the importance of the light-skinned ones and those who follow the ways of the light-skinned ones (hello anyone invested in or shaped by capitalism, at the very least) remembering Spirit, that all life is connected, and that we are only one small piece of something much larger.

As I walk, I am mostly met by business-as-usual or by folks in terror or numbness about end times, the Great Unraveling. Sometimes I am met with a kind of hyper-positivity about how everything is going to be fine because someone - Jesus, Spirit, the angels - is going to sweep in and scoop us all up at the final hour. Today, literally about an hour ago, I had a long conversation with a woman about what it means to trust, to let go, to believe that something else is possible. We talked about this as we talked about the death of her son, about what it means to not fear death.

About what it means to not fear death.

In Fort Wayne, I got to participate in a panel with Ketu Oladuwa. Elder Ketu spent a year traveling by motorcycle across the lower 48 states in 2016. The two of us were on the panel to compare notes. We laughed a lot, including about the fact that I, a middle-aged light skinned woman, had been stopped by the police multiple times and he, an older Black man, had not been stopped at all. We talked about the kindness of strangers and how it impacts us and when it surprises us, and we talked about what this practice of walking and riding has meant for us in imagining what is possible. For both of us, it touched on that place where Joanna Macy talks about the Great Turning. Elder Ketu said it well: part of our work is to address the fear we feel about strangers and about the world around us. This fear is what leads to control and a desire to shrink away or come out fighting. This sits alongside a clear understanding of the power of systems and unfinished histories in responding to and shaping each of us but it is more than that. It is the place of liberation. Of possibility.

It was an honor to be there with him, the gift of meeting a great one. Thank you, Emmanuel.

When I first started to study craniosacral therapy and other body-based modalities, it was because I wanted to understand what happened within our bodies. I wanted to know the inside experience, the way that histories are held in tissues as well as in institutions and law. I had spent a lot of years learning frameworks to help explain how systems and histories are woven togethers. I learned about and continue to learn about oppression and power and pain and about how to build collective power. About how to build collective power - and collective safety and collective security. I have learned and practiced how to push, to demand and to refuse to let another moment of violence arc out unchallenged. And there is always so much more to learn. I feel such grief and rage at how much I was not taught and am still in the process of learning the successive circles of colonization and how those circles continue to shape present moments of policy, land use and people’s sense of belonging. It really is everything. 

So, from years of focusing almost only on building political analysis and frameworks surrounding power and oppression, I moved into wanting to know what happens within the body - survival physiology and the shaping of a life by generational trauma and generational supremacy. Somatics. Bodies. The organic nature of aliveness. And now or maybe still but with different understandings, I feel almost completely drawn to the collective nature of what is sensed and known among and between us. The way that everything is connected to something larger. The way that land and Creator are the same and the ways in which our individual lives, as well as the lives of our entire species, are so small. So young. So awkward even as we are wise. 

How do we live on this land in a good way. Together. This is political, spiritual, physical, all at the same time. Leave your homes and your comfort zones, do a risk assessment based on your positionality so you are clear about what that means for you, and go to talk with someone you don’t already know. Show up and ask them how you can help them. How they think we can hold a different kind of possibility for those who are coming next. I was talking with an older white man about a week ago. He was tight and angry, someone who believes that Trump is going to do things that no one else can. I laughed and said I I don’t disagree with him, I just don’t want what Trump can do. He wanted to argue about details and I told him there is no fight here. He is not going to convince me and I am not going to convince him of anything so why are we arguing? I asked him: rather than arguing over what we each believe are facts, I just want to pause. I asked him, is this the best of us? Is this all we can hope for, raising children and grandchildren and the generations after that to be in a constant tug of war between stories about how we got here, whose fault it is and what should be done as a result? Is this the best of what we have to offer those to come? He was a farmer, although now his children and grandchildren do the farming while he, in his words, lives the life of an old person. We talked about how farming communities have been destroyed and about how much he hates that he doesn’t actually grow food anymore. 

Show up and listen. Don’t try to convince someone of what you know and believe but listen. Wait. How do we live on this land in a good way together, not how do we agree, how do we win, how do we get the upper hand. Living on this land in a good way together is about the land and it is about each of us, every single one.

I am listening for new ways of dealing with my kin’s prejudices - their racism and transphobia and misogyny -  when they rise up. Not slamming them by pushing through the front door and telling them they are a piece of shit (yes, I have done this a bunch) and instead remembering to ask why they believe what they believe. What has shaped this understanding and story, where did it come from and how do they know what they know? What, I asked one woman, has led you to be so angry at people who are, like you, just trying to survive and to protect and care for their loved ones? Is this the person you want to be? Is this what is most likely to create a world that the generations to come will want to live in? What story are you, am I, holding on to, loyal to, fighting for, and when is that story a tool and when is it a weapon?

I have shared before in these blog posts that when I am walking down a road that has a lot of semis whizzing by, I will often listen to a podcast. Sometimes I snort-laugh as I walk because the voice in my head is telling me things that move my heart and mind and spirit and meanwhile, maybe three feet from my right hand side, there are HUGE trucks blasting followed by cars and everyone is going so fast. On one of those loud-road days, I listened to a podcast episode, I think it was on First Voices Radio but I am not positive, and they introduced moral foundations theory. They did this to share a tension that often happens in change work: the tension between justice and loyalty.

What impacted me as I listened was this: that two of the moral foundations outlined in this theory - justice and loyalty - often tangle together. That in moments of chaos or uncertainty, many of us can feel a tension between the people and issues we feel loyal towards versus the deep sense of what is just and aligned with our values. And because of this tangle, sometimes we are making moral decisions that are about protecting someone, or an ideal, or a community and we say this is justice. And sometimes we will make moral decisions that feel risky and dangerous because we are staying true to a deep sense of justice even if our decision might make the people we love and respect angry at us. 

I know that I have often chosen loyalty - to a person or an ideal - in a way that has overridden my capacity to step back and assess the present moment. I have reflected on contexts and conditions and said that because of A or B, I understand why this person would act in this or that way. I have said this even if the person’s actions have sometimes been shitty. When this happens, I am operating out of a deep connection to this person or ideal, to protecting it or feeling protective in this present moment. And thank god for this. This is not a “bad” thing. It is just a way of being connected. Of loving. What makes it a weapon rather than a tool is when these choices are made without reflection, without wisdom. Because sometimes what is loyal in the present moment is not the most useful thing for the generations to come. 

And sometimes it is.

What do you feel loyal to? Where did you learn this? Who do you see expressing this same loyalty that you feel? Where is it absent? What do you think would happen if you ignored this loyalty for something else?

What do you think justice is? What does it mean to operate with a commitment to justice? When is it easy? When is it hard? Who do you see acting out of a commitment to justice in a way that you admire? What do you think would happen if you ignored this commitment to justice and focused on something else?

And yes, like many of you, as I write this I keep thinking about Gaza.

Have you ever had a moment, and you know that you have, where you felt a tangle between these two things? A moment where you felt compelled - either by yourself or by others - to act out of loyalty even if you weren’t completely sure that the situation was truthful or fair? Do you feel loyal to some people or beliefs over others and lift them up even in moments where the just response is not so clear? And what about the opposite? Have you had moments where you chose something that felt fair and just even as you knew that the outcome of this assessment would potentially make things harder for someone who already had it hard? Or might make someone angry at you, someone you care about and whose respect you desire? 

I spent a few days recently with a white woman whose loyalty was strong around the idea of America. Her feeling was that “America” must be protected at all costs. She wasn’t a particularly strong Christian and she had a lot of belief systems and viewpoints that were similar to my own but where we differed was that her loyalty was to the United States. And this loyalty reigned supreme. It meant that, on one hand, she could feel compassion for anyone fleeing poverty and oppression and, at the same time, feel terrified about how many of “them” were going to come over the southern border. There were lots more examples of this. Spending time with her, I was listening for the contradictions, asking her questions about where she had learned what she had learned and wondering what she was most afraid of. And during all of this time, like you, I listened for how much I do the same thing I perceived her doing, but from a different political framework and position. I felt like I was moving through tides that were crossing against each other. One tide was the compassion and care that she felt for those who struggle to keep themselves and their families safe. The other tide was everything she believes about the United States being the greatest country in the world, the only place where freedom exists, etc. And when those two tides crashed together, as they kept doing while we talked, she reached for her life raft and that was her loyalty to believing that America is great and needs to be protected so that the greatness is not compromised. I left that conversation wondering how to offer her a different life raft, one that she feels she can trust.

Someone I love and respect recently asked me if any of these conversations I am having really matter. They wanted to know if anything other than building collective power for a long-term fight really makes any difference at all. I answered them strongly, because I was feeling things strongly at that moment: yes, I said. YES. We have to get out of the power struggle, we have to find other ways of being in relationship with each other. This can’t be the best we have to offer our descendants to come.  If they asked me that on this day, I would answer less strongly. Maybe along with the great unraveling and the great turning, we just need to have the great unknowing. 

If there is anything I want, it is that those who are not on the front lines of a thing, particularly those with the enormous social privilege that being a white US-er gives us, are moving outside of the circles that are comfortable for them. And that there is a commitment to move against the isolationist energy of a destroyed public and a culture of fear. To reach out to strangers and say, how can I help? What are you afraid of? How do we live on this land together and in a good way?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know what shifts this great unraveling. I don’t know what brings about connection and relationship instead of fear and control. I don’t believe it is possible to know in any large scale way but in the most simple present moment, whether sitting with people who hate Trump like that is a new religion or who believe that he IS the new religion, none of this is going to help us live together on this land in a good way. 

I got picked up the other day in a van filled with Amish people. Sometimes folks driving by will ask if I want a ride and mostly I say no but in this case, they asked if they could take me about 15 minutes down the road so that they could ask me about my walk. This was one of those moments where I was very glad to have a sign on my backpack. When I looked in the van and saw a bunch of Amish folks - not the guy driving the van, but everyone else, I thought well hell, time to break another fourth wall. Meaning, I knew that sitting in that van was about to make a group of people - “the Amish” - become real and more complex. They asked me the same questions that most folks ask - where I started, how many miles I walk a day, where I expect to end up, if I am doing this for charity, and so on. We laughed a lot and at one point one of the men pointed at my backpack and said that if that is all I have, it looks like I am living more like them these days. I laughed back and said, well I have a cell phone and a solar charger so I think that disqualifies me. When they asked why I was walking and I said to try to understand or feel how we can live on this land in a good way together, they got quiet and just nodded. And I nodded back. And we sat there, quietly. And that was enough.

Many people ask me if I am doing this for charity and more than a few people have said that I should find a cause and use the cause to get sponsors, make money, get free stuff. I have told people again and again that this is a very self-centered walk. I am not walking FOR anyone and that there are beloveds who have signed up on a patreon for me which is a gorgeous and huge help. But each time I pause and say why I am walking, every single time - I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME -  there is an answering pause and a bit of space. Sometimes the space is followed quickly by a joke (well, that’s deep) or by a sigh or by a question or an assertion, something to take the edge off what might feel too serious. Sometimes, like in the van, we are just quiet together for a bit longer. What doesn’t happen, and maybe this is what I am most grateful for, is that no one has yet jumped in to explain to me what the answer is to this question. 

The great unknowing.

Bits and bobs

I am starting to keep and update a google doc on my route. I will add to this and update it pretty often as I know where I am going and when. I am always but ALWAYS open to any thoughts, ideas or offers of people to meet with. And if you are local to a place, even if you don’t live there anymore, feel free to tell me what it has been like for you. What I should know, listen for, witness, remember.

I have now gone about 1600 miles. The quickest route across this part of Turtle Island on foot is about 2800 miles. My trip will be longer than that, closer to 4000. I anticipate being somewhere around the halfway point when I reach Hannibal, MO with my daughter. While I have walked with a backpack during this first half of the walk, I am thinking about transitioning to a cart - what most folks use when they do this walk - because it will let me carry more water and food when I am walking through areas without a lot of infrastructure.

In the second half of this walk, it seems like I’m going to have more people walking with me. I’m excited about that. And curious. This will change how things unfold.

Also, if you haven’t read it yet, this essay on Rupture and Repair is so so good.

Thank you to all of you who have sent me so many fabulous messages. Just thank you for the hundreds of ways that you have been supporting me. It’s not small at all.

As always, patreon helps me get through the miles so thank you for that cash help. And I wrote this before I started walking - you can download it for free or with a small donation which also helps this walk.

And finally, I post most often on Instagram (@raffosusan) and second most on Facebook (same order of name).