Gwen Frostic, Michigan ecologist and artist, wrote in 1973 that activism on behalf of working for a better future for our planet is not in creating big groups, big plans, unions and community ties. It is in being one who goes deeper into the world. To not belong, but to become.
When I was a little girl growing up in northern Michigan, my grandmother took me for wildflower walks on which she taught me the different names—and along the way we would sometimes be graced by the presence of deer, maybe a bluebird, a grouse, woodchuck and once, a bobcat. From the time I was young, I felt that everything is alive. Much later in life, I learned that this is the way I must look upon the world around us—without an agenda, without a sense of having to fix, change or “improve.” To simply abide with the sense of home that exists in the company of another being. To behold.
Beholding requires a deeper sensitivity to the world around and within us—toward our own bodies as well as the bodies of other creatures. Further it requires an acknowledgement that all beings have a right to exist unto themselves. My early activism was stalled out by my sensitivity to being in big crowds, and my crippling anxiety about making “cold calls,” and striking up conversations with strangers, to sign petitions and speak at rallies. I was arrested at age nineteen while protesting the PFAS pollution in the AuSable River at Wurtsmith Airforce Base in Oscoda, Michigan, and I struggled to belong in communities of people who fought and protested, put their bodies on the line.
To write is to have a broken heart—and the source of a broken heart is often the experience of bearing witness to suffering—that which seems irrevocable, beyond the reach of time. I write from a broken heart, and eventually, I come to glimpse the possibilities and even hope—that hummingbird of a word. In a culture that is fixated on striving, achieving, consuming and by all means, not failing, we don’t have (or take) many opportunities to be still, to withdraw, to sink down into those places where we hurt so much.
Maybe a broken heart doesn’t write despite these things, but alongside them, or even because of them. To embrace the frankness of one’s own animal body: to go toward the edge of where we now find ourselves—a zone that is reflected in and by the body and its honesty, and literally, at the edge and end stages of late capitalism. To stand up for gentleness, the fullness of being for all animals, the richness of language, and to fully participate in and co-create with the more-than-human world.
—Amy Nolan
Amy Nolan is a friend of Prairiewoods. Her blog wraps up our series looking forward to Prairiewoods’ Spirituality in the 21st Century: Hope in Action, which takes place tonight and tomorrow (April 26–27). This year’s event features Susan Bauer-Wu, Rev. Veronica M. Johnson, Leah Rampy and musician Sara Thomsen. Learn more at prairiewoods.org/spirituality-in-the-21st-century.