By Jynx Houston – Mendocino Commentary, July 26, 1990
Dear Editor:
The feeling at Saturday’s Redwood Summer demonstration was the most open-hearted and actively peaceful of any large political gathering I’ve ever been part of. Thanks go to everyone—especially those responsible for actually putting it together. Anna Marie Stenberg, who I met through my involvement with Women of the Trees Chorus, was outstanding in her warmth, accessibility, supportiveness, and general outpouring of energy. I’d like to acknowledge her extraordinary contribution.
The speakers who I felt were the most engaging and effective were the many who spoke from their hearts and told their own stories. Someday (soon?) we will have a demonstration where nobody will feel the need to tell us what attitude we should have and generally splash us with his ego. Manipulative styles will never be part of the solution.
The surface of the earth—a (you would think) self-evidently significant layer of nature—is being destroyed. For corporate economics no less. And increasing numbers of us are seeing this for what it historically is:
Patriarchy’s Last Hurrah. But we still don’t know how to bring about a different reality, which we know has to happen if this movement towards disaster is to be deflected. And that uncertainty was apparent as well on Saturday.
The resistance—however subtle, however unconscious—to the obvious path our culture hasn’t tried yet, namely, the balanced presence of female energy, is still there on both sides of the political fence. While something more open and kinder was clearly radiating from many, many people I laid my eyes on and spoke with Saturday, and, while people seemed centered and responsive, the fact is, it has taken the unthinkable threat of no more forests and special public occasions to protest that dreadful possibility to move us to come from a deeper place for a time and see again that there’s something unbroken among us all. As soon as we choose to stay awake moment to moment and continuously experience this, then we’ll be allowing the entire human community to click in again to its (our) connection w/nature (sic). With her inspiring balance of female and male energies.
I know this sounds like quite a leap—and it is. But think about it: nothing less is going to do it. Encoded in us is how. We’ve lived with a sense of being in life and of the spiritual purpose of all life and all people before. It’s just that it’s been a long, long time.
Congratulations, Redwood Summer, on a step—overall—very consciously taken.