i often reflect and share this desire to show up more fully human, to show up many things! Can i/we show up in the world with all our fucked upness, with all our exquisiteness, with all our messed up, glorious beautiful and not so beautiful selves? When I experienced Eve Ensler (now known as V. ) show up at the beginning of her talk ( The Alchemy of an Apology) at the Middle Church a few years ago, I was deeply moved. Ive been wanting to share this for awhile now:
‘I come to you this morning many things. I come to you as a woman who has been often anxious lost and despaired, and I come to you as a woman who has known the deepest love. I come to you as a woman who has loved men and women, and a women whose been utterly terrified of intimacy. I come as an artist whose been saved by the act of creation and I come as an activist giving what I need the most. I come as a friend, sister, mother, rebel. I come as a white person whose ancestral legacy was responsible for murdering, pillaging colonizing raping and the removal of indigenous people whose land we stand on right now. I come from an ancestral legacy which produced 400 plus years of slavery the lynching, murder rape of our beautiful African brothers and sisters followed by Jim Crow and continuing through endless diabolical white supremacy, through active participation or through the blindness of privilege; I come from Jewish ancestors erased in genocide. I come as the oppressed and I come as the oppressor, the murdered and the murderer. These stories shame me and catalyze me every day. I come with mad hope and I come with pure outrage. I come with sorrow and I come with magic. I come with grief that feels so huge it could fill oceans with my tears. I come knowing each of us is divine and knowing we are wildly different. I come as a seeking human being and I come as a know it all. I come as a white middle class person who had all the racial economic privileges and I come as a girl whose been devastated by sexual violence beginning at five years of age from the same father of privilege. I come to you with my heart breaking at the state of this world and I come to you as a woman moved by generosity and kindness by many. I come to you as a woman who wonders deeply whether we humans have a future here on earth and whether we are going to get it together over the next 12 years. And I come to you as someone who will fight to the end to make sure we do. I come to you as a realist and I come to you as a believer in miracles. I come to you as a woman who lives in the woods and spends my days bowing and hugging trees and serves the mother and I come to you as a city dweller searching for a way home. This particular morning I come to you to speak to you about the Alchemy of an apology.’
V.
you can find the rest of V’s talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHgMs8Vjav8