Via Daily Dharma: Stop Feeding the Pain Pattern

When we meditate, we are training the mind to stop feeding a pain pattern.

—Ruth King, “Soothing the Hot Coals of Rage”

Via The NewYorker: Kids Attend Drag Queen Story Hour

A new reading series at the Brooklyn Public Library introduces elements of gender bending and camp to little ones. 

On a recent Saturday morning, about two dozen small children and their parents gathered in the Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Public Library for a new reading series. There were pregnant women with tattoos, breast-feeding moms, and a little girl in pink ballerina gear climbing on the laps of her two dads. Many of the kids, who ranged in age from newborn to five years old, wore tiny T-shirts showcasing their parents’ favorite bands (Nirvana, David Bowie) or political views (one read, “The Future Is Female”).

The event was hosted by Michelle Tea, a writer from Los Angeles, who started attending library story hours after becoming a mom. “Story time rises or falls on the charisma of the storyteller,” she said. “Some seemed to have a personality disorder or didn’t even like children.” She’d brought her partner, Dashiell Lippman, and their two-year-old son, Atticus, who had a haircut that resembled David Beckham’s. “He is pretty butch—we call him Fratticus,” Tea said. “I’m always pushing a tutu on him, but he’s, like, ‘No.’ ”

Tea’s solution, called Drag Queen Story Hour, introduces elements of gender bending and camp. “I have long thought that drag queens need to be the performers at children’s parties, rather than magicians or clowns,” she said. “Drag has become more mainstream. Kids might have seen one on a billboard or on TV.”

Rachel Aimee was at the library because she had seen a Facebook post about the series. “I work at the Feminist Press and thought, Maybe we could present it,” she said. “The thing that first struck me was it’s all about dressing up and being pretty without the baggage of gender coding. As a parent, I’ve been looking for something like that.”

“Yeah, it’s just fun and glitter,” said Tea, who was wearing animal-print palazzo pants and had a red heart tattoo on each of her fingers.

Having a six-year-old daughter has made Aimee question some of her feminist beliefs. “She got really into watching ‘Barbie: Life in the Dream House,’ ” Aimee said. “How could I tell her not to watch it? It has a thousand girls and only, like, two boys in it. I would be teaching her that shows about girls are bad.”

At eleven o’clock, Tea made her way to the front of the room. “Do you all know what a drag queen is?” she asked the children. “Drag queens are amazing. They get to do fun things like dance and sing and travel and play dress-up with their drag-queen friends. And they’re all feminists.” The parents chuckled politely.

The drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess came out, wearing a white sequinned tunic dress and matching heels, bright-pink tights, and a curly auburn wig. (She has performed at Bushwig, a drag festival, and at SFMOMA.) She declined to give her birth name but said that she is a graduate student in media studies at N.Y.U. She put on black owlish reading glasses, sat on a folding chair, and addressed her audience: “Can everyone say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a drag queen’?”

The children just stared.

She would be reading from “Tatterhood,” a collection of feminist folktales, which had originally been published by the Feminist Press, in the nineteen-seventies. The title story, from Norway, features a feisty goat-riding heroine who fights off angry trolls with a spoon.

 

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Via Organizing for Action

On October 10th, 2015, I married my partner, Stephen. We'd met in Washington, D.C., bonded over our shared Boston background, and traveled all across the U.S. together.

So naturally our wedding was in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Two years earlier, I'd accepted President Obama's invitation to become the Ambassador to Denmark. Stephen and I had gradually settled into our new city. We'd learned of its proud history as the world's first nation to recognize same-sex marriages.

And so we stood at Copenhagen City Hall, the spot of the very first same-sex marriages -- 26 years earlier -- and said our vows. It made it even more special that the U.S. had legalized same-sex marriage nationwide just four months earlier.

In that moment, though, what I felt had nothing to do with politics. It was personal -- the same little moments and feelings that everyone experiences on their wedding day: Love. Friendship. Family. All of the good things. All of the happy words.

To deny anyone the happiness we felt that day is inconceivable. And as I look at the progress we've made, I know how important it is to keep fighting.

Since our wedding day, we've been overwhelmed by the good happening in communities around the country. The people in the LGBTQ community who bravely share their story. The people who listen to them.

The marches.

Our marches have always been more than celebrations. They're how we defend our hard-won advances -- and how we clear a path for the issues that we still need to tackle. As this administration threatens our progress, that's never been more true.

That energy is where my pride comes from. Because if there's one thing that has been true for every single progressive issue in our country, it's that sweeping change -- the kind we look back on and say, "Well, this was inevitable" -- really isn't. It comes from us.

So I say to everyone, both LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ: Show up this month. Be loud. Be proud. And don't forget the work we still have to do. Stand with OFA now:

Add your voice

Thanks,

Rufus

Rufus Gifford
Former United States Ambassador to Denmark

Via Ram Dass

When I go out into the woods, and I look at trees, I say, “Oh, look at that one, oh look at that one, oh how interesting!” I don’t ask why an Elm isn’t an Oak… I just appreciate them for what they are.

Somehow it’s different when I get near humans, I somehow feel that it’s a whole different category, and I move into my judging mode, saying, “If that person was more like that person, things would be better.”

Now I don’t elevate human relationships that much. I see them as just more of the interaction with the phenomenal world, and another person is a set of phenomena manifested, and I see that I'm getting upset because somebody is a certain way, I take that upset and ask, “Why am I upset?” I realize that a part of my upset is because I have a model that I am holding of how the world should be other than the way it is.

I have the choice of either trying to change the world to adhere to my model, or let go of my model to be with the world.

-- Ram Dass --

Via Daily Dharma: The Pure Land Is in This Life

I don’t envision a single thing that, when undeveloped, leads to such great harm as the mind . . . . I don’t envision a single thing that, when developed, leads to such great benefit as the mind.

—The Buddha, “The Single Thing”

Via Daily Dharma: The Pure Land Is in This Life

The Pure Land isn’t like heaven, because it’s not a place that you go to—it’s more a state of mind, and it can be accessed in this life.

—Reverend Patricia Kanaya Usuki, “The Great Compassion”

Corruption is Legal in America

Via Daily Dharma: Keep All Views in Check

Views are colorful and interesting and life-enhancing—as long as we know they are views.

—A. J. Bocchino, “Beyond Language”

VIA FB:

“When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them.” 

― Andy Warhol ―

Ian McKellen on Trump failing to protect LGBT rights: 'It’s appalling'

Dissolving the Fear, Finding Your Own Beauty - Ram Dass

Via Daily Dharma: Lovingkindness Shows, Literally

The energy of metta spreads through your bloodstream and nourishes your whole being. You look bright and clear, calm and peaceful.

—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “11 Benefits of Loving-Friendliness Meditation”

Stephen Fry on Trump, Liberals, and Bullies - 2017

Via Daily Dharma: Why We Suffer

We suffer because we take things to be real, and we suffer in direct proportion to how solid we make the contents of our mind.

—Andrew Holocek, “How Far Are You Willing To Go To Wake Up?”

Via FB

Via NPR: Pride Events Honor Memory Of Gilbert Baker And His Rainbow Flag

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/21/533844029/pride-events-honor-memory-of-gilbert-baker-and-his-rainbow-flag

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - June 21, 2017

Miracles and gatherings of Satsang, reading or hanging out with holy books, chemicals, they’re all traps, but they are useful because they keep strengthening your faith. Faith can touch that place inside, which is called the Atman. It’s naive to think that any one route will bring you faster than any other route, other than what is supposed to be your route. In Zen, they say, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”

Your work on yourself starts exactly where you are at this moment. Like, at this moment, if you’re thinking about the future or the past, if you’re planning, if you’re collecting this for later, what about right here? Now. This is what it’s all about. Everything you’ve ever done in your life and all your incarnations are for this moment. This isn’t for that, this is it – this is what it’s about.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: You Need Both Wisdom and Compassion

Both wisdom and compassion shift our sense of identity away from ourselves toward the wider human, biotic, and cosmic community to which we belong. But where wisdom involves a cognitive grasp of this fact, compassion operates viscerally.

—Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, “The Need of the Hour”

Via Outsports: Former Patriots and Chiefs tackle Ryan O’Callaghan comes out as gay

Ryan O’Callaghan’s plan was always to play football and then, when his career was over, kill himself.

Growing up in Redding, Calif., he didn’t see any other option. From a deep red corner of a blue state, the conflicted young man had decided in high school that he would never — could never — live as a gay man. While the 6-foot-7, 330-pound offensive tackle didn’t fit any of the gay stereotypes, he decided shortly after coming out to himself in junior high school that he could never let anyone else in on his darkest secret.

Over the years he had heard general comments from friends and family members about gay people. Every utterance of a gay slur or a joke about gay men — and he heard them plenty when he was young — was like a knife to the gut.

"If you’re a gay kid and you hear someone you love say ‘fag,’ it makes you think that in their eyes you’re just a fag too," O’Callaghan told Outsports on a recent visit to Los Angeles for his first-ever Pride celebration. "That got to me a lot."

Growing up in a conservative area light years away from nearby San Francisco, his own views of gay people had been shaped by those off-color comments and the rare image on television showing a gay man he couldn’t relate to. He knew that the people in his world would never accept him being gay, and he could never truly accept it either.

O’Callaghan decided early on that he would hide behind football. The sport would be his "beard," and the jersey on his back would throw off the scent and keep his secret hidden for over a dozen years on a journey that saw him playing college ball at the University of California and in the NFL with the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs.

He spent his time in football preparing for his suicide, yet thanks to a small group of people within the Chiefs organization he ultimately found the will to live as the real Ryan O’Callaghan.

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