The Threads of the Wheel

Hey friend,

Things continue to be painful as the world spins madly on. But, here we are. When I write here I always have an intention to create a pocket of peace for myself, and hopefully for those who find and resonate with what I say. And if you don’t resonate with what I say, luckily there is a whole wide internet out there for you to explore.

But peace doesn’t mean burrowing your head. Peace requires acceptance. And as I quoted Prentis Hemphill in my last post, “it’s only from grounded acceptance we can make choices for how to rectify our situation.”

For me these past few weeks, a big part of the work of “acceptance” has been reaffirming what my values are, and reaffirming what I believe to be true, in light of what’s happening in my country.

Regarding Alex Pretti, I found this anonymous poster on Reddit who put into words some of my thoughts:

The executed man was an American citizen. He was lawfully carrying a, permitted, firearm, per his 2nd amendment rights. He was attacked by ICE for recording them on his cellphone. His firearm was holstered. When they subdued him, they began to beat him. They removed his firearm and you can see an ICE agent leaving with it BEFORE the shooting. While he was on the ground, with both hands on the ground, he was shot and killed. After he is shot and killed a separate ICE agent draws his firearm and shoots the dead body 5 more times. This was an execution because he was exercising his 1st amendment right while exercising his 2nd amendment right.

And this, from user jspark3000 on threads:

The lie of Alex Pretti’s ‘waving gun’ goes back to George Floyd’s ‘drug problem’ to Sonya Massey’s ‘pot of hot water’ to Elijah McClain’s ‘he is going for your gun’ to Tamir Rice’s ‘guy with a pistol’ to Emmett Till’s ‘whistling at a white woman.’

James Baldwin already told us:

‘The violence was being perpetuated mainly against black men…and so it didn’t count. But if a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe.’

We didn’t get here out of nowhere. All the threads of the wheel connect.

I have very little interest in politics, but I do have a large interest in humanity. And like it or not, our current iteration of politics is inextricably linked to human rights. I believe we are all the same species and we all deserve to be treated with dignity. I know that human beings have always migrated during our 250,000ish years of existence. I know that the idea of borders is a social construct. I believe people have the right to protest, to be imperfect and even to break the law without being executed.

I am against dehumanization in all forms. At this point, I’ve been showing up with these beliefs online for most of my adult life. I’m not interested in portraying those who don’t agree with me as enemies and I would hope they would extend the same courtesy to me.

That’s that on that, for now. All of this was quite a longwinded way to begin what I hope with be a new monthly (ish) thing on Substack where I share more personal posts for paid subscribers. I’m thinking these posts will have three components: sharing some of what I’ve been thinking about generally (as I did above), sharing what I’m thinking about in relation to tarot specifically, and then pulling a card and offering some thoughts on it.