Photo by Elisa Stone
“these days i have noticed how often ritual is really about directing my attention, towards and away from emotions, energies, lives, futures. tonight i need rituals.”
Ritual + Action leverages community-based spiritual ritual alongside targeted social action to make timely impact on issues of social injustice that arise in our communities and our world.
We invite you into a Ritual of Grief, Compassion and Transmutation
On March 16th, eight people were murdered in an Atlanta spa, including six Asian women, in a racist and misogynist attack by a white man. This event comes after many months of increasing violence towards Asian people in America, the result of xenophobic and misplaced blame for the COVID pandemic.
I cannot move past this moment without calling us to gather our love and energy to feel the depth of our feelings about what is happening around us, and leverage that love and energy into actions at any scale (tiny to huge) to create a ripple of positive impact. I echo the call made by my pastor, Eunbee Ham of Davis Community Church, at a vigil held after the shootings:
“How many times have people of color moved on through countless losses? How many times will we be expected to moved on after being gaslilghted? Interned? Silenced? Raped? Forgotten?.....I believe that today we are gathered together to push back against this painful and violent obligation to move on.”
Hear Pastor Eunbee’s full statement here.
Friends, let us gather. The sexual fetishization and racist misogyny against Asian women in America is the legacy of colonial exploitation that lives in all of us who have grown up in this colonized country. As a white woman who practices and teaches a Japanese healing art, I am very aware of the shadowed presence of the colonizer mentality—one that would have us strip everything we find of value from non-white cultures, while disregarding and literally terrorizing and killing the people who are the bearers of that culture. It must change inside of each of us, from the inside out. I absolutely believe that we can do this, that we can transmute this legacy of violence into something beautiful that is longing to be born. Let's do it together.
At this gathering you will:
Be led in a Reiki-based ritual practice to be with the many emotions we are carrying around this, and allow the energy of those emotions to transform into compassionate action both within and outside of ourselves,
Be invited to make a donation to an organization doing work on this issue, or directly to support the families of victims of this shooting (links in the form below),
Commit to taking one action in service of what we’ve felt and wish to see happen. These commitments will follow the “tiny change” model—in other words, we’ll commit to something that is small enough to be ACHIEVABLE for us, while also serving the larger vision of an end to white supremacist violence. For example, we might commit to: Learning more about the ways racism is expressed inside the Asian experience; make a donation to an organization working on these issues (examples below); make a public statement against racist violence; speak out when you witness a racist action or comment. There are many ways to make change from the inside out, and we begin with the changes most accessible to us that also push our learning edge,
Be inside a community of care and compassion.
Will you join us? Please register below to receive the Zoom link, and to choose an organization to make an (optional) donation to.