Today I Give Thanks For My Privilege

(a poemletter to my white American cohort celebrating Thanksgiving today
and anyone else who has privilege who feels compelled to give thanks today)

Today I give thanks for my privilege
at a laptop computer
(Apple, no less)
in my own, relatively quiet, and totally safe home.
A white woman, queer but accepted fully by
family
by my chosen society
(the immediate 18 miles that surround me).
With a warm, fat cat on my lap and
another in the bedroom -
more than one room, three bedrooms, in fact
(though small, I want to say, and the traffic outside
can be loud when it is not a holiday).

I have today off. The whole day off. Because
I am self-employed doing 100% what I love.
When people ask me:
"How can I do what you do?"
I have to pause in order not to start with:
"Do you have enough privilege to get going?"
An inheritance? Which I did.
A good credit rating? Ditto.
White skin and an educated upbringing? Tritto.
Because these are what made all the rest of it possible.
Even though it took dead parents to get
the money
and a lot of forced independence
for that credit rating -
the skin
the education
came first and most importantly
based on nothing other than chance.
Not a single choice in my life hasn't rested on that chance.
On privilege.

My desire to hedge, to say
"I am privileged, but..."
is itself a privilege, a mark of my own knowledge
the freedom I have to feel responsible
guilty, even,
or not.
Today, I choose not to feel guilty or ashamed.
Today I choose not to brag but to give thanks.

Because it is due to grace
that I am here.
That I am not in Syria
or trying to escape Syria
has absolutely
not one thing
to do with who I am
or my goodness.

This is privilege -
to feel safe. To feel unthreatened
except by my own mind.

I ask you to join me in giving thanks
giving back to what has been given to you.
I do not ask for guilt
I do not ask for shame
I do not ask for hedging or apologies or amendments
I do not ask myself for these
today
and I do not ask you either.

If you are in North America and your skin ever reads as white,
you are privileged.
Please stop trying to fight it.
On a day like today, where people focus on
gratitude for all the extra things,
I would like you to consider
like I am
giving thanks for being the basics:
for being alive
(because consider the alternatives)
for being here
for being safe.

I am not asking you to give up your privilege.
I am simply asking you to
See it.
Give thanks for this blind gift.

Because it is a gift, it is something that can be given away.
Risk it, risk it for the black people being shot
in Minneapolis,
in Chicago.
For the Syrians fleeing -
the migrantsrefugees the whatever whichever newspaper wants to call them today -
the human beings risking their lives to live.
Risk your reputation with your family
with your careful safe society
and side with those who don't have such safety.
Risk your sense of self
and consider what it would be like
to be born somewhere else
or in another time
or in another body

What you - what I - take as fact
is chance.
This life as a privileged white North American
is not fate.
It is not a manifested destiny you have earned.
None of it.
Not a whit.
All if it comes out of privilege.
And the best way to honor it
is to start by giving thanks
whole hearted
nothing held back thanks.

Then, to show our real gratitude,
we must risk it.
In small ways, in big ways.
Why?
Because privilege brings with it power.
Because we can do more
since others read us as not a threat.
We can go into the frontlines
(if that is your way)
or into the headlines
(if that is your way)
and still keep our privilege.
Since it is so indelible, such a given,
give it away. Just try.
You cannot lose it.
It cannot be taken from you.

Privilege was given to you completely.
Give it away completely.
People without it have sacrificed more and more readily
for centuries.
Start small
but
start today.

Today I give thanks for my privilege.
Today I ask you to do the same for yours.

No Home Like Home

 

Watering Hole, Philadelphia, August 2014

In case you haven't noticed, I travel a lot.

The first weekend in August, I was in Philadelphia teaching Miksang. A few weeks before that, on a three week retreat in Colorado. My wife gets tired of me traveling (that's the polite way of putting it). I get tired of me traveling (that's the simplistic way of putting it). And my cats? I think they don't notice so much, but they sure are happy when I get home.

As am I. I wish I could bring the cats and my wife along with me. I get jealous of dog owners, that they can carry along their dogs. I see them in carriers (well, little ones) on planes, out running in dog parks in other cities, and I wish the cats could just curl up and come along. I wish each place I am for between 4-21 days could become home for just a little bit.

It does, sort of. I figure out where to get the food I need. I take good care of myself: I practice, sleep, bring my own pillow, make sure my meds are in order. I get better and better at this over time. And yet, ironically, I also get older. It takes longer for me to adjust to time changes, more sleep for me to feel recovered. I get sick less often because I am more in touch with what I need - and I need more than I did when I was younger.

Nothing beats arrival - especially arriving home. Piles of mail, of dirty laundry, of dirty dishes, even, can't deter me from snuggling my wife and cats. Home is my watering hole, where I come back to again and again.

In my first chapbook of poetry, At Home Here, I implied I can be at home anywhere. Yes, and also, there is actually no place like home. No home like home.

Chez moi, ou non pas? (My home, or not?)

"Please don't park here - car exit" Paris, 2012

I remember when I was eleven or so, I went on a trip with my brothers to Ohio, for a family friend's wedding. Staying in her apartment, one of a large building that encircled an active courtyard, I recorded the sounds that were so unusual - normal to someone but not to me - and enjoyed listening to them again and again. I wasn't bothered by being "kept awake" - I was curious about this place where even the pace of speech differed.

I could hear people's conversations, something I didn't often overhear in my quiet, "a suburb not attached to a larger city" town of upbringing. I heard basketball and sirens, yelling and people running around. It was what made me most aware I was elsewhere.

So, when I woke from a nap this afternoon in the lovely, light and open fifth story bedroom of my host's place in Paris, I had a similar curiosity. For a moment, I thought I was at home:
I heard skateboards outside, cars shuffling around one another, a cat on my left, cuddled up close.
It could have been home: comfortable, clean, cozy.
Only, it's not.

Weather Report

The cats are very wiley today. Aviva got up every half hour or so after midnight and played with a large mirror that hangs on my bedside wall. Her tactic is to futz with it, pull it a bit so it fidgets on the wall, then stop, paw usually still in the air, and look at me in the moonlight to see if I see what she is doing. If we aren't awake, she keeps doing it until we are. And when I spray her with a spray bottle, she keeps doing it on and off, indignantly licking her wet butt or face first.

A student came into class this week and said that she's been having a rough few days. "I choose to believe it's a full moon. That and I am PMS'ing, too." It's been rough for me, too, and also not. Stirring old pots lately, to try and bring the brew to surface so it can heal, so the pot, me, can heal. Juicy things, floating up, sometimes bobbing below surface. I am tired of rowing in all of this stew but I know it will be better this way. Eventually. In a way it already is.

The cats remain crazy. I came in and they both woke up from apparently a long nap to make up for a night of nagging me out of my dreams, and now they are running around the house, playing with things, popping objects off the dresser to get my attention. Feed us more! Play with us! Open the windows and doors! Part of me, too, wants to go run around, break free and expand. An equal part wishes as much stillness as I can find, to keep the boil at a tolerable level.

Outside the weather echoes us all. Windy, cloudy, always on the edge of a storm. This morning it was stormy. It may be again. Then again, in between bouts of wind, the sun peeks out from between two clouds and lights up a yellow changing Honey Locust. Impermanence in action.