If you need – as I do – to fully understand how we can heal the divisions in this country so that we can collectively heal the land, look up a new book on the disenfranchised Right (and Left) in America’s heartland, especially with regard to their “seeming” concern about now they perceive environmental regulations as negatively influencing their livelihoods.
It’s Arlie Russell’s Rothschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, well worth reading. She asks us to sit down and have a beer or take a walk with someone in our community whose political views seem diametrically opposed to our own.
But on issues of community, identity, health, beauty and access to the outdoors, most of us have values in jive with one another than not.
Now is not the time to villainize and essentialize our neighbors into reductionistic cliches. It is a time to listen, reach out our hands, and open our hearts. No one needs any upswing in violence over the days and weeks after the election. Although it is not as “cool” as being mad, we need to deepen the healing and restoration of our communities.
Brother Coyote, OEF
