Performance + Workshop @ Cesar Chavez Charter High School for Public Policy Greenspace Festival
written by Wendy Bailey
Thank you for your presence on Saturday. I feel continually blessed to work and play with the variety of folks I do here in DC, and am especially reminded of this on days like Saturday. When spirits converge for common purpose, who have been previously linked for related reason, but have not met at that particular nexus, magic happens. Many commented on a distinct energy they saw in me, and I felt it; I was absolutely fueled by the way good work was weaving; by the creative, sometimes quiet, focus and self-direction of all attending; by the returning to a way people have gathered always. I believe spaces can be sacred, can be sanctified, and that when they are, strands of ceremony surface–there was synergy, there was breadbreaking, there was drumming, there was dancing, there was story remembered and made. The land outside of our cafeteria had been abandoned, poisoned, had become a dumping ground, rendered useless; it seemed symbolic of what has become of much of our natural space, and our society. I have much regard for concepts of ecopsychology; that we absorb our physical surroundings, that they become manifest through our thinking, feeling, behaving. Saturday, we altered regard for the land–we actually amended components of the soil, that plants could absorb nourishment from it; we cleansed the space of trash; we laid foundation for fruition, reversed degradation. And I would venture to guess we did this in ways and ripples we will never know.
It has not been lost on me that gratitude is a blessing–that to be grateful is to be blessed. And to witness kindness. I feel I spend much of my life teaching about and responding to injustice and ruin. Sometimes it surprises me kindness can still exist, and that it can surface from the most simple acts and basic circumstances. I don’t know why sun, soil, plants, afternoons turning evenings, drums, can bring the good out in people, but I sense they always have.
I write this with tears in my eyes. Thank you.