The Solidarity of Six Million

I´m about to be vulnerable to all you readers (what else is new?). A few weeks ago I was staying at the Ciudad Sandino house, and my incredible commate Tony and I decided to watch The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a Shoa movie (Shoa is better known as the Holocaust, although this term is less politically correct). It was the first movie I´ve seen in a while, and it´s quite...powerful. So Tony and I, afterwards, spent about twenty minutes crying and processing. The end result for me was this somewhat depressing, somewhat empowering poem, which I hope you can read and not take at face value. And challenge me on it as you see fit please!

The Solidarity of Six Million

I am heavy.
I walk beneath the weight of six million incinerated Jews
Gasping and clawing in mortified confusion
Canaled into concrete rooms like cattle
By their own kind.

Beyond the memory,
I carry the burden that this happens every day,
Every day,
While we scribble, dine, avoid, ignore.
There´s work to be done.
Because they may have been crushed, but they aren´t gone.

They are alive in their ebony brothers in Somalia,
Their Muslim sisters in Xiajiang, their café cousins in América.
Those whom our decisions and indecisions oppress, forget.
Even today.

Yes, they are alive. They hear me.
They live forever waiting for somone to lift the latch on the steal door,
to let them out, to scream NO or WHY,
or at least, to stand with them, the crackle of the fire of oneness
surrounding us all.

And if those concrete rooms, those ashes, seem too far away,
I turn to face Nicaraguan children, addicts, veterans who saved my life in that war,
and now waste away, forgotten, just like the six million.

Oh, how I labor to find the fresh air of freedom.
But my people cannot breathe.
They live, trudge, die in concrete rooms and behind steal doors, even today.
Even today.

But for them, the six million are not a weight.
They are a force,
to fill them with strength and anger,
an ENOUGH that echoes to electrity their feet and hearts
from the Earth and sky.

I year for that force. I yearn to be full of the strength of six million.
I yearn to detach from the vacuum of opulence around me and live truth,
live connection.
And so I pray to those faces in history, in heaven,
that they flow through me,
That they fill me with the fire that burned them
So I, led by their living legacy,
March behind the hungry, old, hopeless, poor,
the People,
the smiling souls of six million alive in billions more,
who, together, will open steal doors,
No,
Will move mountains.

My JVC Mission Statement

I thought it would be valuable to you all, and shameless of me, to post my mission statement. We wrote these during a 5-day retreat where we processed the past year and prepared to welcome in the new one. It describes what I hope to be the purpose of my life, which, granted, is a work in progress. Enjoy?

My Mission Statement

I, Heather-Hache Mae-Maya Colbert-Moline, have been given life.

This life is loved by those who have given it to me.

This life is deep. It is illuminated by questions, perseverance, courage, strength, fire.

This life is harmonious, awash with music, expression, and a dance of joy.

And I have been given a Quest.

This Quest is unique to the poetry and compassion of me. It has surfaced in books, chapels, volcanoes, journals, cliffs, mosques, faces, hearts, oceans and hugs.

This Quest is simple and eternal. It leads to God. But because I don’t know what that means, I say to Truth. To a Truth beyond—beyond words, logic, individuals, religions—and within—within hearts, beings, beauty, struggle.

I accept this Quest because I yearn for this Truth, this Knowledge of Love.

And I accept this Quest because everywhere I turn, I find the miracles I need to complete it.

I find solidarity. The tender steel bond between Questers, a bond that calls those who have been given life to give it up, give it back.

I find dialogue. An awareness of the wisdom and energy we awaken in each other, led by those who seem to have been given the least.

I find intimacy. Trust, honesty, challenge, wrapped in glances, kisses, embraces, tears.

I find the Earth, her selflessness, her call to simplicity and radicality.

I find vision, the ability to see through heaven’s eyes, to give thanks, to wait, to leave myself and fly.

When I grow weary of this life, of my humanity, I will unwrap these miracles. And I will listen to the yearning within me, to the chant and rhythm I hear on the other side of green mountains, where I will look back—and forward?—in gratitude at the Truth my searching has slowly, gloriously revealed.