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Welcome
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Welcome to the new Active Love mailing, sharing the work of the Braided Bridge Community. This message launches the Testimony Project, and writing on what is meant by the term 'Active Love'. These two major projects have significant content to share, so we'll be sending these a couple paragraphs at a time, once a week at most, so it's easy to take in. Once a month or so, we'll also share a sampling of what people in the community are working on, and how the studio is being used to support justice in the broader communities around us.
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Active Love: A Change in Operating System
A Foundational Change
People have been talking about love and peace for a long time. It’s common to dismiss such talk as simplistic, sentimental idealism. But living according to love is a significantly different life structure from our present social and institutional norms. It requires us to be open to making changes in each of our own lives in order to learn how to live outside of the dominance-based worldview nearly all of us have been steeped in from birth. It includes changing our language, and some of our most basic frameworks upon which we make our decisions.
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To develop a society based on love, our legal and justice institutions will need to be structurally and conceptually rebuilt from their very foundations. This statement does not refer simply to the government-operated justice system of lawyers and judges and police officers and jails. It also implicates the justice structures within families, in workplaces, schools, organizations, and religions. As daunting as that may be, love is the foundation both of justice and of peace. If we would do more than daydream of a world that does not rely on violence, oppression, and war to maintain its sense of order, we will need to work and live into such foundational changes.
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What's Been Happening?
Below is a short update of things people in the Braided Bridge community have been doing. If you'd like to share a project that seems in alignment with Braided Bridge, please reach out!
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Jared has been working on developing a computer game to foster empathy and kindness.
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Philipos has been gathering relationships with people from the Eritrean and Ethiopian diaspora to work together on peacebuilding among refugees and the people remaining in the region of Tigray. Over 700,000 people have died in genocidal attacks and targeted sexual violence against the Tigrinian people.
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Melissa and her nonprofit, RISE, recently received a contract with the City of San Leandro to run their winter warming shelter. It was a huge step to go from case management with almost no funding to having a City contract, insurance, and paid staff in a couple of weeks. Due to the cold, the shelter has been open every night for the past two weeks. This is an unusual situation where someone with lived experience of homelessness has been contracted to provide services for the unhoused - something our Homebridge Connect participants have been advocating for years.
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We are a very small group but laying the groundwork to grow. If you aren't active in the community and would like to know more, please let us know!
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Testimony Project: What it Is
The Testimony Project is a series of very short, true stories, describing what has been witnessed by people offering support and advocacy for houseless people, or by the people themselves who have been unhoused. It begins with accounts from Homebridge Connect, the grassroots group formed in 2020 which is now part of Braided Bridge. We encourage you to share these stories.
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We’re hoping to put light on the violence present in our midst, that people learn that our behaviors and policies around poverty and homelessness, kill people. We exist in an apartheid culture, in which the poor are stripped of necessities for survival, and once someone becomes unhoused they are no longer identified as human – no longer citizens with rights, or any expectation of safety. Any housed person’s property is routinely prioritized over the value of an unhoused person’s life, and an unhoused person is expected to be dead rather than to inconvenience housed people with the cost of their existence. We will begin sharing these stories weekly, to raise public awareness.
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Michelle and Kim contributed posters in support of the Sweeps Free Sanctuary ComeUnities movement that was launched on December 17th in Yelamu (Oakland), Huchiun (San Francisco), Tovaangar (LA), Yocut lands (Fresno), Sogorea Te (Vallejo), and Chief Siah'l (Seattle). Below is some of the press coverage on the movement.
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Protesters in SF, Oakland, LA Denounce Rise in Encampment Sweeps
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For a few hours, Oakland City Hall was home to a ‘sanctuary’ encampment
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December 18, 2024 | The Oaklandside
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Homeless groups call for the right to build ‘sanctuary communities’ on public lands
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December 18, 2024 | Local News Matters Bay Area
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Peaceful protests by unhoused in SF and other cities lead to massive police sweeps
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December 23, 2024 | 48hills
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Aum Mani Padme Hum
Braided Bridge invites sharing of people's varied spiritual practices and experiences. This will span the faith traditions and lives of people in our community. Jared shares:
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Aum/Om - ॐ - The well known four part syllable meaning birth "oh", life "ooommm", death "mmmm", and liberation silence - Represents the Rulers of creation
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Ma - म - First syllable for Jewel, symbolic for spiritual rewards - Represents the demigods
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Ni - णि - Second syllable for Jewel - Represents us humans
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Pad - प - First syllable for Lotus, symbolic for wisdom from muck - Represents animals in all their instinctual innocence
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Me - द्मे - Second syllable for Lotus - Represents "hungry ghosts" which are beings where "food turns to ash in their mouths"
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Hum/Hung - हूँ - Syllable meaning "am" - Represents the demons in damnation
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"Universal Gem, Lotus of Enlightenment" "praise to the jewel in the lotus" "I in the Jewel Lotus" and other renditions have been given this mantra in English. For me the introduction came from the Lotus Born (aka Padmasambhava or Padmakara) with emphasis on the 6 syllables each representing a different state of existence as seen above, and wishing each to be born in a better place. The mantra is considered to come from Avalokiteśvara (known in China as Guanyin) the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
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For me the time I said it that felt "correct," as Padmakara would say, was when with each syllable I felt the boulder atop each state of being. Om, G-d's ennui. Ma, the angels of uncertainty in the face of dynamic existence. Ni, humanities endless agitation and anxiety at the unknown. Pad, animal prey instincts. Me, endless disappointment despite constant effort. Hum, only a prison makes sense in a universe of unrelenting woes. When I meditated upon this sense of things it felt as if my heart was looking upon the sun! The upwelling of compassion I felt from The Good Lord to The Deceiver, and everyone in between, wishing each peace from the center of my being without flinching or loss of intention. When you feel that, that unstoppable wish for universal peace it changes you. You carry if for them. You become a sun to warm others, out of intention and happenstance. Because you've had enough of the cold.
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Using the Studio
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Right now, the studio is available to use for projects when Kim is in, and there is a possibility of someone using it regularly to have their own access. We offer studio access, instruction, and project support on a gift economy basis, and ask that participants discern what they are called to offer given their own needs and resources, as well as the needs and resources of those served in the community.
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How Donations Have Been Spent
In the past month, donations have been used to pay for storage assistance for an unhoused person, groceries for people transitioning into housing, and a short hotel stay someone who suddenly lost housing due to a funding lapse by a program he was relying on. In addition, a donation has been received that will help cover upkeep of the art and printing studio, and stipends for justice conversation art and writing contributors.
Future goals include funding to hire two part time positions: a website and publication editor, to expand our outreach in conversations about justice and love, creativity and spirituality; and a studio manager to expand regular access to the studio for the community. Workshop leaders, restorative justice facilitation, and case management for people who've been unhoused are three more goals. We could also use volunteers to help with strengthening community, leading spiritual reflections or meditations, advocacy, support, and creative workshop time and projects. Please join us!
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Recipients of this new mailing include past donors and workshop participants, members of Braided Bridge, participants of Homebridge Connect, people familiar with the starting of Braided Bridge, and a couple of close friends. If you are on this list and didn't want to be, please do feel welcome to unsubscribe and accept my sincere apologies. We needed a place to start. –Kim
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