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Dear friends,
I have a friend who makes a playlist to help him get through the
night. He stitches podcast episodes into an eight hour stream, presses
play, turns it down low, and lies down.
It fulfils two functions, he says. It’s like the ambient noise lots
of people use to help support sleep. But also, he says that when he
wakes up in the middle of the night, he knows he’s in the company of
voices that he trusts. He chooses podcasts that are not shouty, that
are not dealing in outrage, but that explore mystery and meaning. He’s
been having a hard time, and the nights are tough. He can barely hear
the voices, he says; but he knows that the murmur from the corner is a
murmur of curiosity. It helps him breathe, he says.
What do you do to help? To help what?, you might ask. To help you…
now… a year into a pandemic… with noise of vaccinations and new waves
and policies coming from all directions… a year that has continued to
uncover so much that was already wrong: systemic injustice, violences,
disparities.
Our
On Being episode this week is an interview with Dr.
Christine Runyan. She's a U.S. Air Force veteran, a clinical
psychologist who believes that psychology and mental health care
should be at the front-end of medical care, rather than at the end of
lengthy referral processes. Her insight about the body’s response
during stress is extraordinary. From her, we hear that stress affects
the nervous system, and that a year like the one we’ve had is a year
of stress. Finding ways to name what’s going on will be vital to our
capacity to respond well as this next year progresses, she says.
Christine Runyan brings critique to some medical measurements being
employed to talk about our realities in this past year. Responding to
public voices using medical diagnoses to speak about how people are
responding to the pandemic, she says: “It is such a medical lens. It’s
such a lens of pathology. And I don’t think it actually captures what
I’m saying, which is, this is a very normal, in fact predictable,
human experience, given the conditions that we have.”
With this perspective, Krista and Christine talk about memory
lapses, episodes that feel like depression, hostility about
masking/non-masking and other regular experiences for many this past
year. Christine provides an extraordinarily supportive containment in
her shared wisdom; a containment that says, What is happening to
you is okay. Here are some things that might help. Among the
things that may help, she suggests exhales, background music,
body-work, placing your feet firmly on the ground, evoking curiosity,
and savoring. What we notice can be as ordinary as the way the light
catches the curtains. “And so we actually have to put some effort in
towards noticing that which is neutral or pleasant; in fact, if we can
really notice, most things that are even neutral become pleasant,
because they become fascinating,” Christine Runyan says.
In a year where we worry that our very breath has become a danger
to each other, Christine praises medical professionals: “No amount of
sophisticated technology can do what health professionals have done
these past few months — offered care with uncertain evidence, sat with
the dying, comforted family members from afar, held one another in
fear and grief, celebrated unexpected recoveries, and simply showed
up… No one has been trained how to keep regular life afloat at home
and anxiety at bay, while working day after day with a little known
biohazard.”
This conversation is a balm, not because it glosses over the
pressures of the last year, but because it speaks to them. It makes a
space between the stress and the story of the stress, and allows
perspective. Listen to it, listen to it again, savor.
This
week’s episode of This Movie Changed Me features host
Lily Percy speaking with Shea Serrano about Gregory Nava’s Selena,
a biopic about the life and career of Tejano music sensation
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. Starring Jennifer Lopez as Selena and Edward
James Olmos as Selena’s father, the movie explores what it means to
have a dream, to follow that dream, and the difficulties — from
family, expectations, resistance — along the way. For Shea Serrano,
once he became a parent, Selena offered him a new way of
thinking about his role as a father. Edward James Olmos’ character in
the movie is a former musician himself, who encountered terrible
discrimination, and who then, when his daughter followed in his
tracks, projected all his fear onto her. The movie is, in many ways,
an exploration of what it’s like to learn to notice your fear, to name
it, to step away from it a little, and to not give in to letting fear
control the expectations you have for — or put on — those you
love.
In both On Being and This Movie Changed Me we are
considering what it means to see, name, live with — and even work with
— the very understandable fears of a life. In all our considerations
this week, friends, we wish you courage, and breath, and continued
health.

Beir bua,
Pádraig Ó Tuama host of Poetry
Unbound
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This Week at The On Being Project
Our Latest Episode

On Being with Krista
Tippett
Christine Runyan "What’s
Happening in Our Nervous Systems?"
Pandemic brain and “skin hunger.” How
our bodies have been trying to care for us. Strategies for bringing
our conscious selves back online.
Listen on: Apple
Podcasts Google
Podcasts Spotify Our
Website

This Movie Changed
Me
Shea Serrano “Selena”
The enduring inspiration of a Tejano
music icon, with wisdom on parenthood and the importance of dreaming
big.
Listen on: Apple
Podcasts Google
Podcasts Spotify Our
Website
Recommended

Read | The
One Year Mark: Ritual and Accompaniment Through the Pandemic
Portal This resource guide, created by Adam
Horowitz and Nuns
& Nones, offers starting points, questions and experimental
prompts to process all that we have lost and are emerging into during
this pandemic year. As they write in their guide, “Unlike a
traditional rite of passage, no one is holding this container for us.
But, any one of us can create moments of ritual and reflection in our
own lives and communities, with the goal of emerging on the other side
of the pandemic with deeper courage, compassion, and commitment.”
Watch | Nomadland Last
month Chloé Zhao made history when she won the Golden Globe for Best
Director for her film Nomadland — she is only the second
woman to earn the award after Barbra Streisand for Yentl in
1984. And this week’s Oscar nominations make her the first Chinese
woman ever nominated in that same category. I am normally the first
person to say that these awards are meaningless garbage, but this time
around I am celebrating the recognition of a filmmaker who, with
Nomadland, has created one of the most intimate and emotional
movie experiences since Debra Granik’s 2018 masterpiece Leave No
Trace. Watching it at home, I grieved for the loss of my local
movie theater. The movie’s landscapes — and Frances McDormand’s
powerful performance — demand a big screen, and the safety of a room
full of strangers witnessing … alone, together. — Liliana Maria (Lily)
Percy Ruiz, Executive Producer
Watch + Listen | Zildjian
LIVE! – JD Beck (Featuring DOMi) JD Beck is a
17-year-old drummer who has a uniquely-defined style that is the envy
of drummers twice his age. Even with a pared-back drum kit, he creates
a sound that is almost electronic, like a drum machine. He’s so at one
with the drums when he’s playing — he’s definitely “breathing through
his eyelids” — that the separation between himself and the instrument
evaporates. And as he shows in this video, where he is performing to a
room full of drummers who are geeking out as they watch him, his
musical genius is a reminder of the pure joy that music can bring.
— Chris Heagle, Producer/Technical Director
Events
In
the Shelter Book
Launch March 25,
2021 Online Event Pádraig is thrilled
to launch the North American edition of his book, In
the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World, with Broadleaf
Books on Thursday,
March 25th at 8pm EST. Krista will be joining Pádraig for a chat
along with other friends dropping in to talk poetry, theology and
conflict. The entire event is free and will last about an hour.
Healing
Our City (of Minneapolis) Virtual Prayer
Tent Daily at 8 am
CST Online Event The coming trial of
Derek Chauvin is surfacing fresh pain and fear. The
Center for Leadership and Neighborhood Engagement has launched an
online version of the community prayer tent that was a wonderful
presence last summer. As their website states, “From this tent we will
go out into our neighborhoods and into the daily lives of people who
long for welcome, safety, and belonging." All are invited — whoever
you are, wherever you are in the world — to join by Zoom or Facebook
for reflection followed by your form of prayer, silence or meditation.
This is currently planned for every morning at 8 am CST for the coming
months and Krista will be leading a reflection on an upcoming day.
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