What ideas matter most to you?
On peace, enchantment, disturbance, dreams, and ceasefire now
Take up space and continue defending the ideas that matter most to you.
-Dr. Angel Acosta, closing ceremony of the International Healing-Centered Education Conference, 2023
This was the call to action and invitation that was offered by Dr. Angel Acosta at the end of the International Healing-Centered Education Conference, which I have written about in my last several posts.
Dear reader, what ideas matter most to you? How are you defending them?
As I sat down to write today, these words echoed.
This Substack, Enchantable, was born from writing about re-enchanting education, and my own dance with enchantment and being enchanted by and with the world.
As I have written before, on the other side of enchantment is disturbance, and I think our quests for learning and living need to be informed by both. They are intertwined, they dance together, like the red flower and the rusty garbage bin.
What enchants you?
What disturbs you?
We can hold these questions at the same time, and be enchanted and in love with this world while also being disturbed by it. Both enchantment and disturbance can serve as motivation for imagining and acting towards better worlds.
The disturbance weighs heavy now, though.
Peace is the idea I have centered my life around: a holistice peace, a positive peace*, which I believe includes justice, liberation, decolonization, and creating a world in which all beings can thrive. A peace at all levels, that is fundamentally about the interbeing of relationships, as described in the Earth Charter:
Recognize that peace is the wholeness created by right relationships with oneself, other persons, other cultures, other life, Earth, and the larger whole of which all are a part.
A peace, I believe, that is possible, not as a static endpoint but as an ever-unfolding process, an imperfect peace**, a peace in the plural, peace(s)/paces.
This is why I join the global call for a ceasefire now in Gaza. For those of us from the US, these bombs that our government has supplied to Israel are being dropped in our name with our tax dollars, and we cannot stand for it. We must do everything we can to stop the genocide of the Palestinian people that is taking place right now, and call on our government to stop supporting it.
A ceasefire doesn’t mean peace, but it is at least a cessation of the horrorific war crimes being carried out by the Israeli government as they continue to bomb hospitals, churches, mosques, schools, and shelters. A ceasefire is an aspect of peace, in peace studies what we call negative peace, meaning it is the absence of physical violence, but not yet the presence of justice and liberation. However, it is a necessary condition for justice and liberation to be possible.
Peace also demands justice. A peace without justice is empty and hollow. Peace must mean liberation for all people, indigenous sovereignty, and decolonization, the end of settler colonial violence everywhere. A peace that includes justice, liberation, indigenous sovereignty, and freedom is a more positive peace, the presence of conditions for thriving. Peace means ending oppression in all its forms, including ending the apartheid Palestinians have been living under for decades.
Those in power can end this war now. They won’t do it without our pressure, and we must do everything we can to use our voices to call for peace and justice. We need a ceasefire to at least start.
I am trying to do what I can in the little corners of the world that I touch to keep loving the world and do everything I can with as much with love as I can. Writing you this letter. Taking care of Daphne. Holding space for students. Tending relationships. To keep my heart from getting hard, to not add one more drop of hatred to any situation. To do what I can to stay calm and grounded and not contribute to panic and division and separation. To mourn the immense suffering and loss of life taking place before our eyes. To pray for and end to this, for the protection of all life.
My friends at Ecoversities Alliance put out the following call:
Ecoversities is a network of people, humans with feelings, thoughts, reflections, stories, experiences. We believe it's really important that at this point in history, in these times of crisis, that people can speak from the heart, hear from the heart, and relate and empathise. We are collecting anonymous words from around the world of what is alive right now. Sara, our magical holder, suggested two starting points:
- right now, what breaks my heart is...
- in the world i want to leave for the future, i see...
We will sculpt something beautiful out of it, that intends to honour the multiverses that are coexisting. You can write them to ecoversitiesweavers@gmail.com or on our instagram @ecoversities
Thank you 🤍
In the world I want to leave for the future, I see all children leading thriving, meaningful lives. Playing freely. Laughing and dancing and playing. No child poverty. No child victims of war, because in this world, there is no more war. A world where all children get to live their dreams. A world where all children, and all their caretakers - which then means all people because we would all be taking care of each other - thrive.
I believe and know that this world, other worlds, are possible.
This past week I came across this video of Palestinian children talking about their dreams (click the post to watch):
Dreams of Palestinian children living in the El Yarmouq refugee camp. Exerpt from “Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege.”
I do a lot of dreaming and imagining with students, and recently when I offered an imagining session, a student asked whether people in situations of injustice, oppression, and violence would want to dream. How would this apply to them? Wouldn’t this seem irrelevant, futile?
In this video, I see the importance of being given space to dream. Of being asked what your dreams are. That humans, especially children, will keep dreaming even in dire circumstances. I see the answer to this students’ question. Yes, it is still important. All children, all people, deserve to dream. And for the chance to follow and live those dreams, and beyond them.
I am holding us in our heartbreak.
I am holding us in our dreams.
I am holding steady to the ground
And holding tight to visions
Of other worlds I know can come to be.
With all my love,
Stephanie
*the concepts positive and negative peace come from the work of peace scholar Johan Galtung.
**imperfect peace, la paz imperfecta, Francisco Muñoz