News & Articles

Writing articles for the Reader is sometimes easy and other times difficult. There are those days when I have plenty of ideas and others when I’m struggling to choose a topic or title. And ever so often, there are the moments when I can’t think of something or don’t believe that I have anything to say and write about.

Sitting in bed the other night, I had a million ideas but none of them seemed right. And then I just started crying.

I wasn’t sure if the tears were in response to having writer’s block, questions about my personal life or feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders and in my heart. It was probably a combination of all three.

I decided to put the pen down, close the notebook and settle into some music. The second song that I listened to was “In the House of Stone and Light” by Martin Page. I replayed it again and then again.
After playing the song about 10 times, and reading the lyrics, it finally dawned on me that I had found the music and words to lift my spirits and provide a new direction for this article. 
There were three stanzas of Page’s song that hit home for me.

O Mount Kailas, uncover me,
come my restoration, wash my body clean.
I’ve been walking along a crooked path
where the walls have fallen and broken me in half.

Holy Lady, show me my soul,
tell me of that place where I must surely go.
Old man waiting at the gates for me
give me the wisdom, give me the key.

In the house of stone and light,
it’s been too long, my spirit’s been at war.
Havasupai Shaman, let me be reborn.

Looking at my personal life, our city and the country, it feels like the walls are falling and breaking us in half. Wondering how we can restore ourselves and be reborn. Concerned about how to become more soulful and wiser as we walk this crooked path.

In his Substack article on Jan. 26, Thom Hartmann wrote about his experience in 1980 when he was visiting Uganda during the civil war against Adi Amin.

While Hartmann was at the Entebbe Airport waiting for his plane to depart, he was confronted by three armed men who demanded his money. One of the men told Hartmann that they could kill him and no one will know, that nobody will punish them.

Hartmann stated that he was reflecting upon that experience as he was watching Trump and his administration’s message that he was in charge, he was in control, we can’t resist, and people must obey or die.

In Minneapolis, ICE agents are threatening and murdering people. In Philadelphia and out west, the National Park service is removing signs and exhibits about slavery and the mistreatment of Native Americans.

And the Trump administration has withdrawn the U.S. from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, removed the Black Lives Matter street mural in Washington, D.C., and deleted hundreds of words and phrases like social justice, mental health, disabilities, health disparity, vulnerable populations and climate change from federal websites.

The president and federal government are promoting anger, violence, intolerance, greed, lies, racism, fear, ignorance, hypocrisy and male toxicity.

The country has become a house of stone. And it’s become a dark house.

Frederic Gros, in his book Disobey, wrote, “disobedience should be self-evident in the face of the absurdity and irrationality of the world as it is.”

We need to face the insanity and absurdity in our country by resisting the Trump presidency and finding every opportunity to disobey.

Resist and disobey the ICE agents’ threats and acts of violence.

Resist and disobey the federal government’s refusal to address climate change, racism and the mistreatment of Native Americans.

Resist and disobey the corporations that are complicit in tax evasion, low wages, economic inequality and environmental destruction.

For those of us who live in Duluth, let’s find the times and places in our daily lives to help build a more creative, compassionate, wiser and soulful city.

It is by doing this that we can restore ourselves and be reborn in the house of stone and light.