Digging to Blue

Coming to Ground #28

Dearest Fellow Earthlings,

I’m grateful that you’re here. It’s been a little while since I last sent something out to you. This gap in my writing is a sign of the deeply distracting times that we’re living in.

I offer the following words out of my own flawed, but tender human heart of flesh. I hope they’re grounding in some small way in these profoundly un-grounding times.

Artwork by Anni Roenkae, a Finnish multimedia artist

“Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.” ~ Audre Lorde

The Power of Witness

Here in the Great Lakes region, the month of January became increasingly cold, with record low temperatures and more snow than we’ve had in years. But the frigid weather did not keep people from showing up to offer mutual aid to neighbors at risk. It did not stop observers from demonstrating resistance as government-sanctioned violence escalated and abductions of primarily immigrant residents in towns and cities across the nation burgeoned. And, it did not deter people from recording this activity on their smart phones as they witnessed it.

The state of Minnesota is known for its neighborly, community minded people. As violence toward immigrant residents escalated in Minneapolis, people showed up in large number to observe and record it. They offered meals and rides to work and school for those afraid to go out by themselves for fear of abduction. As in other cities, their actions informed the masked and heavily armed agents of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement—or ICE—that they were not welcome in their neighborhoods.¹

As the violence of ICE escalated, two Minnesotans who had come to observe and to offer assistance, were brutally murdered in the street by ICE agents. The deaths of Renee Good (January 7) and Alex Pretti (January 24), are seared into our hearts and minds through horrific live video recordings of these murders, witnessed from multiple angles by those who were there. There is no valid defense for these murders or of the numerous others that have occurred at the hands of federal agents since January 20, 2025.

Signs from a gathering in Detroit on February 11, a protest vigil after the murder of Renee Good. Names of those who had so far died at by the hands of ICE and CPB agents.

In the midst of the shocking violence in their largest city, Minnesotans—and those from other places who have come to lend a hand—have offered us all more than a glimmer of hope. They have shown the world what true love and mutual aid is. The people are, daily, feeding one another in body and spirit, while actively loving and protecting the vulnerable. They are resiliently making music and singing together. They are gathering on the City’s frozen lakes and dancing on the ice surrounded by the flames of a thousand luminarias. These are people who are showing the world what to with long-handled spoons.²

My feelings about the ubiquitous presence of cell phones and social media are complicated. But right now, I want to sing the praises of the pocket computer with a powerful camera and the ability to communicate instantly through social media channels. Without the robust documentation that allowed collective witness of both horrific tragedy, and love in action, we might be lost. The constant recording of all that is happening in this chaotic time has been powerful.

If not for the ability to see and hear what has been happening in Minneapolis (and elsewhere) from the people there on the ground, I admit that I might have fallen into deep despair in the aftermath of those shootings. Instead, I witnessed collective human courage and strength even as grief swelled, and I could see the love and comradery expressed by those gathering, singing and lifting one another up in Minneapolis. Through them, I felt heartened, inspired, and empowered by the solidarity of diverse people grieving and holding one another. I sang along with the now famous refrains led by the human angels of Singing Resistance. “Hold on, hold on, my dear ones here comes the dawn . . .”

As I witnessed—as we witnessed—all of this this human love in action, I felt some of the heaviness I was carrying ignite as bright flames in my heart, becoming fuel for loving action. In the aftermath I’ve had more energy and passion to be involved in local work for mutual aid.

A Poem, Rediscovered

In early 2021, sometime in the weeks after the events of January 6 in Washington, DC, I had a dream that was full of vivid imagery. The dream felt iconic and true, and full of hope rising out of darkness. At the time I translated this dream into a poem.

In recent days, I remembered that poem and took it out again. It felt deeply meaningful and to me right now, so I’ve shared it below:

Digging to Blue

In the dream, I knelt on the ground
my hands on bare earth.

I began to dig
noticing each stratum,
the varied colors of soils,
every layer born of weathering,
born of birth, life and dying
nutrient dark layers,
teeming with small beneficial creatures

I plunged my bare hands in,
making a deeper passage,
and when walls began to crumble
I patted falling soil into place
until it held firm again.
I dug until my fingers brushed sudden soft forms;
peered in and saw the deepest blue,
rising from the floor of my excavation . . .

I grasped gently,
slowly pulled,
the flowering indigo cluster,
tangled roots slid with strange ease as I lifted
the dark blossoms from the ground,
pulled them into clear air,
and light bathed each fleshy petal.
I cradled them in my hands;

could hardly believe
how blue this flowering was!
The deepest deep blue
like wild yonder, heaven’s door,
like Shiva’s blue throat
after he drank poison from the world . . .

And he dances . . .

When I woke up from that dream, I felt that the flowers I had labored to uncover were a blessing of some kind. They were an image of something difficult and necessary and surprising that becomes something new and beautiful. My dream flowers were deep, deep blue.

Blue is a color that often signifies compassion.³

Shiva’s Blue Throat

My poem ends with a reference to a mythic story of the Hindu God Shiva that I have found to be deeply meaningful, and to contain Christ-like elements.

He is one aspect of Brahman, which is the One Supreme Divine Force of the Universe, a Holy Mystery that brings all into being. Brahman is depicted as a trinity of divine personas: Brahma the Creator of the Universe, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer of all that threatens to destroy Creation, such as the sins of toxic ego, greed, hatred, violence, ecological destruction, etc.

In the story, a group of Asuras, or “wanna-be gods” and a group of demons have made an unusual alliance to work together to extract Amrita, a substance that confers immortality to the true Gods, the Devas. They devise a plan to extract it by churning the primordial ocean of milk. They assemble tools for the job and greedily begin this task. Before long, they discover that a deadly poison has been released through their churning that could extinguish all life on Earth.

Just in time Shiva arrives to destroy the poison and save all of life on earth by drinking it. Though he is a powerful persona of God, the poison was strong enough to destroy him if it flowed through him. So, his beloved, the Goddess Parvati, known as the Nurturer, steps in to firmly grasp the base of his throat, and blocks the poison from entering the rest of his body as he consumes it. Shiva’s throat becomes permanently blue from the poison, but he is saved by the compassionate action of his partner, Parvati.

Shiva’s blue throat is a sign of how love can hold and transmute the poison that threatens to destroy the world. The stain of it will always be there, and that ensures that it is never forgotten.

The real power of ancient myths like this lies in the actual truth that they convey through story.

Shiva and Parvati, a painting by artist Gejesh Mitkari, used by permission from the artist, granted February 12, 2026

Beloved Community

None of us are Gods. But when we gather together in diversity and solidarity to act out of fierce love with mutual support, we may have enough power to transmute deadly poison and render it harmless. We must speak love in the presence of the poison of false power and take action where and when we can to preserve and protect one another. No action taken in service to love is too small.

Minneapolis has shown us that we can replenish our strength within beloved community. We are bolstered by singing together, and feeding one another to stay strong. Our survival might even depend upon it.

I know that the people there, and elsewhere throughout our country, did not want what they got—but they showed up for each other, in love and grief and rage. They sang with broken hearts, and as they sang, other hearts far away from them, like mine, were ignited. We sang with them from our own places, and we felt more courage coursing through our bodies even hundreds of miles away. This is healing in action.

Grief and anger are necessary and real responses to injustice that can spur us on, but if we have no constructive outlet for them or ways to safely express them where they can be held by community with compassion, they threaten to consume us. The moments of collective care and togetherness that I witnessed and participated in from a distance, helped to galvanize me into action here in my own community, because I was grounded within my own fierce love for this world and for life. I was reminded that anger that is fueled by love and care for others can be more powerful than the fear that rises from witnessing blatant hatred and brutality. Collaboration and mutual presence are essential ingredients. Parvati, held the throat of her beloved to help save the world from the poison that would destroy it.

Revolutionary poet and activist Audre Lorde powerfully asserted, “Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.”

Every petal from the deep blue flowers of compassion is needed.

I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.

Isaiah 43:19

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Items for growing Power and Hope:

• If you agree with a moratorium on ICE funding, please call your senators and let them know. If you aren’t sure if you agree, I encourage you to please listen to the powerful words of community faith leaders in the linked video in the next item on this list.

• On February 4, I attended an Interfaith Press Conference, hosted by my Bishop the Rt. Rev. Dr. Bonnie Perry, at our diocesan Cathedral of St. Paul in Detroit. The purpose of the press conference was to advocate for a freeze on funding for I.C.E. in the face of all the brutality it has unleashed upon people all over the country. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clerics, along with an impassioned member of a nonpartisan organization called Voters Not Politicians, each offered unique and powerful speeches outlining just why this funding freeze is necessary. Many lay people, like myself, attended to show support.

• This: Singing Resistance Songbook <3

1. The acronym ICE is boldly appropriate as they act as agents who literally put the freeze on people’s lives—many of whom have already endured horrible conditions and violence in their countries of origin and came to the US full of hope for a better life.

2. A traditional Jewish tale called the Parable of the Long-Handled Spoons. There are many versions of this story but the essentials are that the difference between those who go to heaven and those who go to hell is illustrated by the way they use ridiculously long-handled spoons. Those in hell suffer from starvation due to the fact that they cannot get food into their own mouths because the handles of the spoons are too long for their own arms. Those in heaven are well fed because they are happily feeding one another with the same long-handled spoons.

3. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word compassion literally means “to be with suffering”

The card I drew for the first Omen Day for 2026, the omen for January. The card is a part of An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Times by Maria Popova