Episode 1.13: Ancestors II

THE PODCAST: MAR. 5 /19

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EXAMINING YESTERDAY’S ACTIONS TO UNDERSTAND TODAY’S REALITY

To understand today’s reality, we need to examine yesterday’s actions and our connection to them. In episode thirteen of FIND THE OUTSIDE: THE PODCAST, Tim and Tuesday continue the conversation around history, impact, and our world.

Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.

1.13 —— SHOW NOTES

  • Tim: Vulnerability is about revealing something of yourself, which invites others to do the same. 

  • Tues: Vulnerability feels like something we, as a people, are seeking and need to search out. This podcast is on-air vulnerability; it’s a way of walking our talk. Brené Brown does incredible work around vulnerability for those listening who are interested.

  • Tues: On both sides of my family, not one of us had wealth or resources or access to power. That’s why, in some ways, I can look back on my lineage and feel unafraid and only pride.

  • Tim: When I think of my ancestors, it’s coming from a place of “Who bares the blame?”

  • Questions from Tim: 1. What is the source of pride and awe? 2. What do you mean by the legacy of brutality? 3. What is it like to have no written history/context?

  • Tues: Pride and awe comes from understanding our survivorship and the enslavement of my people—what it took to physically survive being taken from our lands and stacked like wood in the bottom of ships. That legacy of treatment and building the economy of North America on our backs continues today.

  • Tues: You can look up forever the impact of generational trauma and enslavement on Black parenting. When you are brutalized, you in turn, brutalize others. Then there’s also the brilliance of a diamond being crushed so hard which can also make you shine, at least in my experience.

  • Tues: A lot of black folks in this country have done a lot of work to refine and reclaim their roots. I have not done that work. It’s a big, gaping wound. A big part of my practice is actively reclaiming the land I am on. My only ancestry are enslaved people. There’s a huge loss in not knowing what came before.

  • Tim: Do you ever feel your ancestors? 

  • Tues: Yes, 100%. That pride, awe and understanding is automatically accessible to me. That is something about feeing it in my blood. I think about myself as the culmination and not an obligation to them. I am in this life to dance and be joyful, and make change.

  • Tues: I want to leave listeners aware of my huge amounts of gratitude and I hope that that infuses my work and our work. And I hope I can stand strong in that.

  • Poem: “Thanks” by W.S. Merwin


    Listen
    with the night falling we are saying thank you
    we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
    we are running out of the glass rooms
    with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
    and say thank you
    we are standing by the water thanking it
    standing by the windows looking out
    in our directions

    back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
    after funerals we are saying thank you
    after the news of the dead
    whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

    over telephones we are saying thank you
    in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
    remembering wars and the police at the door
    and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
    in the banks we are saying thank you
    in the faces of the officials and the rich
    and of all who will never change
    we go on saying thank you thank you

    with the animals dying around us
    taking our feelings we are saying thank you
    with the forests falling faster than the minutes
    of our lives we are saying thank you
    with the words going out like cells of a brain
    with the cities growing over us
    we are saying thank you faster and faster
    with nobody listening we are saying thank you
    thank you we are saying and waving
    dark though it is


    W.S. Merwin, "Thanks" from Migration: New and Selected Poems

  • Song: “Family of Aliens” by Teleman

 
 

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Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.

 
 

Duration: 38:21
Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good Studios
Theme music: Gary Blakemore
Episode cover image: source

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