What do a violinist, a wisdom conference and a single, clear moment have in common with a history-making supreme court ruling for marriage equality, a race-related massacre, and the deeply affecting upheaval of both? Soul Growth Radio’s issue 3 theme, “Sound and Fury.” Thanks for being here with us. Please come in and see what our contributors are exploring about sound, silence, anger, upheaval, transition and transformation.
I find it difficult to write some of the words above, and I keep deleting them, wondering how better to state them. But there is no truer way, and this is the core of Issue 3’s theme: Openly witnessing the true sounds of our realities, holding in our bodies, both personal and collective, the fury and anguish of the challenges we face, personal, systemic, fleeting, permanent. It feels like a fight through these moments, a fight to reach the rewards of freedom, a fight to breathe under the grip of oppression. And while we fight, the peace on the other side of the struggle is what we hold in our minds and hearts.
On an internal level, upheaval calls for a re-wiring of our conscience. If we face our challenges with the same mindsets with which we entered them, we stay stuck in the challenge. Our own resistance becomes our oppressor.
The inspiration to this month’s theme began with music, more specifically, with Kai Kaight, an innovating violinist and speaker at the Wisdom 2.0 Conference in February. Wisdom 2.0 is a mindfulness conference, a gathering of people who come together sharing what they know about mindful practice and interaction. And so, the presence of Kai’s affecting sound, and the collective conference’s journey to limit the noise in our brains, struck me as the ongoing challenge of our lives. How do we hold the upheaval while we transform it, while it transforms us? How do we acknowledge the anger, the ruckus, the fear, the mental flurry, the physical traffic when life gets loud?
Sound and silence gave me “Sound and Fury.” Our contributors’ deep explorations of the theme, and the our country’s civil rights explosion of June 2015 brought the theme’s substance to the top of our hearts and the tips of our tongues.
Who do we become when we have broken wide open?
As we move through July’s issue, Ane Axford writes about Sensitive Leadership, Stephanie Gagos taps her anger with Core Energetics, and finds sound mind and health, an interview with Mindful Nation president, Krisha Pendyala brings their remarkable movement of veterans, nurses and teachers to our pages. And our columnists explore their sounds and furies with tenderness and depth.
Please enjoy Soul Growth Radio’s exploration of “Sound and Fury,” and add your thoughts. For the first time, our comments sections are open.
In spirit and story,
Pema Rocker
