Why is it that protesters such as now occupy the streets of many American cities for anti-Trump rallies often choose the Night to stage their marches? I propose this may not simply be due to their daytime work schedules, especially on weekends. These protests are an outcry from the collective archetypal DESCENDER, whose domain of expression and action is a Deep, often submerged realm, in what James Hillman called the “underworld” of the dynamic Unconscious.
A “call in the Night” embodies a passionate, ardent outcry for all concerned. Protesters in America are often not even well organized; the nighttime rallies are organic, spontaneous. Much is being brought to the surface at this time in America and in much of the world in this and recent times of economic and political uncertainty. Black Lives Matter marches over the past summer; anti-Trump rallies that began during the terribly bitter campaign in protest of bigoted statements and threats by the candidate; raucous campaign rallies themselves: all of these demonstrate the frustrations and divisive polarization occurring in the world perhaps since the 2008 Great Recession and subsequent Occupy Wallstreet movement in America. Many have not yet recovered lost jobs or feel disenfranchised either from the experience of enormous economic disparities or from becoming the target of racial, religious, or gender and sexuality coded attacks.
The Center cannot hold”
… echoes W. B. Yeats from his grave (warning of an impending Anti-Christ). Yeats also penned in “The Nineteenth Century and After”:
“Though the Great Song return no more,
There’s keen delight in what we have;
The rattle of pebbles on the shore
Under the receding Wave.”
I like Yeats (can you tell?)–as I once memorized virtually an entire Collected Works of Yeats volume late in high school thanks to a dear mentor (D/M)–, and I find myself returning to Yeats’s sage, deeply reflective poetry often this past week. Yeats’s poetry and the theosophical philosophy underlying his poetic vision (read his book, A Vision) reminds me of the cyclical nature of life and politics in this world of appearances, this phantasm:
“Once, while on the old grey stone I sat,
Under the old windbroken tree,
I knew that One is animate.
Mankind inanimate phantasy.”
But here’s one I am reminded of this week as I struggle to come to terms, to find a balance of acceptance while yet feeling protective of my liberal values of appreciating diversity and freedom of religion (implying due separation of Church and State):
“Outworn heart, in a time outworn,
Come clear the nets of wrong or right;
Laugh, heart, again, in the grey twilight;
Sigh heart, again, in the dew of the morn.”
Paired with (in Those Images) one of my favorite of all Yeats phrases through the years:
“What if I bade you leave
The cavern of your mind;
There’s better exercise
in the sunlight and wind.”
images are from pixabay.com
It is time for a change to rattle the pebbles on the shore; a time for poets and mystics to descend to their Core and to reemerge in the Light.
May we all be Torchbearers for one another when that is needed.
May you and I everywhere find ways to exercise our God given, inherent freedom and delight to go forth, again, to play in the Sun!
Better Endings 