Old Souls

A Reflection

Old Soul

Art Piece: “Curled Up” “Stretched Out” by Sylvie McKnight-Milles (age 3)

     My Full-Day Pre-K class, along with my fabulous Assistant, Mari, were coming in as a class from Outside Time, and I noticed that many of my little students had angry faces. I quickly put a smile on mine and said,

     “If something wonderful happened outside, press it to your heart.”

      “If something sad or aggravating happened outside, give it to the wind.”

      And then a four-year-old added with wisdom beyond her years, saying, “That’s because the wind will take it and swirl it around and turn it into something good. Anger is a lot of energy.”

      I love Old Souls. They contain knowledge that is way beyond their years. I don’t know if I am an Old Soul. I feel like a Battered Soul some days (and some nights). Perhaps the people who walk through life blissfully ignorant are happier than I am because they don’t reflect.

      How can one not reflect? How can one not remember? That four-year-old is right; anger is a lot of energy. I think back to January 6, 2021, and watching the Extremist Right-Wingers take over the Capital to try and overturn the election. It was one of the times I felt most scared in my life. It reminded me of what we know about Pilgrim times and witch hunts.

      One of my (I forget how many Greats Grandmothers back), Alice Lake, was hung as a witch. At the time (in the early 1700s), she had had a child die, an infant, and Alice had made the “error” of telling someone that she had seen her dead child in a dream. The small community where she lived in Rhode Island decided the devil had visited her and hung her as a witch.

      That is what I thought of that January 6^th. “They are out to hang us. They are out to transform this country into the twisted notions of the original Europeans who savagely killed the Native people and then claimed this land as their own, all using twisted logic from the Bible as their guide. They brought enslavement of African American people, dehumanized them, ripped them from their families, tortured them, treated them as property, and set into motion a system of racism that exists still today.”

      Anger is a powerful force. I cried when I woke election morning in 2017 and was sure Hillary Clinton would be our President and then found out that The Electoral College had voted for Donald Trump. I wept. I sat in a curled-up ball of fear for myself and our country. And for the next four years, I held my breath.

     A new Presidential cycle is beginning, and I find myself holding my breath, fearful that the same nimrods who stormed The Capital are going to threaten bodily harm at election sites and that we as a country,  as a country who has not reconciled with our bloody, murderous past of the Native people, of our proliferation of enslavement to the African American people and the lingering effects in the form of systemic racism, to women, and migrants. We will return to those Puritan Days. Perhaps even labeling women with “Scarlet A’s,” which will become the norm.

      That’s what happened in Nazi Germany, and it can happen here. Anger is a powerful force.

So is love. Love does not mean letting people walk over and on you. It is standing up and out with the truth of the equality of people, of the reality of the past of this land, the choices that the country has made, and the individual choices we have each made.

           “If something wonderful happened outside, press it to your heart.”

            “If something sad or aggravating happened outside, give it to the wind.”

Yesterday, I found out that my latest book was rejected. I shall leave it at that. I am mad and feel misunderstood.

             And so today, I give “it” to the wind.

     What will you give to the wind? What will you press to your heart? Thank you for listening, and thank you for reading. And thank you for reflecting and hopefully making our future better than it is today.