People are not disposable. And yet many of our institutions and systems treat them as if they are. And you would think this would be obvious, but people are not commodities. So how do we reshape our businesses and institutions so that people are not seen as a resource to be used up and spit out, but as an integral part of everything we do, and one which needs to be nourished and kept healthy?

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My body and I had to come to Jesus this morning in

the wee dark hours. It kept shouting outside my window

carrying signs I couldn't read. And so I shouted down and said,

"what are your demands?" and it just made uncomfortable possum

sounds or the noise that a baby otter makes before it touches

water for the first time. And I said, "okay, but really?" and it

said, "ow." And I said, "okay, but where?" And that is how I

ended up lying awake at 5am with my thumb pressed into the muscle

just to the left and center of my sternum, feeling the

throbbing all along my rhomboids, the point of my

shoulder, and assorted other places that I'm not used to

feeling sensation at all, that humans are not really made to

feel sensation in at all, unless perhaps, we have been hit by an

arrow or a falling log, which I have not. But what I have been

hit by is two plus years of pandemic, poverty, heartache,

separation from my loved ones, exhaustion, burnout, and the

flailing of late-stage end-stage some-stage? of capitalism, that

part where fascism and oligarchy try to take over, over and over

again. And somehow, we do not smoothly make the obvious

transition from being wealthy to sharing that wealth. Socialism

seems obvious to me. But in the meantime, we have to have some

kind of bridge, something that helps us regain our humanity,

because it has already been lost in this morass. I know about it,

because the point of my shoulder and my rhomboids told me so. But

I am informed by reliable sources that most people have

long since forgotten how to hear what their bodies are telling

them, because it hurts too much. And as a consequence, cannot

also hear what the body of humanity, the body of the Earth,

the body of life are saying. And by saying, I mean shouting. Even

when it is also ourselves down there doing the shouting,

holding literal signs that literally say what we literally

want. But we forget that the people in the tops of the

skyscrapers can't actually read the signs once they get up

there. They can't see the signs once they get up there. And

hiring a sky writer is both dangerous and ineffective, not

to mention expensive. Ani DiFranco said, if he doesn't

come down and put change in her cup, she's coming up, which is a

great line. But the fact is that the elevator is guarded and

stepping into a small box into which one can be locked for

basically ever makes that strategy probably not the most

effective way to create change. And so what is the most

effective way to create change? And how do we recognize who we

are? And we are in fact, the ones also with the keys to the

elevator, we are in fact, also the ones leaning out the window

squinting at the shouting, perhaps even sincerely engaged

in the possibility that we might be able to meet the demands of

the people down there while retaining our seats up here.

That is not really how it works. In the old days, the buildings

were shorter, even on the fifth storey, you can basically tell

what people are yelling about. And I think that's important to

being in touch with the ground from which we come is

a vital part of our survival. And at the same time, we need to

start stacking people better in cities so that we retain some

compactness of resource distribution. And at the same

time, we need more people, more kinds of people moving to the

places where the skies are open, and the farming is good. I

believe in us, my friend Mina Raver believes in us; she is not

the only one. My friend Vanessa Burnett believes in us; she is

not the only one. I believe that those of us who believe in us

are actually in the majority. I believe those of us who want to

simultaneously be in power and share the power are not as

unique or as far apart as the narratives that we hear would

have us believe. Even the people writing the newspapers sharing

the stories have become the people leaning out the 125th

floor of someplace, squinting down the street, trying to read

the signs and figure out what the shouting is all about,

trying to figure out what the demands really are. Because from

up there, it all sounds like possum sounds. This morning, my

body and I had to come to Jesus and I lay there at 5am firmly

consistently pressing out knots that my body doesn't even let me

know that I have, most of the time. Usually, there is no

shouting. The shouting is a way of finding the problem. Shouting

is a way of knowing there is a problem. The shouting is the

first step. But it is only the first step, then somehow,

somehow there has to be consensus, consolidation of the

people at the top of the skyscraper and the people at the

bottom. Somehow, my body has to trust me enough to let me work

out the knots in my pectoral muscle. So that my shoulder can

move freely, so that I can exercise, so that I can breathe.

So that I can meet the very things about which it has been

shouting, that I can meet it on the ground. It can meet me in

the air so they can meet everywhere it wants to. The

signs aren't merely symbolic. I'm relieved about the shouting,

but only when the shouting leads to something.

Here's the irony. My personal trainer and I have been on this

exact problem. My personal trainer and I have been working

on this for months, trying to find our way down the fire

stairs, floor after floor after floor all the way to the bottom

every chance we get. Every time we get a clue as to where we

might find the doorway, the entrance, the way to find out

what's happening down there. The way to read the signs the way to

hear the demand- something, something gets in our way.

That's the way of capitalism. But I have known intuitively and

from the beginning, that the key to this problem is heart ache.

And the way the human body curls around the center of the chest

in defense. My body has to know simultaneously that my heart is

breaking and that I am doing everything that I can to save us.