Have you ever had a big nighttime Dream, the kind that stays perfectly crisp in your memory? The kind that steers your life in a new direction?
My most recent Dream was set in a European city of pastel-colored buildings and waterways, like Amsterdam. In it, I am at a subway station (never mind that there can be no subway in a city built on water) with my best friend and a 12-year-old girl with sandy hair and blue eyes who needs surgery. My friend and I need to take the girl to the hospital.
I carry a backpack with all my writing utensils and a basket with my daughter's things: changes of clothes, water and snacks and diapering stuff. I stand on the subway platform wondering if I've brought everything I'll need or whether I've overpacked and am burdened by too much stuff. A train comes, my friend jumps into it with the girl, and before I know it the train takes off, leaving me alone and confused.
I need to catch up with them. I need to get to the hospital in this foreign city where I don't speak the language. I start walking toward the street and come to a crossroads between a park that is an old sacred forest, an amusement park, some crumbling old pyramids brought from Egypt or Mexico, and a market where brown-skinned immigrants sell their crafts.
Just as I am realizing how weird it all is and that I must be dreaming, I wake up.
It was clear this was a Big Dream. It was loaded with symbols, and I knew it was trying to tell me something. As soon as I could, I did some dreamwork and discovered this dream had at least 3 messages for me:
1.-The young girl in a city threatened by the rise of sea level represented both Greta Thunberg and Kelsey Juliana (you can read my interview with Kelsey's amazing mom here), two of the most influential environmentalists of our times, who began their activism when they were in their early teens. The girl in my dream needed help. I need to participate in the climate justice movement.
2.-I carry the instruments of the writer and mother that I am. Although in some ways I am overprepared and in others I am underprepared, the situation is urgent. I can't wait until I'm perfectly ready. I must act imperfectly now.
3.-The crossroads between the amusement park, the sacred forest, the pyramids and the market where immigrants sell their offerings is my work. I am a brown-skinned immigrant from a land of pyramids and ancient wisdom. My work is the protection of the sacredness of nature. How am I going to do it? By using my tools as a writer and making it interesting.
If I close my eyes, I can still inhabit this Dream with perfect clarity. Such is the power of dreams. Jung called them messages from our unconscious. In shamanic work we know our dreams are woven by our Oversoul, the divine and immortal part of ourselves that loves us unconditionally and whispers guidance to us in a language that only we can decode.
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Mere weeks after I launched my blog, a fellow environmentalist mom reached out to me and introduced me to the local chapter of Extinction Rebellion (XR), a group of activists who support the youth-led climate justice movement. Finally I had a place where I could feel my environmental grief and collaborate with others in telling the truth about the climate crisis and doing something about it (more about that later).
Through my participation with XR, I was invited to an all-day art workshop for activists in preparation for the Global Climate Strike starting next September 20th (learn more here).
The seeds of the global strike were planted by young people. Four years ago, Kelsey Juliana and 20 other youth filed a lawsuit against the United States government for causing climate change and endangering the life and livelihood of their generation. One year ago Greta Thunberg began striking from school. Every friday she would sit with her handmade sign in front of the Swedish Parliament, demanding meaningful action to curb climate change. Today, millions of people have joined them and plan to participate in the greatest strike every to happen in all of human history!
The activist art workshop was going to be taught by David Solnit. I had never heard of him, but I wondered if he was related to Rebecca Solnit, a feminist journalist and writer I greatly admire, whose fearless participation in the Resistance to Trump and brilliant political analysis has made the last 3 years more bearable. A little internet research told me not only that David Solnit has been using art to amplify the power of countless peoples' movements for decades, but one look at a photo revealed that he is Rebecca's brother.
When I finally met him in person, I had to bite my tongue not to blurt out, "Your mama's milk sure had superpowers!" I behaved, for the most part, and the only obnoxious thing I did was to ask for this selfie, to which he generously consented.
This soft-spoken, unassuming man in his paint-streaked carhartts and baseball cap is a force to be reckoned with. After spending the morning teaching us about street murals, silk-screening, stenciling and painting banners, David showed us an impressive slide show with giant puppets, street-long banners, large-scale street murals, and even a “cantastoria”, a rhymed story-in-song told with beautiful images painted on fabric. With deep respect for grassroots organizers, David has magnified their impact by making their protests more fun, beautiful and frankly irresistible. He's supported those who oppose building a giant telescope on the sacred Hawaiian mountain Mauna Kea, he was there at Standing Rock protecting Lakota water rights, he has supported Juliana vs. U.S. lawsuit and Greta's Fridays for Future movement. David Solnit was there all the way back at the protest that shut down a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999.
When he showed slides of that event, I got chills. When I had just moved to this country and was living with my first husband in an eco-village outside Eugene, Oregon, members from our community returned from the WTO protests beaten and pepper-sprayed. I remember feeding them soup, then washing their red, burning eyes with chamomile tea. My activist friends took enormous risks to stand up to the corporations that are destroying our Earth.
David Solnit's approach to activism with songs and giant puppets and street art was instrumental in the victory against the most powerful trade organization in the world in Seattle in 1999. Now, 20 years later, he taught us how to put the same tools in the service of Mother Earth again.
I thought of a point Rebecca Solnit makes time and again: when you sow a seed, you don’t know how or when it will sprout, grow and blossom. It was Rosa Parks who inspired Greta Thunberg to begin striking for climate all by herself. It was the Standing Rock Lakota Sioux warriors who inspired Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to run for office. Instead of ignoring the climate crisis like most politicians do, Ocasio Cortez is spearheading the Green New Deal, another effort to which David Solnit has lent his art.
I am an activist mom because of sheroes like Catia Juliana: a woman who blockaded a forest to save it from logging with newborn Kelsey in her arms. That newborn grew up to take on the U. S. government. My Dream about Greta and Kelsey propelled me to start publishing this blog. What dreams move you? What sheroes and heroes inspire you?
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