Earlier this week, I had the privilege of attending a workshop on nonviolent resistance. What I learned will continue unpacking itself in me for a long time to come.
One of the first things I noticed was how often the instructor used storytelling. Yes, there was data, there were charts, and a slide deck of facts was distributed. But it was the stories that impacted my heart, and continue to work me.
One of these stories was about the Las COMADRES, the families of “the disappeared ones” in El Salvador. These are women whose husbands and brothers and sons had been disappeared by government sanctioned military abductions. Their mission was to find their missing loved ones, and to bring public attention to the disappearances. In order to protect their families from retaliation by the government, these women would visit their homes during the day when there was less chance of reprisal, and spend the night at their office headquarters.
Late one night, a bomb was set off at the door of their office space. An international volunteer witnessed these women immediately move into the kitchen space and begin making coffee. They loaded trays with steaming cups, which they then took through the rubble of their doorway and out into the streets where soldiers waited to arrest them.
The international observer said their own first thought was securing the files of valuable and sensitive information, rushing as many Comadres as possible into hiding, and barricading the open hole where the door had been.
The grandmas knew differently. Forged through years of suffering and resistance, they recognized the noise of violence had to be met with a different kind of energy, an energy rooted in care and deeply connected to their own inner being, their own wisdom. As they circulated among the soldiers with their gifts of warmth and nourishment, the soldiers saw in them their own mothers, grandmothers and sisters. One by one, they disappeared into the night, and the Comadres commenced clearing rubble and repairing the doorway.
Grandmas in headscarves with hot beverages turned aside the violence and tyranny for one more night.
When oppression and violence are at their loudest, It is the smallest of actions that can shift the narrative.
This encourages me so much in this time in history. Chaos, division, and violence are so very loud right now. Despair hovers ever so closely. What is my small, quiet response, my little cup of coffee, as it were?
My small cups have included attending singing resistance events once a month, signing up for this nonviolent response workshop and knitting red hats. I also keep showing up with my creative sisters for our silent writing mornings, have asked a friend to teach me how to play pickleball, and of course, going fishing with my favourite guide. Anything that sparks delight, or a sense of play beckons me forward.
I’m noticing an overlap between the small practices that nourish my creativity and these tiny sparks of joy. I learned during the workshop that creativity is an essential part of nonviolent resistance.
Meeting the forces of division and violence with their own energy will only intensify and multiply the harm. A different kind of energy entirely is needed to create lasting change, an energy that makes space for something new.
That’s why our most effective resistance is in our small acts of care, whether they are soul-care or care of our neighbours and communities, or care of the earth. Any act of care contributes to the care of the whole, and is this care that will birth a new kind of culture, a new kind of world.
This is why it matters so much that each of us strengthens our connection to our own inner wisdom, and expresses that outward through our creativity. The new thing that we can’t see yet is not one person’s dream, or one organization’s objective. It is arriving through each of us knowing what is most true for us and acting on that truth.
That’s why soul-work matters. That’s why creativity matters.
And that is why, when the noise of the world around me feels too loud, too overwhelming, too disheartening, I am remembering to pull my attention inward, narrow my focus to small acts of care and tiny sparks of joy. It is in these small things that hope and new life grow.
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