Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

How History Repents

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We have the power to set the future free

This 4th of July was strangely quiet here in Philadelphia. Normally the holiday is a very big deal in this city. People flock to our neighborhood in droves to attend a massive, booming, concert on the Parkway, followed by a spectacular, equally booming, fireworks display over the Art Museum. But because of the pandemic, neither happened this year.

Sitting on my roof deck that afternoon, the quiet made it feel like we were a city and a nation deep in introspection, as indeed we need to be. These last weeks and months have brought to light so much that is crying out for healing in our nation, so many erroneous beliefs that need to be let go, so many injustices that need to be dismantled.

Every year on the 4th of July, the Declaration of Independence is read aloud in front of Independence Hall in Old City Philadelphia—a yearly ritual which I suppose took place virtually this year—and I have to say that despite all the injustices and flaws of our nation, I still believe in the words put forth in that Declaration. Just because they have never been enacted doesn’t minimize for me the importance of the vision they set forth.

Those radical words sent shock waves across a world that held to beliefs that seemed inviolable at the time, a worldview that assumed there was a class of people who were entitled to the wealth, power and privilege to rule over everyone else, people who were born into their status and enjoyed it through no effort of their own.

Of course, we can now see the blatant contradiction that the man who penned the words of the Declaration and many who signed onto them thought it perfectly appropriate that other human beings be held in bondage and bought and sold as property. Clearly the worldview of privilege they were challenging lived on in their own minds, simply with a different set of criteria in which status and privilege were granted to people who inherited a particular gender or skin color rather than an aristocratic title.

But still, the deed had been done. The vision had been proclaimed, and it’s been relentlessly hounding us ever since.

What we have been witnessing this past month is a case in point. I don’t know about you, but I have been astounded to see how quickly the monuments to white supremacy have been falling. It seems a groundswell of people are rejecting the very premise. Of course, for those symbolic gestures to have any meaning, they must be followed by equally bold systemic changes.

Setting the Future Free

Years ago, while we were in seminary and before we were married, Kip and I were having a conversation in which I was heatedly talking about the atrocities perpetrated upon women through millennia of misogynistic patriarchal rule. I was feeling outraged and overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all.

Kip then said something that I have never forgotten. He sincerely asked me, “How does history repent?”

His question stunned me. How does history repent?

History has left us with a superfund site of injustices to clean up, and there’s nobody here from the past we can hold accountable.

But for those of us who are white in this country, yes, our ancestors set in place a system of oppression and injustice that they are powerless now to correct, but it’s a legacy that we continue to benefit from. And that’s the rub, because as long as that’s the case, their transgressions live on in us.

Over the years, as I’ve sat with Kip’s question, I have come to realize that there actually is a way in which history can repent. It can repent through us.

We repent on our ancestors’ behalf when we commit to dissolving every remnant of the idea of supremacy from our own thinking. We repent on their behalf when we resolve to dismantle every injustice their misguided beliefs set in motion.

It is an astonishing power when you think about it, that we can repent on history’s behalf and by doing so set the future free. I suspect that right now our ancestors are begging us to do precisely that.

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The Power of Joy

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Joy is the most transformative power we can imagine.

This past week a message came across my path by White Eagle, a Hopi Elder, who was offering counsel on how to be in these times. She talked about the potential of this time as being a portal for us, and she emphasized the importance of taking care of ourselves, because when we take care of ourselves we are taking care of the whole.

She also talked about the importance of joy, and about joy as an act of resistance in the face of oppression. Here are some of her words:

. . . if you take this opportunity to look at yourself, rethink life and death, take care of yourself and others, you will cross the portal. . .

When you are taking care of yourselves, you are taking care of everything else. Do not lose the spiritual dimension of this crisis; have the eagle aspect from above and see the whole; see more broadly.

There is a social demand in this crisis, but there is also a spiritual demand — the two go hand in hand. . .

Learn about resistance of the indigenous and African peoples; we have always been, and continue to be, exterminated. But we still haven’t stopped singing, dancing, lighting a fire, and having fun. Don’t feel guilty about being happy during this difficult time.

You do not help at all being sad and without energy. You help if good things emanate from the Universe now. It is through joy that one resists. Also, when the storm passes, each of you will be very important in the reconstruction of this new world.

You need to be well and strong. And for that, there is no other way than to maintain a beautiful, happy, and bright vibration. . .

What world do you want to build for you? For now, this is what you can do — serenity in the storm. Calm down, pray every day. Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day.

Good things emanate; what you emanate now is the most important thing. And sing, dance, resist through art, joy, faith, and love.

White Eagle’s message about the importance of joy in the midst of all of this social upheaval and breakdown makes me think of what I was experiencing on spiritual retreat back in late January and early February, just before the coronavirus changed the landscape of our lives.

In my retreat I came to see how I had been taught to believe that it is selfish to live in and from joy when so many in the world are suffering. But I was being shown that the awakened world is a world of joy, and when I am living from joy I am embodying the energy of that world and helping it come into being.

We so often think joy is a reward, and that we are entitled to it only after all injustice has been eradicated and all brokenness healed. Then and only then can we allow ourselves to experience joy.

But what if the brokenness and injustice we see in the world is a result of us separating ourselves from joy? What if the suffering we inflict on others is due to our alienation from our joy? What if the greed that is decimating the Earth is the consequence of us being unable or unwilling to joy-fully receive and celebrate all that we already have and are?

Suppose joy isn’t superfluous at all, but is the very medicine the world so desperately needs right now, the very thing that has the power to lift us into a transcendent state in which true transformation becomes possible.

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, which sent shock waves through our collective consciousness, people have been coming out en masse to demand an end to systemic racism. Here in Philadelphia, a couple of weekends ago tens of thousands of people gathered in front of the Art Museum, and then marched down the Ben Franklin Parkway to City Hall. When they got there, the organizers started playing music, including the Cupid Shuffle, over a sound system and scores of people broke out into a line dance.

Although I wasn’t there to see it first hand, just watching it on video left me feeling inspired and encouraged, and I began to imagine what it would have been like if the entire gathering had consisted of tens of thousands of people dancing all along the Ben Franklin Parkway. Can you imagine how powerful that would have been?

Why? Because when we embody joy we aren’t waiting for the world to change; we are stepping into the world we want to create. We are claiming it and celebrating it as a present reality.

Joy is irrepressible—consider that word for a moment—which is why it is so subversive to the status quo. And when we really come to comprehend that, we realize that joy is perhaps the most transformative power we can imagine.

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Bringing in the Light

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This is the time for new patterns to become anchored in form.

Last Tuesday morning I was meditating, holding in the energy of Love all that has been happening here in Philadelphia in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, all the anger, the pain, the public outcry for justice, and as I sat I wondered what it would be like to be able to join with other energy workers in Philadelphia to hold this collectively on behalf of our city.

As soon as I was finished meditating I texted my friend Zoana, a gifted energy worker, and asked if she knew of any local groups that are joining together with this intention. She didn’t, but said she would be happy to help organize something.

So we wrote an email that same day letting people know that we would be tuning in three times each day, and we sent it out to energy workers we knew inviting them to join us, and asked them to forward the invitation to others.

Clearing the Way

The next day when we were tuning in, the energy that Zoana and I both sensed coming through felt extremely intense. I wouldn’t describe it as angry. I would describe it as fierce, a Kali energy come to clear out old patterns so that the new can arise.

Nature was expressing it as well. Two intense storms came through the city that day, twisting and snapping trees and leaving several areas without power. Meteorologists couldn’t recall two storms with such intensity ever happening in a single day. The type of the first storm seemed significant too. It was a weather pattern known as a derecho, whose winds can exceed hurricane force. Derecho is a Spanish word that means “straight ahead,” but it also means “right,” as in a human right.

Each time we meditate the energy feels different. One morning my awareness was taken to Independence Hall in Old City Philadelphia where two hundred and thirty-three years ago those who were writing the country’s new Constitution made a compromise regarding slavery. The decision that took place in that building encoded slavery and racism into the law of the land, and slaves were defined as worth three-fifths of a person. I was given to see how it is our generation’s task now to dissolve the energy signature of what took place in that building and all the ways it has become encoded into our systems and our psyches.

This past Saturday, when a huge crowd of thousands gathered in front of the Philadelphia Art Museum to peacefully protest the injustices that George Floyd’s murder exemplified, as we were tuning in I sensed a bright Light surrounding the entire gathering, Light that was converging from above and below.

At other times I feel the energetic presence of the new world that wants to be birthed—its Joy, Gladness, and Lightness of Being. It is a world where all are thriving together and expressing the fundamental truth of our interbeingness, and as I tune in to it I feel that world becoming anchored in the cells of my own body.

Preparing Ourselves

I believe there is a reason why those of us on the inner path have clocked so many hours on our mediation cushions, on our yoga mats, so many hours excavating and dissolving the egoic patterns in our own minds, and attending retreats and going through certification programs to become healers and energy workers. I believe we’ve been preparing ourselves to partner with the energies that are now seeking to come into form, the energies of that new world that is often referred to as Heaven on Earth.

This isn’t to say that we don’t also advocate on the manifested plane for the changes needed. In the unitive way there is no duality between the inner and outer, the non-visible and visible, the world of spirit and the world of form, prayers and programs. In the unitive way it all converges, and when it does it unleashes the power of that which is to come.

Anchoring the New

Once, years ago, when Zoana and I were in Sedona on a retreat, she received some intuitive guidance that Philadelphia and Sedona need each other. That Philadelphia is a dense place energetically that needs the mutable lightness of Sedona’s energy. But Sedona needs Philadelphia as well, because this is a place where those energies can become anchored in form in an enduring way, laying the foundation for the world that wants to emerge.

Early on the morning after Zoana and I sent the invitation out to the energy workers, long before the storm systems arrived, I went up to our roof deck at sunrise and was amazed to see that, even though we hadn’t had any rain overnight, there was a rainbow descending onto the PECO building, which is the headquarters of Philadelphia’s electric company.

Normally the PECO building scrolls community announcements on the marquis at the top of the building, along with the time of day, but maybe because of all of the upheaval in the city in recent days all of the community announcements had been removed. Now the marquis was announcing only one thing, over and over again. It was simply telling us the time.

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Of Looting and Love

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Beneath it all, racism is a denial of Love

It’s early Sunday morning and I’m sitting on my roof deck. It’s a beautiful morning, cool, sunny. The flowers in the pots lining the edge of the deck are starting to come into bloom: bright yellows, reds, purples. The birds are singing. A gentle breeze is blowing.

Over Center City Philadelphia, about a mile and a half to the south, a helicopter is hovering, only one. Last night, when I could see the smoke coming from the building the protestors had set on fire, there were half a dozen.

To loot (v): to rob especially on a large scale and usually by violence or corruption.

1619: The first ship bringing human beings abducted from the continent of Africa arrives in Point Comfort, in the colony of Virginia.

Last night an old friend of mine, Tyrone, emailed me from Denver to say he was thinking of me. He’d seen the news coverage from Philadelphia, and he told me and Kip, my husband, to stay put and stay safe.

Tyrone and I first met in high school when mandatory bussing in Denver started. He had to get up hours before dawn to catch the school bus that took him across town so he could get to our white suburban school and integrate it before the first bell rang.

1857: The Supreme Court rules, in Dred Scott v. Sanford, that African Americans have “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Once, years ago, when I was waiting in line in the women’s restroom in Philadelphia’s 30th Street train station, a woman came in and stood in line behind me. She must have worked in the station; she was wearing a name tag. I felt a rush of excitement when I saw that her last name was Pearce. Not very many people spell it with an e-a.

I was just about to say something to her, but suddenly I realized the possible implications. My great-great-grandfather, a Methodist pastor in Mississippi who was renowned for his preaching on the revival circuit, owned slaves. The woman standing behind me was Black.

1877: Jim Crow laws are initiated to reinstate white supremacy after Reconstruction; the promises to freed slaves, that they be given 40 acres and a mule, abandoned.

Tyrone teaches African American Studies, and two days ago when we were Zooming he explained to me that the police force in the US has its origins in the slave patrols.

He explained to me that when Black people seek medical attention for a broken bone they are given a fraction of the pain medication whites receive because those in the medical establishment assume they have a much higher pain threshold than whites.

1963: Klansmen plant dynamite in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The bodies of four young Black girls are found in the basement rubble.

Earlier in the evening, when I was sitting in the living room attempting to read, I felt my Heart take over. I felt it holding, in its vast spaciousness, everything that is unfolding right now. The anger, the grief, the despair, the fear, the hope, it was holding it all in Love.

I’ve learned this about the Heart: it turns nothing away. When I find myself transported into that Heart knowing I understand what absolute wholeness is.

2020: George Floyd, handcuffed, lying on the pavement and begging for his life, is calmly murdered by a police officer kneeling on his neck.

Last night, when I was thinking about Tyrone’s email and him checking in on me, something in me collapsed. I felt my love for him, the Love of one human being for another, the Love that knows of our inherent equality, the Love that is never fooled by the lies we’ve been taught, or the lies we tell ourselves. I started to cry.

That’s when I realized that at its core, beneath all the fear, beneath all the patronizing superiority, beneath all the veiled (or not so veiled) violence, racism is about white people being in denial of Love. It is about us being alienated from our own capacity for Love. It is about betraying our own essence as Love.

As I write these words, the helicopter over Center City flies away. They must have seen everything they needed to see.

I had an experience once that revealed to me that this world is a dream, a story in which we are playing out all of our unconscious beliefs. As someone who has worked with dreams for years, I know that dreams always come to show us the things we need to see in order to come into our wholeness. They always confront us with aspects of ourselves that we have rejected. And they will always keep recurring until we bring all of ourselves back home.

I also know that the only way a recurring dream changes is when the mind that is dreaming it changes. I’m not sure why, but I sense that the Mind that is dreaming this collective dream is beginning to change.

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Grief as a Portal for Our Awakening

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Humanity’s only future is that of the awakened mind and open heart.

Yesterday the front page of the New York Times listed the names of 1000 people who have died of COVID-19 and one sentence about each of them. They were only one percent of the 100,000 lives lost so far in the US, and there are no doubt tens of thousands more who have died as a result of this pandemic but who were never diagnosed.

Clara Louise Bennett, 91, Albany, GA, sang her grandchildren a song on the first day of school each year.

Valentina Blackhorse, 28, Kayenta, AZ, aspiring leader in the Navajo Nation.

Merrick Dowson, 67, San Francisco Bay Area, nothing delighted him more than picking up the bill.

Arthur Winthrop Barstow, 93, Hadley, MA, there is not a Louie L’Amour Western he had not read three times.

Ruth Skapinock, 85, Roseville, CA, backyard birds were known to eat from her hand.

I doubt it was coincidental that also yesterday morning, during my journaling time, I found myself weeping profusely. There is nothing happening in my own immediate life that would warrant such intense grief, and I don’t personally know anyone who has died from this pandemic. But the tears were nonetheless streaming down my cheeks, issuing forth from this reservoir of collective sorrow.Continue Reading

Donald Trump: Catalyst for Our Awakening

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The new world is ready to arise

Dear Mr. Trump,

At the risk of blowing your cover I want to express my deepest gratitude to you for the monumental challenge you took on in this lifetime to be a catalyst for our awakening.

You have been the asteroid that slammed into the world ego built, and your timing was impeccable because we had gotten so out of alignment with the balance of life on this planet that prior to your arrival our future was very much up in the air.

It was unfathomable to most of us that things could implode so quickly. We have been aghast to see just how fragile our social contract had become, how much our sense of responsibility for one another had unraveled, how shaky the girders were that held this country together. Seeing it all fall apart so quickly has been as shocking as seeing the World Trade Towers collapse into a storm of debris in a matter of hours on a bright September morning.Continue Reading

Our Moment of Clarity

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We are experiencing a moment of global clarity

Who would have guessed even four months ago that we would see the planetary changes that we have witnessed in recent weeks? For the first time in a generation people in India can see the Himalayas from hundreds of miles away. People in China can step out of their homes and see a blue sky for the first time in their memory. Turtles are storming the empty beaches to lay their eggs, lions are lazing in the deserted highways of South Africa, fish are frolicking in the clean canals of Venice.

With the cessation of human activity, the crust of the Earth has even grown quieter, and seismologists have a chance now to detect the Earth’s natural movements, like a doctor with a stethoscope finally able to hear the subtle nuances of a heartbeat.

A Moment of Clarity

We are experiencing, globally, a moment of clarity, and the clarity isn’t only what we are witnessing in the natural environment. We are also experiencing a growing clarity in the mind—clarity that we are interconnected in ways we can’t even begin to fathom, clarity about what is essential and what isn’t, clarity that we humans have been so consumed (consider the word) by the world we had fashioned that we had lost touch with who we really are or what we really desire.Continue Reading

A Pandemic’s Good Friday

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Without the benefit of hindsight, could anyone deem it “good”?

Today is Good Friday, and in my journaling this morning I was contemplating how strange and subversive the name given this day is:

Good Friday.

It’s hard to see how a cruel, torturous execution at the hands of imperial forces could be called “good.”

It’s easier, of course, with the benefit of resurrection hindsight. But without that, without the advantage of remembering this day from the other side of the tomb, could anyone ever have deemed it “good”?

I know all about the historic interpretations that Jesus’ crucifixion was the atoning sacrifice that reconciled humanity with our divine Source. But I don’t buy it. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is one of the greatest misconceptions ever told.

Why? Because Love is indivisible. Love is all there is. Humanity could never be alienated from our divine Source (aka Love) except in our own minds and fantasies. Nothing was ever broken, and no sacrifice was ever needed.Continue Reading