Questions on Resistance

Using whichever question catches you the most, explore your answer as it evolves over the month.  

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” How is life asking you to end your silence?  What is tugging at your heart?

Resisting others expectations, resisting poor treatment of yourself or others, resisting injustice – it takes inner strength to speak against the norm. Where in your own life has resistance been an act of courage?  What inside yourself helped you to resist?

What would happen if you saw praise, joy or the creation of beauty as your primary form of resistance? What if the world needs your praise as much as your picket signs? What if it needs the creation of beauty as much as the elimination of injustice?

The psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote, “What you resist, persists.” Is it possible that your resistance is the source of the struggle you are in? Would the fight end if you stopped fighting? Would the wall fall down if you stopped pushing on it?

What would happen if you saw your justice work not as saving the world or bending the arc of the universe towards justice, but simply as “being a pest”? (Inspired by the Dalai Lama, who wrote: “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”)