Having just returned from Arizona (yes, Sedona is in Arizona, as hard as that may be to believe from any perspective other than cartographically) from a meditation retreat, and having two more scheduled with my teacher at the same location during the year, I have pondered with my usual degree of self-questioning about the potential impact of my choices the suggestions to boycott Arizona.
I had decided — perhaps because continuing to study with my teacher, including on retreat is so important to me now — that as I pretty much go straight from the airport to the meditation retreat and back without shopping, I am probably supporting people who did not support the immigration law. On previous trips, in addition to paying for the food and lodging at the retreat (my teacher lives in California, so the tuition goes to California), we ate at a Mexican family-owned restaurant and a raw foods restaurant and bought some supplies at the natural foods store (eschewing the Whole Foods in favor of the local natural foods store). I’ve decided it is OK — perhaps even a good thing — to support those who clearly were not in favor of the immigration law.
What does it mean to engage in a boycott? Who does it hurt and help? What impact could the Arizona boycott have? Have you thought about whether to boycott Arizona?
Much of the reason that I began attending Friends meeting again several years ago after a long hiatus was to help me find peace within myself as I witnessed and sought to change, in my own way with my own skills, this country’s impulse to war following the attacks on 9/11. As quiet and unlistened to as voices for peace might have been, I still needed to be among a community of people speaking about peace.
One of the questions Friends Meeting of Washington invites attenders to consider, which has become a core contemplation for me, is “what do you do personally to eliminate the causes of war?” For me, this extends not just to how I vote, what work I do, and what charities I support, but what I eat, what energy I consume, what media I read and support, what I wear, and how I interrelate in this complicated global web of consumption and interchange.
Here is a letter from the American Friends Service Committee that I wanted to share with all of you.
Thanks to Professor Douglas Brooks for this thought-provoking piece on debate and yoga.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
