It never ceases to amaze me how even if one is wholly unprepared for ritual, ritual is prepared for you.

Try as I might in the lengthy lead-up to the “days of awe” that begin with our new year, Rosh Hashanah, I couldn’t muster feelings for the shift from 5785 to 5786, much less planning, during these christofascist times marked by the worst kind of awe: “fear mixed with dread”; fear inspired by authority.” Yet I went through the motions, with a friend, of setting up a time and date (today) and location (by a lake) for tashlich, which we titled “casting off fascism, ushering in sweet transformation.” Then, beyond sharing the invite, we did nothing.

This morning, on what still felt like more of the same bad news of 5785, even if it was already 5786, I woke with the dread of having to actually host tashlich. My friend had had an awful week, and had no capacity to pull anything together. Mostly I just wanted to see them and schmooze+kvetch, and not have the responsibility of holding ritual space, and not reflect on the year past and the year ahead, and not have the constant buzzing of anxiety get that much louder when thinking about what the world will/might look like in 5787. Instead, I borrowed a bright-orange scarf, keffiyeh, and the one queerly Jewish thing I could scavenge from my sister’s apartment where I’m currently cat sitting, and then schlepped to a co-op to get just enough ritual foods to make a picnic table look even remotely like it was ready for this new year—even if I wasn’t.

When I met my friend for setup, the first thing we saw were giant, brilliant-yellow mushrooms (last photo). The four folks who showed up to our anarchistic gathering brought still-warm homemade challah—round, as we’ve circled a year; a shofar—which when blown, was answered by the honks of geese; more apples and honey—for sweetness to be abundant; a DIY new year guide we read from; and the fullness of themselves, as we shared what we wanted to cast off and invite in, tossing sticks and flowers into the water. As if joining us, sandhill cranes, ducks, and a non-rain-rainbow appeared. And as if by sacred magic, ritual brought forth life, preparing me a bit more for 5786.

#RitualAsResistance
#RitualAsResilience
#DefendingTheSacred

Thanks to the awesome and rad folks at @igd_news, my latest curated zine, “Ritual as Resistance: 18 Stories of Defending the Sacred,” is now available on its website to read, and as PDFs to download, print, and distro freely. See link below.

And support your indie anarchist media—with your dollars and readership!!

Excerpt from my intro to the zine:

“We make our own sacred spaces — spaces on no maps — through repeated rituals of resistance whose meanings stretch beyond borders. Because our ‘grief knows no borders.’

“This zine is a sampler of some of the modest ways that anarchistic people from varied traditions are doing just that, and gestures toward ‘bigger’ ones. It’s impossible to understand Standing Rock, Stop Cop City, or Palestinian solidarity encampments, say, without acknowledging the key role of rebellious spiritualities. For one example, see the film ‘Yintah.’

“My hope is that this humble zine inspires you to imaginatively blur the line between ritual and resistance, until the death machine sputters and stalls, and all that then moves freely is life. For it is us, side by side, that can make all sacred against the profane of this world. Because our love knows no borders.”

#RitualAsResistance
#DefendingTheSacred
#TryAnarchismForLife

https://itsgoingdown.org/ritual-as-resistance-18-stories-of-defending-the-sacred/

Friendly reminder: I’m still seeking submissions for the next zine I’m curating, titled “Ritual as Resistance: Defending the Sacred.”

Length: 125 words, give or take
Deadline: May 11
Email to: cbmilstein {at} yahoo [dot] com

Please share this “call” far and wide!

I’m looking for concrete examples of rituals you’ve held space for and/or participated in; that draw on your own cultural practices and/or ancestral traditions; that blur the lines between sacred and rebellious, or shake up what the spiritual+political feels like; and especially, that are collectively and/or publicly done. (See fuller description in my previous post.)

Here’s a sample of one that I’ll be using in the zine, as inspiration and to offer a sense of what I want (though please note, I am NOT only looking for Jewish rituals—though we anarchist Jews love our rad rituals!):

“Fascists sticker-bomb your neighborhood. This hurts. Not merely because the memory of eleven people killed at the Tree of Life building—your childhood shul—still lingers, but they’re crafty bigots. They deliberately drop provocative flyers on people’s doorsteps to try to break solidarity between Palestinians and Jews. This inspires you to counter with agitprop. The ritual technology of prayer, in Judaism, allows us to make the most mundane moments holy. The eating of bread and sipping wine. Through the language of our ancestors, we make these acts sacred, connecting us with all who’ve performed them across the axis of time. You arm yourself with new ritual implements: a paint scraper, sharpies, and wheat paste, along with an extending pole for higher spots. Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, even these moments where we cover up white supremacist drek can be holy!”
—Anastasia bat Lilith (@stormbringer_press)

(photo: glimpse of an elaborate, bilingual grief and ritual space that I and three beautifully caring anarchists set up for the whole weekend during the May 2023 @montrealanarchist)

#RitualAsResistance
#DefendingTheSacred
#TryAnarchismForLife
#NoSpiritualSurrender (with love and blessed remembrance to Klee Benally)

Going to the #ShiprockFair, #KleeBenally Remembered the #UraniumDump on the Banks of the #SanJuanRiver

By #BrendaNorrell, #CensoredNews, August 29, 2024

SHIPROCK, #NavajoNation -- "In his book published shortly before his passing, Klee Benally writes of going to the #NorthernNavajoFair and the #UraniumDump in #Shiprock that no one talks about. It is along the San Juan River, the same river that flooded this week, now eight months after Klee's passing.

"'The Northern Navajo Fair at Tsé Bit A'í (#ShiprockNewMexico) has been held for more than one hundred years,' Klee writes in 'No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred.'

"Klee describes how the fair each fall marks the changing of the seasons and the #harvest. He describes the neon glow of the carnival in the cold, dusty nights, and the #uniper fires that burn.

"All of this revelry is held right on #UraniumBoulevard just a couple miles from a massive 105-acre #Radioactive dump containing 2.5 million tons of #RadioactiveWaste on a site that was a former #UraniumMill (which is just 600 feet from the San Juan River.)'

"The Shiprock Uranium Disposal Cell studies showed that more than 1.8 million liters of #groundwater were contaminated with uranium, #selenium, #radium, #cadmium, #sulfate, and #nitrate.

"Now the #NavajoNation again is targeted by the #Nuclear Industry and #DebHaaland's radioactive agenda is being ignored.

"Speaking in Farmington, Interior Sec. Haaland said the transition to green energy in the #FourCorners region will be led by the #AtomicBomb industry, #LosAlamos National Laboratory, which has already poisoned #Pueblo lands in northern #NewMexico.

"There is no mention of the fact that there is no safe way to store #NuclearWaste.
Now, adding to the layers of deception, the U.S. #EPA is deceiving the public. The EPA doesn't actually clean up the uranium dumps and strewn #RadioactiveTailings from #ColdWar #UraniumMining on the Navajo Nation -- it only announces plans and promises to do it.

"#EricJantz, legal director of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, told the Inter-American Commission on #HumanRights in March that the #EPA has not completed any of the cleanups.

"There are 524 uranium mine sites waiting to be cleaned up on the Navajo Nation. Zero -- none of these -- have been fully cleaned up, Jantz told the international commission.
The truth is people seldom talk about the uranium dump at Shiprock because there is so much strewn radioactive waste, and so many unreclaimed uranium mines, with radioactive waste strewn from Cameron to #MonumentValley, and across the Four Corners region.

"During the 1990s, on assignment for USA Today, I talked with #Dine' in #RedValley and Cove, south of Shiprock, down the mountain from where I lived. In every family, there was cancer. In every family, someone was dying of #cancer, or had already died, from cancer because of the uranium mining.

"One Dine' grandmother in her 80s was living in a stone home built of radioactive rock. We had a Geiger counter with us."

Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/08/going-to-shiprock-fair-klee-benally.html

#KleeBenallyRIP #KleeBenallyRestInPower #UraniumMining #NoSpiritualSurrender #IndigenousAnarchy #DefendingTheSacred #IndigenousActivism #HaulNo #CorporateColonialism #WaterIsLife #NoLithiumMining #CorporateColonialism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #CopperMining #Greenwashng #NuclearWeapons #NoNukes #NoWar #NoNuclearWeapons