#Toko-pa Turner

[innervoiceartblog]

"In a time that would have us believe there is always more to strive for, more to accumulate, more enlightenment to reach – the most radical stance we can take is enoughness.

What if we quit trying to be spiritual and aspired to be human instead?

What if there is nothing to fix because we are already whole?

What if there was no time to prove ourselves, because we're consumed with marveling at life?

What if there is no reason to hold back our gifts, because they are meant to be given?

What if every morsel, every glance, every moment and every breath is a miracle of enough? "

- Toko-pa Turner (belongingbook.com)

Photo by Norman Parkinson (normanparkinson.com)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

There are ruins in each of us. A place where what once was lives on like an echo, haunting the landscape of our lives with its weathered foundations. Abandoned, scavenged, and dismantled by time, the ruin is the holiest place in our heart. It is the ways in which we have been broken that have earned us a place to stand. It is in our life’s absences that a wild longing is born. This ruined place is a temple in which to worship, to throw down our grief and our forgetting, and praise what remains. After all, these remains are the evidence of how greatly we have loved and they should be venerated as the legacy of survival that they are.

~Toko-pa Turner

(Book: Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home)

[Philo Thoughts]

[ancestorsalive]

"Because most of us have been orphaned from our ancestral land and the ways of our people, we suffer with the restlessness and ache of not-belonging. Instead of trying to regain what has been lost, Martín Prechtel teaches that we must learn to live in the way our ancestors lived; in reverence and indebtedness to the Holy in Nature.

One powerful practice is to create a place in your home where you know the origins of everything. Not just where a thing came from, but who made it and with what skills, and at what cost to its roots. This Place of Origin may be small and sparse at first, but you add to it over time and, when the young ones come up around you, you tell the stories that you’ve collected in the hopes that one day, where you stayed put becomes a place of Belonging again."

~ Excerpt from “Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home” by Toko-pa Turner (belongingbook.com)

[venuskind]

A blessing to release those that have let you down.

Artwork by Melissa Astra

[diracsea]

There are ruins in each of us. A place where what once was lives on like an echo, haunting the landscape of our lives with its weathered foundations. Abandoned, scavenged, and dismantled by time, the ruin is the holiest place in our heart. It is the ways in which we have been broken that have earned us a place to stand. It is in our life’s absences that a wild longing is born. This ruined place is a temple in which to worship, to throw down our grief and our forgetting, and praise what remains. After all, these remains are the evidence of how greatly we have loved and they should be venerated as the legacy of survival that they are. ~Toko-pa Turner

(Book: Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home)

[prettyboybeau]

For the rebels and the misfits, the black sheep and the outsiders. For the refugees, the orphans, the scapegoats, and the weirdos. For the uprooted, the abandoned, the shunned and invisible ones. May you recognize with increasing vividness that you know what you know. May you give up allegiances to self-doubt, meekness, and hesitation. May you be willing to be unlikeable, and in the process be utterly loved. May you be impervious to the wrongful projections of others, and may you deliver your disagreements with precision and grace. May you see, with the consummate clarity of nature moving through you, that your voice is not only necessary, but desperately needed to sing us out of this muddle. May you feel shored up, supported, entwined, and reassured as you offer yourself and your gifts to this world. May you know for certain that even as you stand by yourself, you are not alone.

Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home

[peacephotography]

Four Lessons for the Long Haul - What Long Covid has taught me on resilience

When the paramedics came for me in the sweltering days of May 2020 it didn’t feel real. I had just passed out in the heat and collapsed headfirst into a radiator. I’d seen paramedics attend to friends and relatives, but in my feverish state, it didn’t sink in that they would come for me. My youthful sense of invincibility quickly faded. I found myself unable to lift my limbs or produce full sentences, and interminable headaches left me in despair. The after-effects are still with me today, in the form of Long Covid.

Now that I have regained some energy, I would like to share some of the lessons that illness has taught me about enduring difficulty in the climate and ecological crisis.

Lesson One: We need courage, not hope

Let the pain be your fuel. Let your total rejection of the status quo give you the courage to transform your life, to stand out from the crowd, and demand transformative action.

Margaret Klein Salamon, Facing the Climate Emergency

For the first few months of my illness, I woke up every morning hoping that I would suddenly recover and have “my life back”. Rather than letting go of what I could no longer do, I kept trying to live as before. But this detachment from the reality of my situation only brought me more pain.

Once I had the courage to face the uncertainty of illness, I let go of anxiously awaiting a miraculous recovery, and relaxed into my situation. In facing my pain and isolation I was able to accept them. They are a state of exile and vulnerability that can be a source of strength for navigating our bittersweet world.

The same is true for facing the climate emergency. If we hope that technology will save us or that criminally negligent governments will suddenly act responsibly, we are recklessly gambling our future on very poor odds. This can only bring pain.  Once we start to tell ourselves the truth about the situation, we can find pride in our honesty and compassion in our grief.  It’s from here that the resolve to take action will emerge.

Lesson Two: Follow your bliss

Joseph Campbell’s saying, “Follow your bliss,” is not an irresponsible phrase that ignores the pain of life but a reminder to receive pleasure and contentment, even in the depths of suffering.

Toko-pa Turner, Belonging

In illness, every day feels like a struggle. When it shows no sign of improving, or worsens, I lose my morale to keep going. It's an exhausting and depressing limbo. In the darkest and weakest hours, I saw my life flash before my eyes and began to dream of people and places I hadn’t seen for a decade. I saw the highs and lows that had shaped me into the man I am today. This gave me some space and perspective to see things from a different angle. From each challenge, there was a learning on how to face hardship. From each joy, an inspiration to live to the full.

Holding on to these feelings helps bring balance to life. In activism, we follow a true passion and through it find our fullest potential. But even this has its limits. Every step along the way we need to find that balance of difficulty and joy for our own wellbeing. Our struggle for climate and ecological action brings many challenges that can lead us to despairing inertia. In my sickness, a joy was as simple as the view from my bedroom window: a falling blossom, a scudding cloud, a wandering snail.

Such joys became my music, my dance, my poetry, my comedy and my sport: ways to relax into whatever challenge chronic pain brought.

Everyday joys can give us the resilience to keep facing what we must face. So as we rebel with all our might against the existential threat posed by the climate and ecological emergency, let’s also cherish what makes our existence so precious. From that reflective space we can find the courage to keep going.

Lesson Three: Words Matter

“The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.”

Virginia Woolfe, On Being Ill

As I slowly regained my speech, I struggled to find the words to describe what I was going through. It struck me that there is a serious lack of language on both chronic illness and climate chaos.  If you are unable to express a feeling, you are unlikely to find any solace for it.

For our society to be able to come to terms with the emergency we need a language to relate to in films, literature and TV.  Some of the best I think we have so far are Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, a piercing portrayal of the rise of sexism and racism in an uninhabitable America; The Road by Cormac McCarthy, for its portrayal of the gritty end-point of mass extinction; and early Studio Ghibli films such as Princess Monoke/Nausicaa, whose heroines champion coexistence with the natural world.

However, the vast majority of current work focuses too much on apocalypse scenarios, produced to scare the shit out of us, instead of relatable everyday stories. How about a  climate drama set in water scarce Somalia? Or a northern woman’s heroic adventure to save her hometown from flooding? We need more romances that argue over whether having kids is responsible and comedies that mock the insanity of our toxic system like The Yes Men or Simon Amstell’s Carnage.

Stories are key for an emotional connection to the challenges humanity faces. Our stories of rebellion can be cathartic for climate anxiety and stir a generation of heroes ready to speak out for their futures. Let’s start writing them.

Lesson Four: Belonging

“By reviving a community, built around the places in which we live, and by anchoring ourselves, our politics and parts of our economy in the life of this community, we can recover the best aspects of humanity. We can mobilise our remarkable nature for our own good and the good of our neighbours.”

George Monbiot, Out of the Wreckage

Being housebound and unable to hold conversations without paralysing headaches is extremely isolating. Yet even in the depths of my pain I was able to appreciate the love of our community. Rebels gave me cards, voice-notes, medical advice, paintings and - best of all – cakes, cookies  and biscuits fresh from the oven. The feeling of belonging to and being supported by a community of kindhearted and extraordinary people gave me strength every step of the way.

Together we are building a community that can hold us through the dark days with pride, friendship and joy. We are showing not only the best aspects of humanity but also the solid foundations of a successful social movement. The climate and ecological emergency will shape the rest of our lives. So take every opportunity you can to nourish and prepare yourself for the long journey ahead. You’ll not only be more resilient, but you’ll find more joy.

-- Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this or can think of someone who could benefit from these words please do share it. If you'd like to read more, subscribe to my blog :) Peace, Robin

Photograph: Franck Fife

[ceekbee]

I am looking for the word that says of love what hasn't been said before. Something like the spray of swallows that exhale from the ocean's foamy caps. Like mountains come unhidden by the clouds, I am looking for a word which is giant and invisible and always there. I am looking for an endearment, like trust made fresh, like the man who naps while his lover writes poetry. I am looking for a new kind of bravery word, like the alyssum which dares to grow on the shoulder of an escarpment while the sea goes wild beneath. I am looking for the word which transcends the obstacles of familiarity, like a seabird's shadow gliding over logs and rocks and seashored debris. I am looking for a word which tells, like a rune, of a sudden constellation. Which praises fidelity to the craft every bird undertakes; to hover unflapping into a headwind. I am looking, but I hope to write a thousand volumes before I find it. ~

- Toko-pa Turner

art: Elizabeth Ladwig

[innervoiceartblog]

"Those dreams that wake you suddenly from sleep are showing you what you are ready to bring to consciousness. They say, "Here is where you are bravely working; here is the realisation of your questions; here is your awakening.""

- Dreamwork with Toko-pa

Photograph by Paolo Roversi

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

In Hardship, Choose Bewilderment Over Cleverness

By Toko-Pa Turner

In grappling with degenerative autoimmune disease, I often wished for a speedy redemption, for something meaningful to come out of my pain and suffering. But every time I tried, I’d be humbled by exhaustion and confusion. One day, I received the following dream:

I dream that a tree of great significance is struck down by lightning. A bolt from above splays the giant tree in a star-like pattern. It is a numinous event which stops me in my tracks. Before I can take in what’s happening, men come efficiently and quickly to buck up the tree into firewood. It all feels too fast and unfeeling, as if the grandeur of this loss isn’t being properly recognised.

One never imagines one can be struck down by lightning, but such as it is, disease is indiscriminate. An intervening force from nature shatters our deeply established way of life. It is swift and unforgiving, and everything we took as solid and reliable is splintered like a twig in an instant.

Sometimes, an efficient inner force wants to step in and make something useful of it all, turn it into “fuel for transformation.” But another, quieter voice urges us to stop. Don’t commodify this loss. Don’t be so hasty to make the events of heartbreak meaningful. Not before the magnitude of what’s been destroyed can be witnessed in its entirety.

In some interpretations, this crisis is also seen as liberation. In some way, what has been torn down was also a prison. And while our fall to the earth will result in incalculable suffering, there will be a new way to live on the other side of recovery. But please, let us not turn this heartbreak into something useful just yet. If we do, we will be tempted to walk in old ways. We will rely on tired words. We will make memes of ourselves. Easy, digestible phrases that fill a short term longing for solutions.

Instead let us truly bear witness. Let the fog of confusion obscure our clarity for a time. To not know how – or where – we’ll live. To be fumbling and full of grief, because what we always counted on has been struck from our horizon. And we may never be as magnificent again.

Acknowledging this isn’t pessimistic, but rather grounding. Lightning and ground are collaborators, after all. Once you’ve been struck, you no longer live in the “upper chakras” alone, believing you are the creator of your reality. Or that some higher power is only benevolent, and rewards people for good. Instead you learn the paradoxical nature of life and death.

With your nose in the dirt, you take inventory of what’s been lost, and what remains. Allowing what’s essential to reveal itself like a wild animal returning to its place of origin after a long exile. You realise that no matter how established and tall your tower was, it had fatal structural problems. A bolt of truth has revealed the injustice and inequality in the “tower way-of-life” and you won’t be able to envision a better world until you fully grieve the grandeur of our losses.

Yes, a new constellation in consciousness will emerge from this carnage, but we need to let ourselves be disoriented first. So let’s not rush the redemption. As Rumi puts it, “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” Because in cleverness you rely on known ways of making the world, in bewilderment a new vision always, eventually, emerges.

(Thanks Ian Sanders)

[ancestorsalive]

BEAUTYMAKING "Heirloom is a compound word, with its roots in heredity + looming. Weaving, writing and painting our stories into the things we Create is a way of feeding the Holy in Nature, which has kept us fed and alive. And as we put all of our lostness and longing into the beauty we make, we do so knowing that we may never hope for more than to pass on these heirlooms to the young ones so they may find their way home across the songlines, as we have been found by those who made beautiful things before us. If even one generation is denied their inheritance, the story and the way home may be lost. As it is said in West Africa, 'When an elder dies, a library burns to the ground.'”

- Dreamwork with Toko-pa Painting by Frank Howell

[owlintheolives]

“Going within is the only way out.”

— Toko-pa Turner

[susieporta]

C'è una particolare qualità di quiete in chi incontra l'ombra con tutto il cuore.

Il tuo corpo può rilassarsi in sua compagnia perché comprende, nelle sottili comunicazioni della loro presenza, che nulla è escluso in sé, quindi nulla in te può essere rifiutato.

Una persona del genere, che ha rinunciato a fare la guardia contro l'ombra, che è venuta a indossare dignitosamente le sue cicatrici, non si contorce più dallo sconforto o dalle setole alla sofferenza. Non si preparano più per evitare conflitti. Portano una profonda disponibilità a ballare con l'incostanza della vita.

Hanno rinunciato alle distanze come strategia e hanno reso la vulnerabilità un loro alleato.

Appartenenza: Ricordarsi di noi stessi a casa di Toko-pa Turner.

[ruknowhere]

“Magic is a relationship forged in the ordinary. It is our endurance through the unknown, unyielding times. It is faith in the as-yet-unmanifest. It is the invocation of the large while praising the small. Magic is the redoubling of our vow when disappointment befalls us, a shoulder to the wheel of our intent.”

― Toko-pa Turner

[ Art • “Glimmer, the Seventh Apparition” by Gustav Arantes ]

source: Wanderings

[prettyboybeau]

There are many ways to be made an orphan. Outright, by the parent incapable of caring for you, or by the ones who neglected to understand your gifts. By the system, which demands your loyalty but trades away your uniqueness. Or by history which, through intolerance and war, has made you a refugee. But we are also made orphans by a culture that, in its epitomizing of certain values, rejects others, forcing us to split off from those unwanted parts of ourselves. And this is perhaps the worst orphaning act of all, because it is an abandonment in which we are complicit. [...] Though it governs so much, belonging is rarely spoken about in the open. Like grief, death, and inadequacy, we are led to believe that to feel unbelonging is shameful and should be hidden from view. The great irony is that modern culture is suffering an epidemic of alienation, yet so many of us feel alone in our unbelonging, as if everyone else was inside of the thing that we alone are outside of. And keeping silent about our experiences of estrangement is, in large part, what allows it to perpetuate.

Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home

[sufferbuddies]

“The black sheep are the artists, visionaries and healers of our culture, because they are the ones willing to call into question those places which feel stale, obsolete, or without integrity.

The black sheep stirs up the good kind of trouble. Her very life is a confrontation with all that has been assumed as tradition. Her being different serves to bring the family or group to consciousness where it has been living too long in the dark.

As the idiom implies, she is the wayward one in the flock. Her life’s destiny is to stand apart. But paradoxically, it’s only when she honors that apartness that she finally fits in.

The world needs your rebellion and the true song of your exile. In what has been banned from your life, you find a medicine to heal all that has been kept from our world.

We must find the place within where things have been muted and give that a voice. Until those things are spoken, no truth can find its way forward.

The world needs your unbelonging. It needs your disagreements, your exclusion, your ache to tear the false constructions down, to find the world behind this one.”⁣

⁣

- Toko-pa Turner ⁣