Ever since I was a very little girl in Kerala, I’ve been searching for moss. Looking in the cracks in the sidewalk where they paved over the jungle that was our home before home was a concrete box. These fragments of Nature would continue to keep me alive through the plastic-coated, sugar-induced nightmare of suburban American life until I was about 17, when I would enter my first real forest in the Berkshires. (It would also be the first time I would encounter a patch of moss bigger than 2x2”.) I knew then, as I know now, that I belong where the moss grows on rocks. But its still the cracks in the sidewalk – whether in NYC or Delhi – bravely bursting with a fledgling banyan tree or other devout “weed”, that’ve taught me the resiliency of Nature amidst of all the chaos and destruction we humans have set our effort too. Nature as reflection of my own and our own perennial natures – that which can’t be destroyed, no matter how overwhelming the assault against its wildness.
 
More than anything else, its these weeds that’ve taught me Faith at times when I almost lost it completely – wrecked in the despair of the reeking, black, plastic-choked waters of my homeland where once there had been alive, green and flowing water. Now waters of death sit everywhere, while the water people drink comes from plastic bottles. Like so much of the world, its the same everywhere. But my whole life has been spent in search of these cracks into an untamable wisdom, and of my own lineage – which despite the thousands of years of Christianity, Brahmanism, war-culture, and the more recent British colonialism, capitalism and Marxism – can still be found, although less and less readily.
 
This assault against our senses – our natural sensibility – is everywhere humans are. It’s the daily message we get from T.V., magazines, billboards and social media – that what’s pre-packaged, exotic, expensive and sleek is more satisfying than what’s raw, immediate, free and natural. Picture the pristine forested mountains of some far-away place in a travel magazine… we’re told that this is this place where we’ll finally feel wonder, ease, joy… if go there on vacation. When we return from these exalted other worlds to our normal lives, we’re convinced its back to a tame life. (Ironically these romanticized distant places suffer from the same assault against wildness that’s everywhere else. Just on the other side of those forested hills are desertified ones, or the ever-growing urban sprawl of development/ “advancement”.) Tragically, what’s beautiful and wild is always somewhere else in the imagination of the modern, civilized human being.
 
Its exactly this that separates us from the wildness inherent everywhere, everyplace – taking the wild out of Nature, and the wild out of us. Instead of going far away to search for something pristine and natural – a continuation of the colonial mindset – its here (wherever we are) that we need to look for and en-courage the wild. If we don’t, then we lose the wild here, and we loose it far away from us as well. Because the destruction of the wild everyplace (especially far away from those with more privilege) is the requisite cost of maintaining the tame modern lifestyles we have. Your comfort here equals black water back in my homeland.
 
What’s at stake within the wild around us – evidenced as the moss that grows invincibly through the sidewalk cracks, or the dandelions on your lawn – isn’t just Nature, its our own soul. Its our original memory of why we’re here – what it means to be human beings that are a part of this planet as opposed to apart from it. Soul is that quality of inherent beauty, intelligence, at-homeness, naturalness and uniqueness. We’ve got to look for that wildness, become really dedicated to appreciating it in the most unlikely places – to become lovers of the wild, devotees of the wild, wherever we are. And its this same quality we’ll also be stalking within ourselves and with others. We’ll be looking for people whose souls haven’t been manipulated into conformity, noticing how they’re twisted in the most beautiful way like the banyan trees that grow out of the sidewalk cracks. Because its not the idealizing of a “Pristine Nature” while we continue to live tame, commodified and sedentary lives that’s going help us survive as a human people, its our dedication to adoring and nurturing the wild within us and outside of us, so that it can do what’s its been doing for millions of years, and come back in full force. Take over more of our concrete and turn it back into the jungle it once was. Take over the colonized, mono-culture, mass-produced sameness of our minds, with its verdant, ever-evolving resilience.
 
Imagine a culture, a world, where we revere what’s wild instead of what’s tame. And where what’s wild isn’t just in Nature, but is also inside us and among us. So that moss might once again carpet this Earth. And so that we could remember that we belong to this Place, (and not the other way around), and that what’s alive, and free and right here, is infinitely more satisfying than anything else could ever be. Those green and sentient rebels growing out of concrete the world over – let them be our heroes, our anthem of resistance, and of hope. 

​I want to honor today all the women and feminine beings who don’t have children of their own, or who want to, or who are caregivers to other children not born by them, as well as to all those who in one way or another mother others. I offer these flowers to you sistren. Mother’s Day is not easy for many of us. And the sight of other people’s babies and families on social media can be triggering for those of us who don’t have children, or cannot have children. I offer these flowers again for all of you for whom this day is not easy. May it be soft with you today, with us.
 
Over the four years that I was a step-mother, (yet unacknowledged as such) I never received a single handmade card or flower. I struggled with that role, being as young as I was then, and also with what it meant to let two beings so deeply into my soul. Even now, (although I have no contact with them) I think of them all the time. I think of those 3 and 6 year-old boys when I first met them – the smell of their little boy heads, the messes they made, nighttime readings, walks in the woods, making food for them – learning slowly how to be a woman who could nurture little people. How shockingly different – and often hard, boringly grown-up, frustrating, and baffling – it was to be in a parent role as opposed to the ever-fun, eccentric, older friend or aunty who visits. They were not my kids, and yet they were my family. And it wasn’t until then that I could have any real compassion or empathy for the  failures and struggles of my own mother.
 
So today I also want to claim my own motherhood – that I have been a mother, am a mother, and will yet be a mother. I offer these flowers today to myself and to my own journey of mothering. Of having learned to fail as a parent of two children, and still wanting to learn. Of mothering my actors and ritual participants over these last 7 years – like a mama hen (who sometimes unwittingly tramples her many chicks!) Of wanting to be a mother some day for my own little one. I’ve struggled so much over whether I could ever be a mother to another – whether I could have what it takes to make that kind of eternal sacrifice – to be always living “with your heart running around outside of your chest.” But I want that – perhaps more than anything else – to be part of and to bear witness to what I feel is the coolest thing I could ever do as a wombman.
 
Although we can never feel fully “ready” for what lessons motherhood brings, many of us who have not yet had children of our own are cultivating ourselves to be fertile ground for a small person to take root in, doing the work of healing our inheritance. I honor these fellow wombmen of my generation who are consciously choosing to ripen a readiness for mothering that our foremothers could never even have considered. I honor that’s its not an easy path for us. We are cleansing the lineage lines, we are saying no to patriarchy, no to our own self-doubt – so that our children won’t have to do this work, so that our children could be free and know that they are loved. Some of us are also waiting for a good man or partner to show up to create that child with (and wondering if they ever will). Some of us – for whatever reasons – had wanted to mother children and never were able to, and still bear that grief. I pray that we all find ways to gift our mothering with others who need it and can receive it. Some of us don’t know whether we would be good mothers, and are still healing from our own mothers’ lack of mothering. So many of us are just learning how to mother ourselves. And still others of us are not mothers’ to children (sometimes by choice), but instead create and offer forth so much beauty, wisdom and compassion to our world. To all these wombmen, I offer you these flowers. Each of us was once a seed – carried like a dream, like a prayer, in the womb of our grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmothers’ womb…may we be fertile ground for the beautiful creations this world needs, and for the seeds that might one day sprout into the free-spirited children who will belong once again to the Earth, just as these flowers do.
 
I hope one day to have a little being that calls me her mother, “amma”. I pray for all those who want to be mothers to others, to have the opportunity to do that in a good way, in a supported way, in a fruitful way. The world needs more good mothers, more good fathers, good parents, happy healthy children. Just like these flowers – all of Life is always trying to re-birth itself. I offer these flowers then, to all the wombs of all the wombmen who have been fertile ground for a being to take root in, and for all who – in some way or another – allow others to feel loved, seen and safe. May we take rest in our own inner mothering and that of the Mother Consciousness that holds all beings in its unconditional embrace. 

​I grew up fighting my Dad most of my life, from the age of 6. I grew up a fighter – hardcore, never backing down – trying to protect both myself and my mother from my father’s broken rage. Disarmament didn’t feel like an option. Being an otherwise soft-spoken person throughout my life, I fought mainly with the men who were closest to me. And just as it was with my Dad – it always felt like a fight for my life. I used to tell my intimate partners: “Don’t fight me because you’ll never win. Don’t fight me because I’ll never stop fighting you.” It was true. And until recently, I still believed I’d always be a fighter, and that there’d always be someone to fight. But in these last couple months, it became unarguably clear to me that the fight outside and the fight inside are linked, and that there can be no peace outside if I’m still at war on the inside. Not that the fighter has died- the fighter in me is still alive and well convinced there's definitely something to defend.
 
I’ve had to face just how much I’ve been at war with my own self, at a perpetual war inside myself – just like our world that’s always at war with itself. My heart has been both a punching bag and a boxing glove. Inside me, there is both the oppressor and the oppressed. I don’t mean this in an abstract, metaphorical way, but in a very real, even physical way. The entire left side of my body, (what I think of as my feminine side) is clenched in protection. I’m aware of this clenching, just as I’m aware that half the world, (if not more) lives a clenched life. The right side is tight too. Underneath most hearts there is fear… a fear of being oppressed, from the memory of once having been so. To “disarm” oneself is not a simple thing. Unwinding this pain, this grief – can take a long time, and I don’t think we can force trust or surrender, on any side.
 
Several years ago now, I became aware of an angry male voice inside my head. It sounded like the voice of my father combined with the voice of some belligerent guy from a Hollywood movie –telling me how stupid I was, or how stupid other people were. I’ve come to think of him as the quintessential voice of Patriarchy, inside me. This same voice had been in me all along, all through my life –  telling me I was stupid, and I had been believing it. And its only been recently that I’ve been able to stand up to it and say: “No. that’s not true! I am not stupid!” Even though its been profoundly difficult, it's helped me see just how much I’d internalized this voice since my childhood. When I was in India last year, it came up a lot and through me – as irritation with people in general, as angst about the way things were. And at a deeper level, I realized that this voice was really heartbroken and felt powerless about all the chaos around him, and that the only expression it knew was aggression.

Over the course of those many grueling months, I came to know my inner oppressor through an intimacy that no longer allowed me to feel estranged from the despicable in another person the same way I had. What’s “out there” is also “in here” inside me. Hatred, jealousy, revenge, aversion, restlessness, all of that – what we label as “negative emotions”. Coming back to America – a land with Trump as its mascot – felt fitting. In India, we had our own equivalent in Modi. It’s a shadow we can’t seem to escape – the archetypal “bad guy”, the big villain… who’s up to no good just because. But, the voice of the Patriarchy inside me – and inside all of us – is so hostile and aggressive precisely because he’s never felt truly at home anywhere. Just like my Dad. I try to say to him now, this angry voice when it tries to yell at me: “I see you.”
 
The rage that runs through my father’s line and into me, carries with it the untold stories of centuries of grief and war. Long before the British, and before even Christianity, my homeland had been divided and claimed by a medieval war-culture – a history that my people have both romanticized and hidden. Ultimately, war is still war, no matter its elegance. A few years ago, I encountered my own old-school inner warrior: an ancient Kalari warrior from Kerala, heavy with his metal, thick set and broody. He’s been in my life – also since I was a child – to protect me from harm; perhaps he’s been with me much longer than that. But the warrior in me is tired. He wants to put his weapons down and just walk into a field somewhere and lie down on the grass. Just like him, I’ve been “up in arms” most of my life, always on the alert. And I don’t want to be a fighter anymore.
 
The healing of all this – this fighting, this aggression, this constant defense and offense – is up to me, within me. Only I can liberate this for myself. “Please don’t fight me, because I won’t entertain a fight anymore.” I ain’t gonna study war no more… Because I’m exhausted. And because the world needs ahimsa, non-harming. The world needs peace. And peace begins inside of me. I’m putting my weapons down – in a world that’s full of pre-emptive war, guns, violence on all sides. I’m wanting to disarm in a world where its not safe to. 
 
Our collective culture so often thinks of “the fight” as something heroic. We laud that all heroes have to fight their inner demons. “Fight the good fight” they say. I really don’t know that there is a good fight. In American history, there’s the myth of the “good war”. World War II for example they say, was a good war, a just war. I don’t believe there’s ever been a good or just war. I think, if we have to fight, its already a bad situation. MartÍn Prechtel writes about how humanity is in so much confusion because we’ve had so many wars for so long, and we’ve never grieved them. The grief and anger just build generation upon generation, making America a nation of warriors endlessly avenging their ancestors’ grief.
 
I don’t believe anger is a “bad” emotion. I believe anger both necessary and sacred, and that it can be used as a tool and catalyst for positive change if channeled well. I also believe that there are times when we do have to push back, and I stand in solidarity with all those noble guerrilla warriors in our world who have to defend their families against aggressors – like the pink-saried Gulabi Gang in Bihar for example – women who took up sticks against their own drunken husbands after being beaten by them for years. There is a place for the most radical kind direct action, so that the rest of us can protest without weapons. Sometimes rebellion means you have to fight. So, then how do we create peace? How do i lay my weapons down?
 
So often, one side wants peace, but the other side may not be ready for peace. Or perhaps both sides “want peace” but the way forward isn’t clear. Because after all, how do you trust that peace is even possible? Can you ever trust it, or is it just that you become brave? Einstein, who was a proponent of full disarmament after he saw what harm his brilliance had enabled (the making of the world’s first atom bomb) said that the only way to have peace between nations is if one is willing to believe – willing to trust – fully that the other also wants peace. If on the other hand, one is holding onto any doubt that the other doesn’t want peace, then it becomes impossible to have true peace! Being willing to trust is a very brave thing. And to be honest, its not a skill I possess, having been taught through experience to never trust “the enemy”.
 
This is acutely evidenced in my most intimate relationships inside which I have to ask myself: How can I have peace if there is fear of being hurt, violated, betrayed again…on both sides? How do I encourage trust within myself and let go of fear? Surrendering some amount of fear seems foundational for being able to disarm oneself. And by the same token, wanting peace must be reflected in action, not just in sentiment. If you’re telling me: “I want peace not war,” but you’re stepping on my toe the whole time, then its not in fact true that you want peace. If we want peace, then we also need to acknowledge and step back from behaviors that cause harm, and make reparations for them. To repair what’s been broken requires we admit that its been broken in the first place – not by accident – but through our own actions and ignorance. Sometimes in walking toward shared peace, we face seemingly insurmountable blocks and hazards. Yet peace isn’t just something that’s on the other side like a reward; its the quality that permeates the entire journey. We need to choose peace at the start, not at the end if it works in our favor. We need to choose peace now, no matter the outcome.
 
There’s been a lot of debate lately over restricting gun access, but I don’t ever think the conversation goes far enough. Yes, by all means – let’s not guns have in schools, and let’s do the practical legislation – but let’s please not stop there. Let’s call for a moratorium not only on guns, but on all weapons, and on war itself. It's not the weapons ultimately that are to blame so much as the culture of endemic violence that we all live within, a culture of Patriarchy and domination – one that will ensure there will always be weapons to avenge its fear. I don’t care if you say I’m not being “realistic”, because an armed world is also not realistic for our survival as a human species. This means we have to question the fundamental narrative of armament, of war, of fighting. Why is owning a gun equated with freedom? Why does a citizenry need weapons to protect itself from the State, and why does a State get to have weapons to control its citizenry? Why is a stockpile of nuclear arsenal a prerequisite to safety or to “peace”? Can peace ever come through war?

I can only call for total disarmament, just like Einstein and the original makers of the atom bomb came to do. I believe that only the total disarmament of all peoples, of all countries, will bring peace. But peace starts with us. It starts with the biggest arms dealer in the world: America. It starts with you. And with me. Inside. It starts with how we treat each other. With how we treat our selves.
 
We can’t fight our inner oppressor. It's not that we get beat up by him either. It's that we choose a third way. This means I can’t fight the oppressor outside anymore either – whether that’s Patriarchy or gun culture, or the neo-liberal machine – just like I can’t fight the men I’ve loved hoping to convince him of my truth. We can’t force anyone to give up their guns anymore than we can force a peace. So I’m choosing that third way. This third way I call “Ruthless Compassion”, and its got its own tools – a barrage of eloquence (well-channeled anger), the poetry of grief, the unrelenting fierceness of mothers who’ve lost their children, flowers – to name a few. It's to be both audible and disarmed in a culture – in a nation, in a world – that’s deeply fissured and armed to the hilt. Its to stand up to the face of all those Americans who want machine guns in order to uphold their second amendment rights, and to the entire military industrial complex of billions of annual dollars of armament, to stand up to this and every other government who arms not only its military but also all the counter-militaries, by saying simply in a way that entertains no argument: “I see you. We’ve had Enough. The Earth and its people demand Peace.” It's also being willing to “point the finger” inside at our own unhealed wounds, grief and rage and commit to their healing. Ruthless Compassion means we stand for justice for our own brokenness, and for all those who’ve died fighting in the endless wars, for all the men, women and children who’ve been killed, maimed or displaced through them or through violence, for all the infinitude of broken hearts, and for all the scarred places of our Earth pockmarked with the shrapnel of our heroic indulgence.
 
People still think of the hippies of the 60’s as being naïve, but they wer onto the truth back then. When that young man stood there placing a flower in the loaded rifle of that soldier – I wonder if he felt brave or if he felt trusting? Either way, he knew what he was risking, and what he was saying:
 
“I offer you this flower – dear soldier, my old enemy– in hopes you will take it and put down your weapon. I offer you this flower – my inner warrior – that you might quiet your endless yelling and fighting.  I offer you this flower – all the tanks and nuclear arsenals in America, in Vietnam, Russia, India, Israel, around the world – because the world so deeply needs peace, not more war.”