Spiritual Praxis or How Do We Get From Here to There? by Rev. Glen Ganaway IM (Satyre Marsayas)
M
y first political memory is of the Vietnam war. Well, actually my first political memory is watching dead soldiers being loaded into the back of a helicopter and television footage of bombs dropping on lush jungles. I was seven. My parents watched every single moment of the Watergate Trial and subsequent hearings on PBS every night. My first vote for president was Jimmy Carter. I am the oldest son of a Southern Baptist Preacher. Politics and Spirituality have been intertwined for me my whole life. In her short story, “The Dispossessed,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote “You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” As a minister, I would say revolution is a lifestyle. It is a way of being. I also say it is who are as human 42 RFD 183 Fall 2020
beings. My politics can be summed up today as perpetual revolution or perpetual awakening. How do I live that way? I’m going to attempt to tell you. It’s deeply wrapped up why I call myself a Radical Faerie and Mystical Anarchist. Why do we want to change the world? There would be no politics if we didn’t want to change our communities and how they operate and the experiences they produce. We can hardly conceive of living or being human without this desire. I think of that desire as proof we want a mature, healthy society. And when we recognize that our communities are not healthy we conceive of actions to be taken for their healing. It matters not what one’s ‘politics’ are at this point. So here’s a thought. We’re actually attempting to heal ourselves by healing the world. I’d like to offer a reversal to that. To be effective in Photograph by Covelo.
