by Milan T Pham
When she said, “This place saved my life.”, my attention snapped back to the circle in which I stood with my fellow board members. The damp meadow grasses tickled my ankles and I was gazing over the pond low from lack of rain. Chad’s hand clasped mine comfortably; his warm and dry. I can’t say where my mind had wandered but it hadn’t been present in the circle until that moment. Board member after Board member described how he/she came to be connected to stone circles at The Stone House. Their stories wove a web linked by a common thread; need for, search for, lack of and finding of refuge.
The common understanding of refuge is shelter: a place to be safe from physical harm. No one in the circle was talking about being harmed physically. No one was talking about being beaten. No one was talking about being raped. No one was talking about being physically tortured. And still everyone was talking about refuge.
Tony, a fellow board member, once remarked to me, “You are the only person I know who can speak to power the way that you do and still manage to be heard.” When he said this, I was the director of a department in government charged with civil rights work. My job, in part, entailed advising the governing body on issues of human and civil rights. I remember thinking then that being heard when speaking to power had been personally very costly. I showed up in places occupied by power, spoke power’s language, ate power’s food and wore power’s uniform. I was gifted at it and I hated that gift. I bit my tongue when I might otherwise have spoken but for my position. I weighed every cause I needed to champion carefully discarding some in favor of others because I knew that power’s ability to hear me was limited. I berated myself mercilessly for every cause I discarded. I dined with people who I wouldn’t consider opening my door to because of their smug contempt for anyone different from them. They spoke to me like I was one of them, momentarily forgetting that I was brown, woman and other. I broke off important bits of myself and placed them inside for refuge and on the outside I froze. So many of the people who I knew inside of institutions of power, deeply integral people, had ceded portions of their integrity to power or had left the fight altogether. For my part, as Ani Difranco said, I was “studying stones. Trying to learn to be less alive. Using all of my will to keep very still. Still even on the inside. [I] cut all of the permanent wires so my eyes can’t make that connection.”
And that is how I lost my hope that movements of justice could succeed. I could not believe that we had enough people to sacrifice in that manner. I didn’t know then or maybe I had forgotten that refuge could exist anywhere outside of me.
Refuge is not just a physical place; it is a mental and emotional space as well. So often, people in movements for justice have offices in the fields, on the streets, in houses of worship and schools where there is no refuge. Sometimes, their beds are in homes where there is no refuge. And, frequently, they willingly place themselves in physical, mental and emotional spaces where they are under siege for the sake of justice. They voluntarily submit to no refuge in the hopes that their sacrifice will lead to refuge for others.
That is where I was when I came to The Stone House for the first time. I had been walking under siege and without emotional shelter for years. It was here that, as an adult, I found a place of refuge outside of myself. stone circles is a refuge not only in the space but in the community and the people who gather in its walls and walk its land. It was here that I began to unpack those bundles that I’d tucked away for safety and to reassemble myself as a whole again. stone circles and its community held a space for me to do my work in fits and starts, clumsily, ecstatically, sporadically and deeply.
Again not too many weeks ago I was reminded of the incredible grace of a space where there is no fear of attack. National, local and personal circumstances had left me feeling distressed to say the least. During the opening meeting of the Board, we were asked to state what we were feeling or what we were bringing to the circle. I shared that I felt enervated (which is just a fancy word for lacking in strength). My fellow board members must have been concerned given all the work we had to do. But I clarified that oddly enough being enervated usually resulted in my doing lots of work. There, that weekend and, in that circle, I was given the gentle reminder that there was no need for me to create a façade of bravado if I didn’t feel it. There was no need to reinforce the barricades and show no weakness in anticipation of an attack that would not come, at least not at stone circles. I was reminded that whatever I came with would be more than enough and whatever I wanted to leave behind would be held with grace.
What, my friend, has stone circles at The Stone House given you?
