Home again, home again jiggity jig

Is it a nursery rhyme going through my head? Or just a saying? When I was little and we had spent a long evening out and about and were just pulling up to the front of our house, my mom would always say, “home again, home again, jiggity jig.”

That’s where I am now: back at my house in Oakland, California. After pulling a banner full of blue lights out of a silver bag at 11:30pm in front of the Olympic bird’s nest stadium in Beijing, getting arrested, being detained through the night in a smoky room, put on a 12 hour flight to New York city, waiting at the JFK airport for another 4, sitting through a flight to Oakland for 5 hours, waiting at the airport to be picked up, I finally arrived home at about 10:30pm last night. After 50 hours of no beds, no showers, lots of waiting, a bit of fear, excitement, not knowing what was next, boredom and exhiliration: here I am. Not sure what to do with myself. Not sure what to say.

Not sure what to say because there is so much to say, so many moments and stories to tell. I got off the plane in New York with my four team members, and was greeted by a small welcoming party: two young Tibetans and a young man from the US. They were holding the Tibetan flag and as we came around to the other side of the banister that separated those arriving from those waiting, they pulled white khatas out of their bags and placed them around our necks. Up until that moment, I hadn’t shed a tear (which, for those of you who know me, realize this is an amazing feat, as I am prone to cry about most everything), but that got me right in the heart. A Tibetan khata is a white scarf that is typically offered to someone special, it may be at a wedding, a funeral or other important events. Growing up in a community that practiced Tibetan Buddhism, I had always seen khatas being offered to great teachers or Rinpoches; sometimes a Rinpoche would receive one and then place it around the neck of one of his/her students. It was something so familiar to me and yet so special. There I was, standing in the middle of the busy JFK airport, with this special white scarf around my neck, weepy and proud to be honored in this way.

Next they showed us the New York Times article – we were shocked and thrilled to see a big picture of our action printed on page twelve. The last paragraph sat with me for the rest of the day, through all those hours of traveling: “one woman, Dolma Yungzom, was shot five or six times point blank after she unfurled a banner.” A Tibetan woman was shot for doing exactly the same thing I did. Sure, I was arrested and detained and taken to a complex of empty buildings where I was interrogated, but then I was released and put on a plane home. Dolma Yungzom was shot.

On my flight from New York to Oakland, I had the pleasure of all the Jet Blue amenities: mainly, lots of TV, which was right up my alley, as I could hardly do anything but zone out. I watched the programs and commercials about stuff to buy and all the pretty girls and fancy cars, the Olympic games and episode after episode of Law and Order and I thought over and over again, what are we doing? I mean “we” the collective, human we. Why are we so consumed with all of these things, these empty things? Why do we fill up our days with so much nonsense? So much fluff?

I know that as this experience fades in my mind, I too will become drawn into my own personal dramas and the details of my day-to-day existence. But the challenge of our short time on this planet, in my humble opinion, is to expand our human community just a bit more. As all of my friends and family held me in their hearts for those 12 hours during which my “where abouts where unknown,” can we hold others in our hearts as well? Sure, I took a risk by going to China and getting arrested there. But this pales in comparison to the risks that are taken every day by so many people in our own country and around the world: those who wake up every morning in a prison cell, those who spend another night on the streets, those in Colombia who despite all the threats, harassment and attempts against their lives continue to stand up for human rights, those Buddhist monks on the streets of Tibet who insist that they should have the right to practice their own religion freely. Can we expand our idea of what is ours, our lives, our families, our time, our money, our own struggles to include just a few of these “others”, to stand in solidarity with just one of those communities, to make their struggle for freedom or own, to live on a daily basis the truth of our interdependent existence?

Tonight, as I go to bed in my cozy home on the quiet streets of Oakland, with my white khata layed out on the shrine at my bedside, I hold these brave people in my heart and re-commit myself to work and play and love and sing for these freedoms which every single one of us on this precious planet deserve.

Call me sappy, but that is what getting arrested in China does to a llorona like me.