1. Agency : the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.
Alexandria O. Cortez (and scores of strong women) exemplifies a kind of agency many of us in the Sixties didn't know existed. (We still had the word, obey, in our wedding vows!)
These women aren't taking superficial answers for facts. They aren't looking away, obeying, submitting, or talking quietly among themselves.
Maybe it took the election of the current occupant of the White House, to bring Stacey, Alexandria, Amy, Elizabeth and Kamala (and a lot more) to the center of the political stage. If so, let's count that one hugely positive result of the 2016 election.
I was in awe of the clear-eyed questioning of Cohen by Cortez at the hearings this week. "So how do we find out more?" she asked. "And who else do we need to talk to?"
And to the way Kamala made Bret Kavenaugh look like an inexperienced first-year debater when he went all mushy in the Supreme Court hearings. "I'm asking you a very direct question, Sir, yes or no? Who'd you talk to?"
And Stacey who came close to winning the Georgia election by, among other things, calling out her vote-suppressing opponent.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/discussing-democratic-response-stacey-abrams-podcast-transcript-ncna976151
Women now have agency not only to tell their own truth, but reject claims that what is being done to and for them is "for their own good."
I'm giddy with delight when I hear women way younger than I am standing up to those old voices! No more grabbing, no more deciders, no more jokey little comments that used to be okay.
I can't count the times I've looked the other way, pretended not to see, or even appeared to agree with those who had "power."
When women have authentic agency, the old earmarks of "power" look pathetic by contrast. Like long ties and pushy gestures, buffoon-ish and dated, on the road to extinction.
2. Activation: To make something active.
I'm learning in classes related to painting how to "activate" paint on a page. By spritzing water on wet paint, for example, you can make it run and move in really cool ways.
While doing these pages, aspects of myself are activated, too. I am happy, intent, focused, and sometimes exhilarated playing with colors and shapes, not caring how anyone else might assess my efforts. (School teaches us to care overly much about the opinions of teachers who, as in my case, chasten us when we paint the red courthouse purple or color outside the lines.)
In a state of playfulness, which is a close-cousin of meditation, buried memories also surface. Sometimes the memories are pleasant, sometimes terrible. I might go to bed thinking of something I could do to enliven a page, and I wake up the next morning with clarity about something beyond the page.
Creative efforts activate the psyche to places that need attention or kindness or expression.
It's not the things we make that matter so much as the process of making that brings stuff from out of the dark into the light.
3. Angel: For me, "angel" is a figure of speech, a metaphor for unexpected generosity or kindness.
When I went to get my morning coke, a new-to-me young man was at the window, a curly-haired man with an endearing smile and voice.
I reached for my dollar and he leaned out the window and waved away my cash.
"Are you an angel?" I asked, half-teasing.
"I try to be, sometimes," he said.
It wasn't the free coke I meant. It was something about the way he looked me in the eye that summoned the word. The way he told me his name and asked for mine.
Often, if you look in unexpected places, certain people pop into view who seem intent on giving, not getting, who seem rare and other-worldly in acting from their big, wide open hearts.
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