The “nice ladies” part is interesting—these days I think about Karens and about toxic white femininity (was just skimming a scholarly article about the latter under the guise of the visiting school teacher system of the early 20th century which lead directly to the school to prison pipeline…).
I almost jumped out of my skin when I was drawn to this. It’s barely 7 a.m and I feel my world has been rocked. What if the Sangha you’re describing is actually portrayed in books that were deliberately left out of the Bible? Because they said we are divine and can manage ourselves just fine? Thus we’d require no churching. I saw a video that said the Ethiopian bible has 15 more books than the Romans ALLOWED, and the knowledge is coming out at this “break glass” moment for humanity. The Ethiopians were never colonized. Thank you!!
My traditional Conservative Jewish Republican mother (who did not vote for DJT) told me in 1970(?) that there would be no messiah. That we all, as humanity, had to bring the messianic age. In the Jewish tradition, this is an end to war.
Excellent piece, and I follow Solnit with gratitude. I once heard a Catholic organizer say something I had never heard my Lutheran teachers say - "Jesus called us into community because he knew community would save us." I've never forgotten that.
Oh my goodness YES!!! I want to shout this from the rooftop! I write about the idea of God as a midwife, which is to say we have to stop relying on saviors and do the hard thing ourselves (“give birth”). Solnit has written against heroes before and this is even better! And Liz I so appreciate the religious richness of this article, and how you succinctly describe how this thread of community and solidarity is woven into most religions. Thank you!
I think language often carries something deeper beneath the surface. The words we use today are not so different from the words of the past. All we need is a spiritually tuned ear to hear the deeper conversation they are part of.
I like the idea of better tuned ear...and I think deep listening is actually one of the skills we have lost (I know I have). I did a deep dive into sacred sound in a chapter of Beyond Wellness and learned a ton in the process.
It's very challenging to tune one's ear. Requires being able to recognize and perceive beyond the senses. Like "The Messiah" of the Hebrew prophets. Who would judge not with eyes or ears. My first thought was "Huh???" Then I realized that the great judge would judge by inner knowing of the (mystical lyrics unified) whole.
What a great post, Liz. As someone who's been writing about messianic cults, whether they emanate from the White House or Tehran, this "sangha not savior" model really does offer a ray of hope. Wouldn't it be great if our Congress acted as an elected SuperSangha and reigned in the Dark Savior?
Thank you for this! I will go back and re-read the interview more deeply. You and Solnit have identified exactly what I think is happening in our country now, but has been simmering for a long time. The nice ladies, who have always been the choir-singing, potluck-organizing, post-funeral feeders of the grieving, have moved their caregiving underground and into the streets. And that work is grounded in and made possible by those deep community ties.
I appreciate this piece but am not sure why you’d worry that your take might be wrestling Solnit into an unwanted role. She teaches regularly with Roshi Joan Halifax. She’s taught at other zen centers. She has a growing reputation as a buddhist teacher though not as a member of the clergy (no contradiction there).
Jody, thank you for thinking through this with me.I think my hesitation came from not wanting the piece to read as conscripting her into a framework she hasn’t claimed for herself. But you’re right that I was underselling: the teaching relationship with Roshi Joan Halifax, the Zen center work, the growing reputation as a Buddhist voice, that’s not me projecting, that’s just her actual biography.
What I’m really trying to name is something slightly different from “theologian” in the traditional sense, more like: Solnit is functioning as a reimagined religious figure for a secular left audience that doesn’t have a word for what she is to them. She’d probably never describe herself that way. But the role is recognizable. The teaching, the community, the framework for sustaining hope, the ethics of collective action, that’s what religious traditions have always been for. She’s doing it from a Buddhist foundation that most of her political readers don’t even see.
The religious formation and the secular reception are running on parallel tracks. That gap is really what the piece is about.
Teacher is probably more accurate, particularly when we are talking about Zen Buddhism which does not fall within a theological framework as a non-theistic religion. On the other hand, I think theology here is intended very broadly - to encompass all religious philosophy.
Except that "teacher" has a very specific meaning in Zen Buddhism, and involves a lengthy period of practice and study with a recognized Zen teacher and then a recognition/transmission by that teacher. A Zen Buddhist teacher is then responsible for guiding others on their Dharma path. Rebecca Solnit is a gifted writer and a brilliant public intellectual who is informed by Buddhism (and has spent a lot of time at Upaya and speaks there) but she is not a 'buddhist teacher' or Zen teacher in that particular context.
That was my aim as well. "Teacher" may have specific meanings within particular traditions, but it also can be understood more broadly by those who feel they are allergic to anything that rhymes with theology.
Liz, thank you for responding and I understand and applaud that your piece is trying to point something out about rebecca that many people don’t notice. I just wanted to be sure we didn’t sell her short as a practitioner. I think using the Thich Nhat Hanh quote about the future Buddha is exactly the right way to get there and to explain what she’s doing for politics with religious thinking but also importantly what she’s doing to push religious thinking in America, at least Buddhist thought, in more political directions. Minor quibbles elsewhere in this great conversation: in America, Zen may seem nontheistic, but I am writing to you from a Japanese Buddhist pilgrimage at present and believe me, Zen in particular and Buddhism in general in Asia are anything but a-theistic! also to the question of what constitutes a real Zen teacher, Roshi Joan has been sharing her seat for a number of years with thinkers and activists who may not be formally recognized to teach in a Zen lineage but who are definitely placed in the role of teacher beside her. So I believe she has deliberately muddied those waters and has done so in ways that benefit American zen. Liz, you are almost tempting me to get back on Facebook.
This piece beautifully names what she is doing theologically. If it resonated (and because all of my comments come with book suggestions), I'd recommend Roshi Joan Halifax's Standing at the Edge—which explores how compassion, altruism, integrity, respect, and engagement function as both contemplative practices and ethical commitments in the real world. Roshi calls these "edge states" because they can tip into their shadow sides (compassion into burnout, altruism into pathological selflessness), which feels very relevant to the "hope is harder than optimism" thread here.
I saw them speak together after the book came out, and the conversation between them was exactly what this essay is tracking—two thinkers arriving at the same territory from different directions, one through Buddhist practice and institutional leadership, the other through writing and political witness. Roshi would call the sangha framework Solnit reaches for not metaphor but method. I have gifted so many copies I've lost track.
I was disappointed to see you gloss over any mention of how foundational this way of thinking actually is within Christianity. It is literally sophiology, the theology of the community as the body of Christ active in the world. Obviously this theme has been underdeveloped in Western Christianity (and has been abandoned entirely in the context of American religion) but your article seems to inadvertently elevate an individualistic perspective by reifying the idea that Christianity is inherently monarchical and individualistic, which isn’t really true. The Western expression of Christianity that we inherited is technically far more Roman pagan than Semitic in its underlying theology, which the Eastern churches have long criticized and in recent decades have challenged through their discussions of sophiology and anthropodicy. I appreciate that white women of a certain generation in the context of the U.S. feel that it’s trendy and progressive to reach for community by attempting to appropriate it from other cultures, but it seems to me that recovering it within the community and cultural traditions we actually inherited and already have would be a better and richer expression of the thing you and she are actually talking about. The appropriation pathway is still just colonialism in a new guise.
I agree with this view, and have spent a lot of my life living out a theology of Christianity as community centered around the word ecclesia. I can see why people are appropriate Buddhism culture to create the sense of community, because it's much safer to find community through buddhism than it is to find a non-authoritarian community in Christian culture. The roots of authoritarianism runs deep in the christian culture and even if you find a theology that expresses a non-authoritarian approach, it will likely be difficult to find the community that has a community based practice. I'm sure they are there, but you have to navigate so many issues to find it.
Just to be clear, I have been a part of both Buddhist and Christian communities, and I am also a trained theologian who studied at an ecumenical and interfaith seminary with both Buddhist and Christian faculty (Union in NYC), and also my husband is an Episcopal priest... so... I am deeply immersed in non-authoritarian theology, know many communities and people who practice non-authoritarian Christianity in several different cultures and denominations all over the world. I also have an undergraduate degree in social psychology, and studied power dynamics within secular human group systems and cultures alongside classes in comparative religious anthropology... all of which makes me suspicious of how Western capitalist influencer culture has sought to offer up a whitewashed "Buddhism" for my generation that downplays the authoritarian strains that have also run deep Asian/Buddhist cultures. If you're looking for a perfect human community within any cultural or religious system you'll be hard-pressed to find one, and you'll find yourself navigating the same issues everywhere, because at the end of the day the issues are human issues. Not sure how much you have studied the ancient world prior to Christianity, but it also featured all the familiar "issues" as well! The authoritarian strains of imperial Christianity that manifested in the specific Western version of the church - the version that is being specifically lamented in the OP - actually has its cultural roots in Roman paganism much more so than the Semitic traditions of Christianity, which are actually indigenous to Syria, Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt.
Thanks! I should say though that I also resonate with your frustrations!! You might find this book interesting, which shows how authoritarianism can graft just as easily onto secular cultures and dogmatically atheist religious systems, no religion required! https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300263619/broken-altars/ If anything, I see religions as bearers of ancestral wisdom that provide us with the best resources humanity has for resisting authoritarianism, but they don’t always “work” in the sense that they don’t always immediately recognize and then successfully prevent their own wisdom from being co-opted and corrupted. None of them have been able to do that. Hell, not even the checks and balances of our secular democratic republic have been able to do that, as events of recent months have shown. People in power will always use all the same old rhetorical devices (sophistry, the Ancient Greeks called it) to co-opt the prevailing language of wisdom and law in any culture. This is why religions keep disappointing people - because people want to think of them as safety bubbles, instead of living wisdom traditions that must be embodied and enacted into in order to come alive. When people discover that human religious systems are no more immune to corruption than any other human system, they tend to despair, and then continue their search for a more pure bubble of safety. But I think the challenge to us in these moments is to abandon our notions of purity in order reclaim the wisdom inherent in these traditions by living it out and modeling it for others. This is what I believe it means to actually take up our cross.
Also, if you take a longer view, you see that every religious tradition has at one time or another become corrupted and failed… but the religions we consider “major” are the ones whose wisdom has somehow managed to hold fast, despite multiple periods of their own corruption. Which in my mind makes them worthy of our reverence and respect. It at least makes them worth paying attention to! That they fell to corruption but then overcame it through the resources within their own tradition is a testament to the strength of these traditions in my mind, rather than a sign of their weakness and failure. Of course no one wants to live in times like these, when you’re watching the corruption play out and it feels like nothing can stop it. But take heart, my friend. There are many of us out here holding fast to our own imperfect praxis of a non-authoritarian Christianity. If anything the corruption of these times is clarifying, emboldening us to hold that line even more strongly and firmly.
I agree that the current display of blatant supremacy/authoritarianism is clarifying, raising the profile of the great multicultural boil so ready to be lanced. We may have needed these many crises to discern the best path from here.
"If you're looking for a perfect human community within any cultural or religious system you'll be hard-pressed to find one, and you'll find yourself navigating the same issues everywhere, because at the end of the day the issues are human issues."
I love all your posts and appreciate how approachable they are. But this one is my fave. I’ve re-read three times. I always learn so much for you, Liz!
I really appreciate your essay! As a progressive Christian and lover of Rebecca Solnit's work, I agree. I have seen her as one of my most important theologians since reading The Faraway Nearby. I'm not sure I would be able to hold onto hope without her insights and writings so it's not just theoretical to me, her work is an important part of my lived experience in this moment.
Loved what Solnit said about collective action after that lone hero comment: “A huge amount of the work is done by nice ladies”
The “nice ladies” part is interesting—these days I think about Karens and about toxic white femininity (was just skimming a scholarly article about the latter under the guise of the visiting school teacher system of the early 20th century which lead directly to the school to prison pipeline…).
https://substack.com/@ilwilliams/note/c-234932605?r=1nzpyj&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I almost jumped out of my skin when I was drawn to this. It’s barely 7 a.m and I feel my world has been rocked. What if the Sangha you’re describing is actually portrayed in books that were deliberately left out of the Bible? Because they said we are divine and can manage ourselves just fine? Thus we’d require no churching. I saw a video that said the Ethiopian bible has 15 more books than the Romans ALLOWED, and the knowledge is coming out at this “break glass” moment for humanity. The Ethiopians were never colonized. Thank you!!
This energy at 7am is everything, thank you! Glad this landed for you.
I immediately thought of the "priesthood of all believers" which is foundational for Protestantism. My reaction to this piece was similar to yours.
My traditional Conservative Jewish Republican mother (who did not vote for DJT) told me in 1970(?) that there would be no messiah. That we all, as humanity, had to bring the messianic age. In the Jewish tradition, this is an end to war.
Soo relieved to hear that. i live in peace to end war. Bless you♥️
Excellent piece, and I follow Solnit with gratitude. I once heard a Catholic organizer say something I had never heard my Lutheran teachers say - "Jesus called us into community because he knew community would save us." I've never forgotten that.
Liz, the way you titled this piece gave me chills. It instantly filled me with hope and a feeling of shared community. Thank you.
I was feeling hopeful this morning!
Oh my goodness YES!!! I want to shout this from the rooftop! I write about the idea of God as a midwife, which is to say we have to stop relying on saviors and do the hard thing ourselves (“give birth”). Solnit has written against heroes before and this is even better! And Liz I so appreciate the religious richness of this article, and how you succinctly describe how this thread of community and solidarity is woven into most religions. Thank you!
I like this idea of midwife, it helps reframe religion quite a bit. Thanks for reading and for your thoughtful comment.
I think language often carries something deeper beneath the surface. The words we use today are not so different from the words of the past. All we need is a spiritually tuned ear to hear the deeper conversation they are part of.
I like the idea of better tuned ear...and I think deep listening is actually one of the skills we have lost (I know I have). I did a deep dive into sacred sound in a chapter of Beyond Wellness and learned a ton in the process.
It's very challenging to tune one's ear. Requires being able to recognize and perceive beyond the senses. Like "The Messiah" of the Hebrew prophets. Who would judge not with eyes or ears. My first thought was "Huh???" Then I realized that the great judge would judge by inner knowing of the (mystical lyrics unified) whole.
What a great post, Liz. As someone who's been writing about messianic cults, whether they emanate from the White House or Tehran, this "sangha not savior" model really does offer a ray of hope. Wouldn't it be great if our Congress acted as an elected SuperSangha and reigned in the Dark Savior?
IT WOULD!
Thank you for this! I will go back and re-read the interview more deeply. You and Solnit have identified exactly what I think is happening in our country now, but has been simmering for a long time. The nice ladies, who have always been the choir-singing, potluck-organizing, post-funeral feeders of the grieving, have moved their caregiving underground and into the streets. And that work is grounded in and made possible by those deep community ties.
Those nice ladies of MN were SO inspiring/hope making for me. I hope you are right...that it has been simmering for awhile, and now change is coming.
Nice ladies often have a tiger side, when motivated. Anyone who has been part of a healthy religious community has seen it!
I appreciate this piece but am not sure why you’d worry that your take might be wrestling Solnit into an unwanted role. She teaches regularly with Roshi Joan Halifax. She’s taught at other zen centers. She has a growing reputation as a buddhist teacher though not as a member of the clergy (no contradiction there).
Jody, thank you for thinking through this with me.I think my hesitation came from not wanting the piece to read as conscripting her into a framework she hasn’t claimed for herself. But you’re right that I was underselling: the teaching relationship with Roshi Joan Halifax, the Zen center work, the growing reputation as a Buddhist voice, that’s not me projecting, that’s just her actual biography.
What I’m really trying to name is something slightly different from “theologian” in the traditional sense, more like: Solnit is functioning as a reimagined religious figure for a secular left audience that doesn’t have a word for what she is to them. She’d probably never describe herself that way. But the role is recognizable. The teaching, the community, the framework for sustaining hope, the ethics of collective action, that’s what religious traditions have always been for. She’s doing it from a Buddhist foundation that most of her political readers don’t even see.
The religious formation and the secular reception are running on parallel tracks. That gap is really what the piece is about.
Isn’t “teacher” sufficient — and less loaded than “theologian” — when we use it in contexts beyond the classroom?
Teacher is probably more accurate, particularly when we are talking about Zen Buddhism which does not fall within a theological framework as a non-theistic religion. On the other hand, I think theology here is intended very broadly - to encompass all religious philosophy.
Rebecca Solnit has entered the chat over on my FB page…and insists she is doing theology, and is well aware of it.
Except that "teacher" has a very specific meaning in Zen Buddhism, and involves a lengthy period of practice and study with a recognized Zen teacher and then a recognition/transmission by that teacher. A Zen Buddhist teacher is then responsible for guiding others on their Dharma path. Rebecca Solnit is a gifted writer and a brilliant public intellectual who is informed by Buddhism (and has spent a lot of time at Upaya and speaks there) but she is not a 'buddhist teacher' or Zen teacher in that particular context.
Also very true! I think, as theologian was being used in a wider encompassing sense, I reached for teacher in the same spirit.
That was my aim as well. "Teacher" may have specific meanings within particular traditions, but it also can be understood more broadly by those who feel they are allergic to anything that rhymes with theology.
Liz, thank you for responding and I understand and applaud that your piece is trying to point something out about rebecca that many people don’t notice. I just wanted to be sure we didn’t sell her short as a practitioner. I think using the Thich Nhat Hanh quote about the future Buddha is exactly the right way to get there and to explain what she’s doing for politics with religious thinking but also importantly what she’s doing to push religious thinking in America, at least Buddhist thought, in more political directions. Minor quibbles elsewhere in this great conversation: in America, Zen may seem nontheistic, but I am writing to you from a Japanese Buddhist pilgrimage at present and believe me, Zen in particular and Buddhism in general in Asia are anything but a-theistic! also to the question of what constitutes a real Zen teacher, Roshi Joan has been sharing her seat for a number of years with thinkers and activists who may not be formally recognized to teach in a Zen lineage but who are definitely placed in the role of teacher beside her. So I believe she has deliberately muddied those waters and has done so in ways that benefit American zen. Liz, you are almost tempting me to get back on Facebook.
This. And your subsequent exchange with Rebecca Solnit through FB, her confirmation of your interpretation … all of it makes my heart sing. Thank you.
Yes, that WAS fun (and we continued chatting over DMs last night). Generous of her to engage with me.
Great article and interesting thread of comments.
One fine point -- the teaching about the next Buddha being the Sangha didn't come on Thich Nhat Hanh's deathbed, it's something he said as far back as 1993. See https://inquiringmind.com/article/1002_41_thich-nhat_hanh/
Oh thank you! I see update the post. 🙏🏽
you're so welcome. thanks for a thought-provoking article.
This piece beautifully names what she is doing theologically. If it resonated (and because all of my comments come with book suggestions), I'd recommend Roshi Joan Halifax's Standing at the Edge—which explores how compassion, altruism, integrity, respect, and engagement function as both contemplative practices and ethical commitments in the real world. Roshi calls these "edge states" because they can tip into their shadow sides (compassion into burnout, altruism into pathological selflessness), which feels very relevant to the "hope is harder than optimism" thread here.
I saw them speak together after the book came out, and the conversation between them was exactly what this essay is tracking—two thinkers arriving at the same territory from different directions, one through Buddhist practice and institutional leadership, the other through writing and political witness. Roshi would call the sangha framework Solnit reaches for not metaphor but method. I have gifted so many copies I've lost track.
Thanks for adding this resource to our conversation, Lisa!
I was disappointed to see you gloss over any mention of how foundational this way of thinking actually is within Christianity. It is literally sophiology, the theology of the community as the body of Christ active in the world. Obviously this theme has been underdeveloped in Western Christianity (and has been abandoned entirely in the context of American religion) but your article seems to inadvertently elevate an individualistic perspective by reifying the idea that Christianity is inherently monarchical and individualistic, which isn’t really true. The Western expression of Christianity that we inherited is technically far more Roman pagan than Semitic in its underlying theology, which the Eastern churches have long criticized and in recent decades have challenged through their discussions of sophiology and anthropodicy. I appreciate that white women of a certain generation in the context of the U.S. feel that it’s trendy and progressive to reach for community by attempting to appropriate it from other cultures, but it seems to me that recovering it within the community and cultural traditions we actually inherited and already have would be a better and richer expression of the thing you and she are actually talking about. The appropriation pathway is still just colonialism in a new guise.
I agree with this view, and have spent a lot of my life living out a theology of Christianity as community centered around the word ecclesia. I can see why people are appropriate Buddhism culture to create the sense of community, because it's much safer to find community through buddhism than it is to find a non-authoritarian community in Christian culture. The roots of authoritarianism runs deep in the christian culture and even if you find a theology that expresses a non-authoritarian approach, it will likely be difficult to find the community that has a community based practice. I'm sure they are there, but you have to navigate so many issues to find it.
Just to be clear, I have been a part of both Buddhist and Christian communities, and I am also a trained theologian who studied at an ecumenical and interfaith seminary with both Buddhist and Christian faculty (Union in NYC), and also my husband is an Episcopal priest... so... I am deeply immersed in non-authoritarian theology, know many communities and people who practice non-authoritarian Christianity in several different cultures and denominations all over the world. I also have an undergraduate degree in social psychology, and studied power dynamics within secular human group systems and cultures alongside classes in comparative religious anthropology... all of which makes me suspicious of how Western capitalist influencer culture has sought to offer up a whitewashed "Buddhism" for my generation that downplays the authoritarian strains that have also run deep Asian/Buddhist cultures. If you're looking for a perfect human community within any cultural or religious system you'll be hard-pressed to find one, and you'll find yourself navigating the same issues everywhere, because at the end of the day the issues are human issues. Not sure how much you have studied the ancient world prior to Christianity, but it also featured all the familiar "issues" as well! The authoritarian strains of imperial Christianity that manifested in the specific Western version of the church - the version that is being specifically lamented in the OP - actually has its cultural roots in Roman paganism much more so than the Semitic traditions of Christianity, which are actually indigenous to Syria, Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt.
Thanks! I should say though that I also resonate with your frustrations!! You might find this book interesting, which shows how authoritarianism can graft just as easily onto secular cultures and dogmatically atheist religious systems, no religion required! https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300263619/broken-altars/ If anything, I see religions as bearers of ancestral wisdom that provide us with the best resources humanity has for resisting authoritarianism, but they don’t always “work” in the sense that they don’t always immediately recognize and then successfully prevent their own wisdom from being co-opted and corrupted. None of them have been able to do that. Hell, not even the checks and balances of our secular democratic republic have been able to do that, as events of recent months have shown. People in power will always use all the same old rhetorical devices (sophistry, the Ancient Greeks called it) to co-opt the prevailing language of wisdom and law in any culture. This is why religions keep disappointing people - because people want to think of them as safety bubbles, instead of living wisdom traditions that must be embodied and enacted into in order to come alive. When people discover that human religious systems are no more immune to corruption than any other human system, they tend to despair, and then continue their search for a more pure bubble of safety. But I think the challenge to us in these moments is to abandon our notions of purity in order reclaim the wisdom inherent in these traditions by living it out and modeling it for others. This is what I believe it means to actually take up our cross.
Also, if you take a longer view, you see that every religious tradition has at one time or another become corrupted and failed… but the religions we consider “major” are the ones whose wisdom has somehow managed to hold fast, despite multiple periods of their own corruption. Which in my mind makes them worthy of our reverence and respect. It at least makes them worth paying attention to! That they fell to corruption but then overcame it through the resources within their own tradition is a testament to the strength of these traditions in my mind, rather than a sign of their weakness and failure. Of course no one wants to live in times like these, when you’re watching the corruption play out and it feels like nothing can stop it. But take heart, my friend. There are many of us out here holding fast to our own imperfect praxis of a non-authoritarian Christianity. If anything the corruption of these times is clarifying, emboldening us to hold that line even more strongly and firmly.
I agree that the current display of blatant supremacy/authoritarianism is clarifying, raising the profile of the great multicultural boil so ready to be lanced. We may have needed these many crises to discern the best path from here.
Thanks Kristin, for exposing my myopia.
I really resonate with this line in your comment.
"If you're looking for a perfect human community within any cultural or religious system you'll be hard-pressed to find one, and you'll find yourself navigating the same issues everywhere, because at the end of the day the issues are human issues."
Fully agree.
Perspective! Thank you.
Check out Brandy Mitchell here on Substack, on the co-optation of the church by snd for empire. Exceedingly interesting.
I love all your posts and appreciate how approachable they are. But this one is my fave. I’ve re-read three times. I always learn so much for you, Liz!
Thank you for this piece. This idea of hope resonates deeply and felt like a much needed reminder.
I'm so glad it resonated! Thanks for reading.
I really appreciate your essay! As a progressive Christian and lover of Rebecca Solnit's work, I agree. I have seen her as one of my most important theologians since reading The Faraway Nearby. I'm not sure I would be able to hold onto hope without her insights and writings so it's not just theoretical to me, her work is an important part of my lived experience in this moment.
I'm sure she would be happy to know this. Thanks for sharing!