Saturday and it is bitter-cold today. It is colder in Minneapolis, 11 degrees F.

A quiet question comes over and over. Would I be willing to stand alongside friends and others who live around me to oppose the roundup and extradition of immigrants from their homes and places of work? Would I oppose the separation of spouses, the orphaning of children, on a day like today, when the chill is around zero degrees… 

Would I rise to act?

Would I become the coward? Remain inside, warm and do nothing? Perhaps I’d stand on the curb cursing the uniformed and masked strangers with sidearms, stoking hatred for their bosses, for the party that silently lends support to their activities?

Whether a male or a female what would I do? Doing nothing is “to do.”

This from Zhuangzi, an ancient taoist record of the conflicted mammal, of homo sapiens. Yin and yang are essential oppositional-complementary forces, equivalent to female and male. Note that yin, the feminine comes first.

…it is said, “The life of the sage
is the activity of heaven and his/her death
is the transformation common to all things.
In his/her stillness
his/her virtue is aligned with yin
and in his/her activity his/her pervasive effectiveness
permeates all and parallels yang.

He/she does not seek to procure happiness
or to avoid tribulation.
He/she responds to forces acting upon him/her
and rises to act
only when he/she must.

He/she abandons resolutions and recollections
of the past
and follows his/her nature endowed by heaven.

Therefore
he/she receives no censure from heaven.
He/she is not embroiled with things
nor reproached by men nor admonished by the spirits.
His/her life seems to glide; his death seems to be a repose.
He/she does not deliberate or lay plans.

He/she is light without glitter.

Zhuangzi, trans. by Hyun Höchsmann and Yang Guorong

*The header image is of the cake pops at Starbucks. A delight for every child.