Pop Quiz
Sometimes all it takes is one - one moment, one chance, one vote, one death. In navigation, one degree of change in plotting a course before setting out delivers us to a different destination: the farther we get from shore, the wider the angle of disparity between the two trajectories.
These days, there are way too many people behaving way worse than we could have imagined. But, it's also true that one person or one country that behaves better than expected can shift the architecture of the moment. In these worrisome days, we can't anticipate what that gesture might be, nor predict its results. But we can choose to align with our deepest longing for a resplendent future and behave accordingly. Authentic change is turbulent. Dangerous. Uncomfortable. And things are just starting to, uh, heat up. As we pick our way through the debris, we'll need a pocketful of stories to sustain us.
At the height of the Liberian civil war, women gathered in their numbers, across lines of division that had riven their communities and destroyed their families. After fifteen years of war, they began meeting daily in a field that had once been the fish market in the capital, Monrovia, to demand an end to the violence. Most of them had lost everyone and everything that made life worth living. Day after day, in every kind of weather, they sat in silence, dressed in white, fasting and praying, as bullets and rockets flew overhead. After several months, it became too much. They felt broken, and too tired to continue, so they dispersed. Two of the women walked towards the city center, with vague thoughts of making their way to the American Embassy. A bomb exploded beside them and one of the women was killed. The other was knocked unconscious. When she came to, and saw her friend's mangled body, she broke down completely. Eventually, not knowing what else to do, she made her way back to the field and sat down. At that moment, another of the women was walking past, recognized the first one, and joined her. Then another. And another. Until the field was full again. Within a few weeks, Liberia's dictator, Charles Taylor, had been ousted and the war ended. Those women literally created a new reality by gathering together and sitting in it.
The noise of the moment is a seductive distraction. The disarray is so compelling that it's easy to slide into a narrative of unstoppable loss. But here's the thing: seeking alignment with possibility is, at best, a trail of breadcrumbs. Each of us is responsible for being clear-eyed and rigorous in our own journey of finding a patch of connection to stand on. And, though we continue to bear witness to the moment, our minds remain free. Our hearts are still capable of love. Part of the resistance to the undertow of calamity is recognizing that I have a dream is a narrative with a future and I take no responsibility is not. Each of us must choose which narrative - what sort of future - we belong to. Wendell Berry said, Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest.
From Aboriginal wisdom-keepers to modern astrologers, those with an eye on larger patterns are all saying the same thing: this is the dawn of a new time. The old structures are crumbling, and not a moment too soon, but... yikes. The dissonance will continue to escalate, particularly at this juncture of a Full Moon at the culmination of Mercury Retrograde on the eve of the election here in the U.S. (and several consequential elections overseas). For a time, chaos and dissolution will intensify. Beyond what we do in the tangible world to prepare, the most important preparation may be the vision
As with any true initiation that heralds authentic change, everything is at stake. It matters if and how we show up. It matters what calls us forward, and how we respond to that call. In the words of teacher and writer Orland Bishop, we are being called to 'witness a higher shared intelligence' and to take responsibility for 'hosting' a future based on different agreements than the ones that are currently unraveling. We are no longer in a land of opportunity but in a moment of opportunity, and it's planetary.
The late Terrence McKenna said, Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up... This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed. Or, more succinctly, Stop consuming images and start producing them.
Next to my writing desk is a piece of paper with a strange and wondrous sentence that turned up while doing research for another project: it's a comment made by a Chukchi shaman to a Russian ethnographer 120 years ago: Nothing created by man has any power. Humans have had an outsize effect on life on Earth, and we can think of that as a sort of power, but it's no match for the abiding power of natural processes - nor for the enduring potential of relationships aligned with those processes. Said another way: the sum total of the biomass of all life on Earth is approximately 550 gigatons. Of that, 450 gigatons are made up of plants. Of the remaining 100 gigatons, 93% are invisible: microbes, bacteria, viruses, etc. The remaining 7% contains all other life forms. Of the overall total, just 0.01% are humans (and we've managed to destroy 83% of all the Earth's wild mammals).
In science, a catalyst causes things to occur that are said to be 'favored', that 'want to happen'. A car parked on an incline 'wants' to roll downhill. Releasing the handbrake would be a catalyst. A candle 'wants' to give off light: all it needs is a match. Life 'is favored' to continue. Life is designed to ensure continuity: a thriving future of restoration and mutuality 'wants' to happen. We can catalyze that future by gathering at that place in our hearts that can already sense it. We'll find each other there.
