Sacred Time
“Capitalism is destroying the planet. The two old tricks that dug it out of past crises - War and Shopping - simply will not work.”
Well, we're in it. Feeling the emptiness of stopping, stopping, at an unimaginable global scale. The spinning top slows down and begins to wobble as it tilts, falls, and comes to rest. At first, the distractions pour in to fill the void. I have my own neurotic momentum, wanting to take advantage of this opportunity to 'get things done'. A mentality laced with the old poison, the Kool Aid of our culture that has brought us to this moment. I admit: I am unhinged. My journal entry from a few days ago goes like this: Cold and rainy. Can't get warm. Wonder if I'm getting sick. Chalked up the worry to psychic detox (I hope). Felt like eating popcorn (didn't). Finally worked out. Felt better, temporarily. Looked out the sliding glass doors and saw shipwrecked earthworms stranded on the cement step and executed a barefoot rescue mission. Tracked muddy water onto the newly mopped floor. Back to the writing desk. Feeling totally ADD. Pounded my tight shoulders with the electric hammering massage gizmo. It helped some. Checking the news obsessively. Checking emails constantly. Finally gave up, smoked some pot, and went to sleep.) It seems like everyone I'm talking to (during my silent haha writing haha retreat) is having a similar experience.
The next day, curious and slightly desperate, I went outside and sat on the deck, watching the ocean, praying, listening, asking how, exactly, to respond, and heard the words: Step into Earth time. Ah, yes! A time without schedules, deadlines or expectations. I immediately felt the truth of this good counsel. The Earth has no need for calendars and clocks. There are things to be done, of course. We have responsibilities and obligations and we will fulfill them as best we can. But perhaps they can be accomplished with deeper integrity if we allow ourselves to follow the body's longing, which is the Earth's longing, for us to move with Her: as the saying goes, to receive breath rather than to take it. How, then, to reciprocate, by the way we live? To care for the most vulnerable among us as we care for the Earth and Life itself, as we care for ourselves, no distinction.
The images in my head and the sensations in my body begin to shift. The lists fall away, supplanted by the feeling of the cool morning air; the garden responding to spring, and this unfamiliar silence; the translucent canals of Venice with dolphins and swans gliding through them; the photo of the wild boar window-sniffing in the town square of a rural Italian village. In this time of death and silence, the Earth is showing us how quickly the flourishing is restored. People are noticing. How can we not? The wisdom pours in: the video from Italy, that is a Letter From the Virus. The letter from Peruvian spiritual leader and author, Arkan Lushwalla. The virus has something to tell us, a message of fierce grace: we cannot go back to the madness that only a few weeks ago we considered normal, because that 'normal' is sick and destructive. We have been warned. We have been detained. We have been given the time to consider how to live differently. A useful koan to fill our isolated, inextricable days. And, while we sit still, or can't stop moving, there is poetry to guide us. Astrologers to reveal the big picture.
As the dithering ebbs and flows, then finally subsides, something else arises - something palpable that at first is difficult to name, though I have been reading wise words telling me what I could not yet feel. Then I recognized it, in my own body and seemingly in the air around me: this is Sacred Time. That's what we're in. Can you feel it? Once it shows up, it's so strong. Something new and seemingly growing. A unified frequency that recognizes both possibility and peril. For me, this energy has the quality of a knife: a hard, honed surface, unimaginably sharp, glinting in the sunlight, which, itself, has the quality of seeing green for the first time.
We live in a virome: viruses are by far the most numerous life forms of all, by several orders of magnitude. Most of them are beneficial. This morning I did a spirit journey with a small and trusted group of women, a virtual pilgrimage to meet the virus and seek its wisdom. The messages we received were remarkably consistent:
The virus is a community, a collective being, not an individual. Big is small and small is big. There is no 'one' in charge, only a continuously moving exchange of balancing and rebalancing.
The lungs are the seat of sadness, grief and pain, including and especially ancestral pain.
The Earth and the Natural World are doing what they need to do. We are the ones who are not OK. We need to face the grief of living outside of right relationship. When we remember how connected we are, we will heal.
The destruction of the Earth is affecting the rest of the universe because She is a fundamental being to 'all that is' and extraction is destroying her ability to communicate.
Look. See. Learn.
There are already those that know how to create the necessary structures and systems we need, that are properly aligned and balanced.
The viral messenger of sacred time isn't an adversary to be defeated, a war to be fought. It isn't one more headline or emergency that will pass. Sacred time invites us to restore right relationship with each other and the Earth, to form alliances that benefit All Beings knowing that true health and prosperity flow from that. Sacred time does not brook disrespect. It brings us to our knees, where we belong, in the face of such generosity.
