Following
Not to put too fine a point on it, but, in addition to pandemics, police violence, protests and politics, on June 18th Mercury went retrograde; the 21st, Summer Solstice, brings a solar eclipse; and on July 4th, the US will be midway through its Pluto Return - a time of fierce reckoning. At last, it is inescapable. This is the moment to set the compass of our hearts on the world we choose to live in.
In Liberia in the early 2000's, as the civil war dragged on and then-president Charles Taylor continued to stir ethnic enmity, women came together across lines of division to insist on an end to the violence. They sat in the streets, in silence, fasting and praying, until the fighting stopped. As bullets and grenades flew overhead, they sat. In torrential rain and debilitating heat, they sat. They went to child soldier encampments and told the children they loved them, and that it was time to come home. Men who were allies worked behind the scenes to raise money to sustain them. They literally created a new reality by gathering together and sitting in it.
My Liberian friend and colleague, Bill Saa, is a specialist in trauma healing. He has always said that, once people organize into decentralized, autonomous self-governance, it's game over for autocrats seeking centralized power. One can easily recognize the signs: rather than listening to the people, desperate governments focus instead on clinging to power, even as it slips away. This is what's happening here, and elsewhere around the world: Russia, China, Israel, Syria and more. The old guard is crumbling, as it must, because it no longer serves.
A moment ago, I asked the I Ching for a touchstone and opened the book to Hexagram 17: Following. Be guided by the way things are moving. You are involved in a series of events that are firmly connected... The whole human world must follow the times and the season. What you are actually following is a righteous idea inherent in the time. Hexagram 17 is part of a pair delineating a model of change. Its companion is Hexagram 18, Corruption and Pestilence/Renovating, which describes your situation in terms of poison, putrefaction... and the evil deeds done by parents that are manifested in their children. The way to deal with it is to help things rot away so that a new beginning can be found. You are facing something that has turned to poison. Search out the source so new growth can begin.
On June 1st, my mother died after a long battle with dementia and untreated mental illness. She was a generous and gracious person, but, in the end, though many people loved her, she was bitter and full of complaints. For me, the through line between the personal and the collective story is clearly visible: for my mother, as with our national government, appearances mattered more than truth. Like them, she clung to the illusion of control. She felt the Natural World was out to get her and had to be kept at bay. The give and take of community was a threat. In 2012, when my father was dying, friends and family asked what they could do to help. When I suggested that she ask them to bring dinner a few nights a week, she gasped and said, "Oh no! I couldn't never do that, because then I'd be beholden." In America, as in my parents' home, reciprocity in support of the common good is perceived as a sign of weakness, though it is the natural way of things.
Larger patterns hold the smaller ones. As my mother lay dying, sirens wailed, and police helicopters circled overhead. Truckloads of National Guard troops rumbled down the streets. After weeks of global protests, violence continues to rain down on Black people. Native American elders continue to die hungry. Covid-19 continues to ravage vulnerable communities. As businesses reopen, pollution surges. How can we be healthy in a poisoned world?
I have always loved the Zen koan that says, If you ask the right question you don't need an answer. The question that taps its foot in my mind is, What are the conditions required for thriving? By this I mean the conditions for the vibrant thriving of all Life, from the Natural World to the people in the house next door. As a garden grows, so grows the world: when the soil is healthy, everything blooms. Healthy soil means healthy plants means healthy climate means healthy humans. Once the conditions for thriving are in place, plants, animals and people know what to do. Those that are suffering know what they need.
What an opportunity this is, unique to the moment, to clean up our act and listen with an open heart - to each other and to Nature. To convene conversations, large and small, and find our way forward, together. And yet, as people cry out, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle refuse to tear the edifice of democracy down to the rafters of endemic racism that the world and this nation were built on. Our country's symbolic mother is absent. The father offers no words of reassurance, focusing, instead, on power and profit.
Love isn't blind. Greed is. Even the heavens, it seems, are ready for change.
