Have you ever had one of those days where you feel dissatisfied with everything? That was my day yesterday. I don’t know why; certainly nothing terrible happened in my life, but there I was: restless, distracted, dissatisfied.
I was dissatisfied with the weather, my self, the state of the house, the state of the gardens, the state of the world. Nothing felt right, nothing felt like it fit, nothing felt like the world I want.
Everything changes and is changing. This is as it is; as it has always been and always will be forever and ever, amen. Once upon a time, there was no Milky Way, no sun, no solar system, no earth. Then something happened and that something changed nothing into possibility, and over unimaginable time possibility became building blocks, and the building blocks became energy, gases, then solids and liquids, then stars were born, and rocky and gaseous planets began to orbit those stars, and this rocky planet formed as its surface cooled, and then (miraculously, because isn’t science miraculous after all?) water, and an atmosphere, then (miraculously) single cells, then strings of cells, then life in warm, salty oceans, then extinction events, then soil, and rain, and life on land, then fish, plants, reptiles, dinosaurs, more extinction events, then mammals and apes and us, and now even more extinction events.
So, once upon a time, and for an immeasurable amount of time, we humans did not exist, and now we do, and the future, well … who knows. Not me, though I am not reassured by our current choices.
A friend and I had tea at my dining room table earlier this week and we talked about change and how necessary, life-giving, and creative it is. We spoke about how we all say we want change, but mostly we don’t want it and we actively resist it; or we want change if it brings us back to the way things were once; or we want others to change, but we do not want to have to change at all within ourselves.
We talked about her new book (which I have ordered, and will read, and will write to you all about in the near future.) Her book is about change and creative disruption and activism. She is a brilliant woman with years of activism, ministry, and leadership in her own history. Our conversation gave me heart.
A couple weeks ago I had chai with another friend at another table in a small cafe here in central Connecticut and we spoke about imagining, then creating, a future we actually want: a future of justice, equity, compassion, integrity, and care for the common good. We spoke about all the letting go that change entails. We spoke about reengaging our individual and collective imaginations to create new ways to be in a rapidly changing world. This friend is also an activist, a minister, and a visionary. Our conversation gave me heart.
A couple weeks before that, though in the same cafe, a different friend and I sipped chai (for me) and coffee (for him) and spoke about how we might begin to create a network of resilience across our town and region. And that conversation also gave me heart.
When I have times of dissatisfaction I know that change has been brewing and percolating within me and is about to rise to the surface of my life in new ways. It is time to begin inter-imagining (imagining with others) the world we want. How this happens will depend on who the imaginers are, I suspect. What gives me heart in all of this is there are (I imagine) more people wanting a peaceful, just, healthy, locally resilient and regenerative world than there are people who want a violent, unjust, unhealthy, fear-based, socially-fragile world. May I be right about that, and may we come together to imagine, and build, the world we actually want instead of the world we have been sold as inevitable. May it be so.
Courage my dears. Let me know if you are interested in imagining with me. Love one another.
