(Read with apologies for several verbal stumbles and pauses)
The world burns, and I receive emails for shoes I do not need.
The Middle East and Eastern Europe are at war (not with each other, but with my own country feeding the conflicts, and taking the wrong sides (in my opinion,)) and I order soft neck garlic bulbs to try for the first time here in my “USDA Hardiness Zone 6” gardens.
Central Europe bakes and thirsts along with the burning; the Pacific west of the North American Continent joins that terrible party, and the smoke drifts towards New England once again; all this as I prepare to vacation for several days.
A soaking rain is predicted here this week; maybe some flooding, too, while the US West is in a state of “mega-drought,” and in Great Britain “hosepipe” watering is banned, while in France laws are passed that make it illegal to provide water for wildlife, though not to the monoculture fields of corn. People in power seem to always make poor decisions that compound the problems they create in the first place.
The world as we have known it is gone. I know that is a bleak statement, but it is simply the truth. We are in a new era that we have created and hastened, and now don’t know how to live in. We keep waiting for the season to change, for the next election, for the climate to right itself so we can go back to “normal.” The issue is that that normal no longer exists. The new normal, which is still building and revealing itself, is only extreme: extreme is all we can count on.
To my great sadness and dismay, world politics seem to be following the weather. The political climate is as terrifying as the planet’s weather. People in power make bad decisions seemingly at every single opportunity to do so.
There are two distinct types of human power that I have noticed: power that is held over others, and power that empowers others.
The first is the type of power we are most used to: this is the power that enriches the few through the impoverishing labor of the many. This is the power that sends other people’s children off to die in wars that are only projections of “powerful” men’s fears and egos. This is the power that divides, derides, and destroys. This power comes from fear. It is insatiable. It is violent. It creates hierarchies. It builds walls. It is power given by, or coerced from, the people, and then held over them. But the human spirit will not be held down for long; always it rises. Always, “power-over” ends, though it never ends well.
The second type of power is less flashy, more stable, enduring, resilient, organic, and much more abundant. It is power that is like the proverbial mustard seed. This second type of power is authentic, it comes from within us all. It is the power to self-actualize as individuals, communities; even as communities around the world.
This quieter power is collaborative, visionary, peaceful, and it understands justice as healing (not punishment and reward.) It is present in those who seek and work towards a healed planet, a loving society, a flowering of peace on Earth. I see it all the time, not in the news, of course, which loves sensationalism, but in the kindness of people to one another, to our sister and brother creatures, to the Earth Herself.
I hear it in the keening of those who grieve, in the lullabies sung to new babies, in the prayers said with those suffering, or with those whose souls are letting go of this life. I hear it in the encouraging, inspiring, truth-telling (even when the truth is sad, painful, angry, hard,) words of writers, ministers, people of faith, people who bring the good into the world, people who have decided to love even as hate becomes the currency of the human-world.
The human-world we set in motion is come to entropy. What we saw as order, has become chaos.
The planet’s systems are immense and complicated, and human beings can never master or tame them. Trying to be gods always ends badly, yet those who lust for power never seem to learn. We are not the alphas of the natural world, and in pretending to be so, we have only become the omega. We have undone a climate that was temperate, and predictable; a climate that allowed us to settle into place, to tend the land, and develop societies. What is coming now is hard to imagine, hard to plan for, but it is coming anyway.
Will we meet this new future with the power of love, or will we resist and destroy ourselves? It is up to us, individually and communally. Our choice will determine the future. Make your choice. Please, choose well.
Courage my dears. Love one another.
