by Margaret Swedish
Okay, this time I'm serious. I must start writing again. I have so much brewing inside, so much from my past, from my personal history, that shines some light on this moment in our western culture's history, so much I have let go from old belief systems that I have shed, that needed shedding, so I could see more clealy, and now from spiritual practices and insights emerging in this time of vast and often terrifying upheaval. So, too, of these recent years back in my hometown, what I am learning from returning to my roots after 25 years in the DC area, and my life with street folks and Chileans in Montreal in years before that, and before that, in the streets of Milwaukee and of Boulder CO during my university days, protesting the Vietnam War and marching for civil rights.
And I just keep learning...
Now, in the face of accelerating political and social crises, the dangers of world war, the cultural chaos that is leading to the collapse of our governing institutions, and all the ecological unravelings happening all at once, including my own unraveling as I age and struggle with lethal disease, this is the time for a real shout-out to the world. People, wake up!
As a nation, we are underestimating in the extreme how bad this is going to get. And, because of that, we are not preparing as we need to to take on the challenges. We do not yet have the psychological capacity, nor the spiritual stamina, to live through what's coming with our humanity intact. That will only come when we are truly prepared to surrender the very ways of life that are bringing about this great upheaval, when our values change from consumption, accumulation, and affluence to community and simplicity in all things, to living in deep relation with Nature in which we are fully embedded, when care for the Web of Life matters more than economic or financial "success," when that care becomes the reason we get out of bed in the morning, the core meaning of what it means now to work in the world, the core meaning of what it is to be a human being.
What a time on this planet and in this dysfunctional culture to start writing again! But if we reach deep into that core to rediscover our humanity in the face of a culture that has been busy destroying it, perhaps we can find the path to how to live through this devastating transition with compassion, generosity, gentleness, integrity, and a deeper experience of the spirit and of community than we have ever known.
So, you can see where I left off in this last essay a couple of years ago. And you can see how the election of the wannabe dictator and the pandemic and then my own illness quieted my voice for a good long time. But a renewed surge of energy and inspiration is telling me it's time to get back to this, that the various lenses of my life's work and evolving faith have something to offer to this moment - about what went wrong and what we need to do to right this ailing species of ours. As a colleague said in a recent Zoom call, "We got it all wrong!" Indeed we did. We need to finally free our minds and hearts from the clutter of the values of this economic growth culture and start to see clearly what we need to do to live on this precious planet that is being rapidly diminished by the 6th Great Extinction, massive loss of biodiversity, our over-consuming at a massive scale the resources that this planet actually has to support us, climate change, the toxification of our environment, and a whole lot more.
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| Light at the end of the tunnel |
It's a grand scale for a writer, but I'm going to dig in. Whatever the limits of my physical life now, I can sit at a laptop and write my heart out for months or years or whatever I have left to make my offering.
Hope you'll go on this journey with me. And I hope you might invite others to join you by letting them know about this blog and getting the link out into your communities and networks. We could actually have a conversation here. We could multiply the lenses through which more people are doing clear seeing. We could share best and deepest spiritual wisdom and practices. We could contribute to the urgent work of creating the Beloved Community wherever we are.
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