WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
“Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”
― Oscar Wilde
Veggie street troughs, walls of algae. Serve yourself sides, pay in plant sweet-talk.
Chips in pets replace leash & cage. Suffering is shunned. Fauna, food no more.
Home-labs grow burgers. Nutrition’s our medicine. Sugar forgotten.
In e-dance centres, acid tests, aya bubbles: souls sprout & entwine.
Minds trip in dream dens, entanglement space travel: new realms, our neighbours.
Knowledge downloaded, inner children learn release. Shadows are embraced.
Higher selves are whole. Basic income guaranteed, everyone creates.
Art swings in fruit trees, chalks foot paths, adorns fences: Civic galleries.
Lyrics write through us, riffs dispensed to fingertips. Collective songs mix.
Sexual slant & gender, flow. Words inadequate, we just choose colours to fit.
Tough kids tantra hard. Sex became divinity, porn became a bore.
Vulnerable’s hot. Love is unconditional, constellations taught.
Holographic shops sate fashion’s craze without trash. Skirts for all, of course.
Cells regenerate. Pharma drugs & crime outdate. Now, we meditate.
Oceans replenished. Free energy accomplished. Human, nature, one.
Our Finest Hour, If We Choose
Our Finest Hour, If We Choose
Expert management is saving lives in this crisis. But we lack leadership. Understanding the difference reveals how leaders create meaning and a better future, even—especially—in our deepest crises.
New York City’s lights went out just after 4pm, August 14, 2003. At first we only knew our office went dark. We looked to each other, then out the window to find the whole city dark. The summer heat crept in. Realizing the futility of staying indoors, we walked 18 flights down and started home.
Power returned piecemeal over the next couple days. During the current multi-year global pandemic, a brief regional problem may seem minor, but so close to September 11th’s second anniversary and so close to ground zero—who knew if terrorists were behind it? What might come next?
We felt lost. Even then, we relied on the internet and our devices, suddenly useless. How would we connect? Would people loot or riot? Could planes land? What held society together? We had to solve many urgent, important problems: to drive without traffic lights, to reach loved ones, and to report emergencies, among others.
Life returned to normal, but for weeks, first seeing neighbors, we asked each other’s stories. To my surprise, nearly all resulted in community and connection. Stockbrokers danced around bonfires in parks with the homeless. Restaurants hosted feasts of food before it spoiled. I hitched a ride to my girlfriend’s.
Making do without technology taught me that many technologies advertised to connect actually separate. Disconnected, we met neighbors. We talked. We interacted. We were pleasantly surprised to find that we liked each other.
The experience led me to choose social media, smartphones, and planes less; farmers markets and walking more. My relationships grew closer and more meaningful. I act more and react less. I learned from later thoughtful reflection. Not everyone reflected, though. People are busy.
But leadership in crises goes beyond the personal. The Cuban Missile Crisis risked hundreds of millions of lives. Imagine you were John Kennedy. You became President just after Fidel Castro rejected elections, signaling totalitarianism. You had learned from World War II never to appease dictators. Experts including the CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend you invade. Why not follow their advice?
Kennedy did, in what become known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion. It resulted in fiasco. What might you learn from this failure? To invade better?
Kennedy went further. He recruited leadership experts to train him not just to follow or manage experts, but to lead them. For example, he learned to value viewpoint diversity, seek rival experts, and promote discussion.
18 months later the U.S. discovered the Soviet Union installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Again, experts advised Kennedy to invade before they believed they could become operational—within days. What else could you do? Kennedy instead used what he learned after the Bay of Pigs. He assembled a team with diverse views—hawks, doves, and more—to discuss. They resolved the crisis without invading.
Today we know the missiles were armed. Invading better might have motivated Castro to launch.
In other words, abdicating leading can increase risk to the highest levels. No risk, however great, justifies neglecting leadership during a crisis. Kennedy’s words after the Cuban Missile Crisis resonate today, “Let us not be blind to our differences—but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”
In today’s pandemic, expert management is saving lives. It creates ventilators and quarantines. But I see little leadership like Kennedy showed in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Nobody yet knows what we can learn from this pandemic. We never will if we don’t reflect, ask hard questions, and discuss answers with people with diverse views. If Kennedy could with missiles minutes away, we can now. We’ve neglected to reflect and lead for decades despite clear predictions of greater pandemics and environmental catastrophe to come. Nature keeps showing the predictions accurate.
If our greatest lesson from this pandemic is to stock more ventilators, we learned wrong. We got lucky on our first global pandemic with one that motivates compliance. Future disasters that deplete food, water, or other resources will promote conflict, even war. Like pandemics, they are a matter of when, not if.
Responding to them as Kennedy did in the Bay of Pigs may lead to Cuban Missile Crisis-scale consequences. Historians identify the Bay of Pigs as a failure that taught us to succeed when stakes were higher. Leadership can make COVID-19 our environmental Bay of Pigs.
History shows examples we can learn from of leadership under crises on COVID-19 scale. After the Miracle of Dunkirk, Winston Churchill reminded us that “We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.” Is our greatest goal in COVID-19 merely to mitigate disaster without addressing its cause? Or can we make it a new start, replacing profligate, self-indulgent waste with stewardship and service? Of humbly seeing ourselves within nature, not separate? Of taking responsibility for our behavior affecting others?
We know what causes viruses to mutate and jump to humans, such as encroaching on wildlife territory, densely packing domesticated animals, overpopulation, and overtraveling—practices we are increasing. Should we decrease them? Do we continue allowing factory farms to pass costs of their “efficiencies” to us? Is saving a few cents per pound of meat worth trillions of dollars of stimulus and hundreds of thousands of lives? What are laws for if not to regulate behavior that hurts others?
Imprisoned on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela learned Afrikaans, the language of his imprisoners, not to defeat them but to lead them to help defeat Apartheid together. Is nature our enemy? Or our ally against beliefs that we can separate from or dominate it? Are individual actions pointless or can one person inspire the world?
Should we consider acting on overpopulation and overtraveling? Do we value Beijing’s clear skies, Venice’s clear canals, and rediscovering connection through struggle in service of others enough to change a culture that discounts the effects of pollution on others we can’t see? We find we can reduce polluting behavior to protect our own health. If we find a vaccine, will we continue healthier behavior, only in stewardship, not self-preservation?
Kennedy’s quote above continued, presciently, “For, in the final analysis, our most common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
Many have died. Many are suffering. More will come. Is it fair to have to fix problems others started? Is it fair that past generations could do in blissful ignorance things that, if we act responsibly, we must forego? Martin Luther King implored us to “continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.”
Effective leadership can help us create meaning from suffering. In the absence of leadership, confusion, anger and fear arise. Politicians who lead can inspire unity, dedication to service, and cultural transformation, as we saw after Pearl Harbor and on missions to the Moon.
Businesspeople who lead can transform markets from ‘serving growth’ to serving people and communities, like Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard. Educators who lead can go beyond ‘teaching to the test’ to teaching life skills and resilience, such as Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy. Community organizers who lead can build regenerative solutions and civic pride, like Stanley McChrystal proposes in his civilian service year.
Everyone reading these words has the potential to lead others in their families, communities, organizations, and institutions. If we only hope to maintain behaviors that stop polluting Beijing skies and other results of global cooperation, we can expect these behaviors to disappear when the incentives do. If we learn to lead and lead, we can build on them, perhaps to move to a society built on stewardship, responsibility, and service. Such a result could give today’s suffering meaning.
Wall Street to Main Street to World Street
Wall Street to Main Street to World Street
The doomsayers work by extrapolation; they take a trend and extend it, forgetting that the doom factor, sooner or later, generates a coping mechanism. You cannot extrapolate any series in which the human element intrudes. History, that is, the human narrative never follows, and will always fool the scientific curve. -Barbara Tuchman
Some say the economic apocalypse is upon us.
The Covid-19 global pandemic that escalated in March, was followed in June by mass protests, massive unemployment, thousands of businesses bankrupt or closing permanently, long lines at food banks, over 100,000 deaths in the United States alone, healthcare workers pushed to the brink by the virus, contradictory state and federal leadership, escalating tensions with China, and deteriorating relations with Russia over election meddling. Amid these chaotic events, the US Presidential Election is coming up this November.
It is as disheartening as it is chilling to see this misery. – is America falling apart?
Disasters have turned into financial panics before, often when leaders lose their way. Yet, when viewed in a larger context, we see that extreme situations do not last. No trend is endless. It helps me to remember the words of Abraham Lincoln, ‘This too shall pass.’ Leaving us, of course, to make sense of the new landscape.
A literary work that symbolizes the current situation for me is Lewis Carroll’s, Alice in Wonderland, written in 1865. Alice falls through a rabbit hole into a subterranean world. There, Alice worries about what final size she will end up being, engaging in a quest for identity and growth, and pondering the logic of rules, the games people play, authority, time, and deal-making.
We are on a similar quest to understand our global economy, and the unsettling disconnects between Wall Street, Main Street, and what I call World Street.
WALL STREET
Growing Up in Manila, the only ‘bears’ I saw were in pictures. And a bull to me was the Philippine water buffalo called carabao. I didn’t know a bull and bear could mean anything else in the investment world of the 1960’s when the market was riding high.
The 60’s were the ‘go-go’ years of super-performing money managers, youth revolution, the conglomerates, creative accounting, new issue stocks, and the growing power of institutional investors and traders. America’s economic might made it the leader the West. Then, in December 1968 the Dow Jones fell 36%.
Right around that time, I was appointed director of investment research and assistant treasurer at the Ford Foundation, the first woman and youngest officer in the Foundation’s history. For the next seven years, I served as manager of the Foundation’s research staff and spurred the globalization of its $3 billion portfolio by investing $150 million into the Japanese market, as well as other foreign markets.
Ever since the 1970’s, Wall Street and financial services around the world have been characterized by a sharp intensification of competition and a rapid transformation of markets. The end of the Cold War and the spread of globalization which started in the 1980’s and the rise of China as an emerging superpower all happened within just 33 years. But the globalization boom, like the stock market boom and economic boom, was also followed by a bust.
Twelve years ago, in the years 2008-2009, when the worst financial and economic crisis gripped the global economy, the world was in a state of shock and made the case for urgent reforms. But instead, the markets had a powerful bull market rally for 11 years which just ended in March 2020 after the pandemic crisis hit the US and the market lost a third of its value.
Since its gut-wrenching selloff in March, the market has rocketed and recovered more than half its losses with its ‘V-shaped’ recovery as of this writing. This rosy view from Wall Street should make us uneasy since it is a world away from life on Main Street with the highest unemployment in 80 years, the risk of a second wave of infections looming, and civil unrest.
Wall Street’s stock market is not the economy of Main Street and while Wall Street and the financial system is an essential part of any market economy, it is a complex and fragile network of trust. The lesson of the current financial crisis is that such networks are prone to abuse and then to collapse. So, now what?
The late John Templeton, who achieved a remarkable investor’s record said that if you begin with prayer, you can think more clearly and make fewer stupid mistakes.
Some might scoff at such a sentiment, but the challenges of the coming decades make the case not only for urgent reform, but for a more conscious, even ‘spiritualized’ financial system. The principle of caveat emptor – ‘let the buyer beware’ does not work anymore. People need protection from predatory practices and renewed trust in corporate governance. Regulators need to watch the buildup of leverage. And companies need to be accountable once again. Capitalism has always evolved and is capable of doing so now. The test will be determined by what we value and how we act.
Here is a table on the global investment landscape that notes key trends and themes from 1945 to a future timeline ending 2025. These changes are leading to the emergence of more dynamic markets, quite distinct from previous decades.
Source | Clemente Advisors, LLC and ETF Asia Analytics Inc., June 2020
So where do we go now, Wall Street?
Given the trends and investment themes in the Phase V Timeline, from 2020 to 2025, meaningful growth and progress will require new ways of thinking. Corporate growth and strong Wall Street markets have been engines of progress, yet the same engines have created or contributed to the biggest obstacles we face today – income disparity and environmental degradation. It is past time for Wall Street businesses to look beyond quarterly profits and act in the interests of society.
Imagine investing in job training for the underserved, or conserving key forests and other habitats for future generations, or in bioregional enterprises that are regenerative. These are examples of social impact investing today. New investment structures and partnerships with nonprofit organizations, government agencies and Small Business Administrations (SBAs) are offering creative opportunities at all scales, local to global.
We are in the midst of a demographic shift in the US and globally. Millennials born in 1981-1997 are the largest living generation in US history, alongside Baby Boomers reaching retirement. Millennials will account for 75% of the labor force by 2025 and will hold about $68 trillion in wealth by 2030 as a result of intergenerational wealth transfers, or inheritance. US Millennials are on the verge of becoming big players in the global investment landscape. They identify as global citizens, as they consume, borrow, invest, save, and unleash funding for social and environmental causes. Millennial investing will drive change and present numerous opportunities for companies, industries and financial services.
Slower growth and the rise of emerging and frontier Asian markets, deep investment in solar and regenerative technologies, and the empowerment of women and millennial inheritors all spell hope for a future economic landscape that is more cooperative and collaborative, focused on people, planet and purpose rather than profit alone.
MAIN STREET
Social distancing and national lockdowns, travel bans and halted tourism, business and school closures, volatile markets – recent circumstances defy comparison to crises of the past. Made more complex by its speed and global scale, this pandemic is unlike anything we have witnessed in our lifetimes.
All countries face the threat of a global healthcare crisis, economic recession, and financial meltdown. And decisions made now can be life or death ones. As long as the rate of COVID diagnosis continues to increase, business will be impaired, markets will be volatile and forecasting hazardous. Much of our hope lies in the medical profession with scientists and drug companies racing to find vaccines and anti-viral treatments.
How bad is it? In the midst of a downturn on Main Street, describing severity is a real challenge – things are changing so fast that the traditional data and economic metrics cannot keep up. What are the real numbers on poverty and inequality? And what is happening to America’s shrinking middle class?
The US government has passed several relief packages to address the effects of the coronavirus, spending about $3 trillion, (more than 10% of the real GDP) on loans and grants for businesses to maintain payrolls and rent payments, as well as to prop up severely depressed industries like airlines. The US Federal Reserve also injected 2.3 trillion of liquidity into the monetary system to help keep order and support financial conditions. But are these the best tools at hand? Is the relief even going to the right places? This is where moral leadership is required.
The missing link in this free market fundamentalism is the recognition, central to capitalism that business has greater responsibility than bottom-line profits. Adam Smith, a founder of modern capitalism, understood that economic freedom can’t flourish without a strong moral foundation. Yet, we see examples of capitalism without a conscience everywhere -environmental pollution, unfair hiring and working conditions, sale of dangerous products, and so on.
And what about our extensive and dilapidated infrastructure in the US? Take a ride on our pothole-filled roads and decaying bridges and tunnels built during Roosevelt’s New Deal. The late Felix Rohatyn’s book, Bold Endeavors; How our Government Built America and Why It Must Rebuild sums it up; The aging of our nation’s infrastructure has lessened our productivity, undermined our ability to compete in the global economy, shaken our perceptions about our own health and safety, and damaged the quality of American life. And then there is the state of our children’s education. Historically, education has been a great equalizer but we’ve slipped further and further behind in the global ranking.
Yes, times are hard with this 2020 recession and contrary to what pundits say, fixing up Main Street’s economy will take time and won’t look like the sharp recovery shapes of V, L, U. What are we going to do about it? We cannot just rely on government to fix things.
We need to begin in the places where we live. What do we want the ‘new normal’ to look like? Look around. What is the condition of our local and bioregional food and water system? How do we currently meet our needs as a community? Is there economic opportunity for everyone and help for those most at-risk? Are local businesses, schools, and organizations supported? Are parks, waterways and wildlife protected? This is where we need to invest time and creativity, as well as social, spiritual, and financial capital.
When viewed in a more local context, many of our problems are manageable. As we shift from ‘me’ to ‘we’, people-powered movements are gaining momentum around the world. When we begin to invest in these efforts across time and space, the opportunities to build a new kind of capitalism is unlimited. The time to start is now.
WORLD STREET
Today’s global economy is genuinely borderless. Information, capital and innovation flow from all over the world, enabled by technology. The torrential cross-border flow of capital is breaking down barriers across cultures, minds and yes, hearts. Time and distance continually shrink, compelling people to explore their differences.
Several sets of processes co-exist – localizing, regionalizing, internationalizing, globalizing. We live in a world of increasing interconnectedness as well as volatility; a world in which the lives and livelihoods of every one of us are bound up with processes operating at larger geographical scales.
Such a system has to be built on a world trading system that is equitable and must involve major reform of such institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), World Bank, and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Trade is one of the most effective ways to enhance wellbeing, when it is conducted fairly, and when poorer countries are allowed to open up their markets in a manner appropriate to their needs and condition. The major challenge is to meet the material needs of the global community as a whole, in ways that reduce, rather than increase inequality and to do so while protecting and regenerating ecosystems. That is, of course, easier said than done since it requires the cooperation of multiple participants – businesses, nations and international civil society in establishing mechanisms to capture gains of globalization for the majority and not just for the powerful few.
Although difficult, such policies are not impossible if the social and political will is there. The imperatives are both practical and moral.
But when the poorest people are fed a steady diet of media glorifying immense wealth and fame it does no good to support social and political stability. It is utterly repellent to me that so many live in deprivation while others live in luxury. We need the will to express what we value, create the narratives that reinforce those values, and live them.
International financial flows and foreign currency transactions have reached unprecedented levels. They easily dwarf the value of international trade and manufactured goods and other services and have done so at an increasing rate over the past three decades. Today in the context of globalization, the tension has become especially acute as nations see traditional control of their monetary affairs threatened by external market forces. The periodic financial crises that have engulfed some or all parts of the world economy serve to intensify these tensions and create legitimate fears over the accountability and responsibility of financial institutions.
The global integration of financial markets brings many benefits to participants in terms of accuracy of information flows and speed of transactions across the world in different time zones. But such global integration and instantaneous trading also has its costs. We experience ‘shocks’ which occur in one geographical market and spread instantaneously around the world, creating the potential for global financial instability. Financial ‘contagion’ is endemic in the structure and operation of the contemporary global financial system. Although many of the restrictions still exist, the regulatory walls have been crumbling, even collapsing altogether in some cases.
CONCLUSIONS
My field, global investing provides me with a window on the world that gives me connections between people and events, between reason and intuition, between the past, present and the future. And being a Filipino-American with multi-cultural heritage provides me with the eyes to see such connections globally.
Recently, the character and tempo for globalization has changed. Even before the pandemic crisis of 2020, globalization was in trouble. When did the slowdown begin? The open system of trade that had dominated the world economy for decades was damaged by the financial crash of 2008 and the China-American trade war. The pandemic shock now ripping through business is daunting, with countries accounting for over 50% of the world GDP in national lockdown.
Yet, Wall Street analysts expect only a slight dip in profits in 2020, given the fact that few public listed firms have made public their calculations on the damage caused by the lockdown. Don’t be fooled by this. In this downturn, falls of over 50% will be common with empty streets and factory shutdowns. Trade is suffering from disrupted global supply chains as well as the flow of capital, as long-term capital sinks. And by attempting to pay off new debts by taxing firms and investors, some countries may be tempted to restrict flow of capital across borders. Global firms may be less profitable.
As economies re-open, please don’t expect a quick return to a carefree world of free trade. Movement of people and goods face restrictions in travel and immigration, which will affect the ability to find work. Like all crises, the Covid-19 calamity will pass and hopefully needed changes will be made. History usually does not evolve in an orderly way. It often leaps forward in disorderly jumps. We are having a crash course in digital currencies, e-commerce and isolated work from home.
In an increasingly complex society, old ways are no longer guaranteed to work. Values are the emotional rules by which a nation governs itself. Values summarize the accumulated wisdom by which a society organizes and disciplines itself. Our values and goals are the precious reminders that individuals obey to bring order and meaning into their personal lives.
The wakeup call in this current pandemic is the movement toward commitment to shared values and goals.
What should these goals be? Nationally, there must be a demand for public service, to see society protected and social injustices addressed. There should be encouragement to blow the whistle on wrongdoing. Individually we must develop compassion, willingness to work, loyalty and love of family and friends and commitment to communities and organizations, as well as the courage to face temporary defeat. Treat all people with justice. Look after your own health and that of others. And we’ve got to keep reviewing and updating our value decisions regularly.
Today’s economic crisis is smaller than that of 1930’s—so far. Yet it is a major event in our lifetimes, with resulting shifts in geopolitical economic power. Whether this brings forth ‘urgent reforms’ in the near term remains unclear. But transformation to a more conscious, collaborative economic future is possible if we have the will to seize it. The new decade is here and it will never, ever be business-as-usual again.
Remember the words of Rabindranath Tagore, “Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them.”
Gazing Into the Heart of Perfection
Gazing Into the Heart of Perfection
You’re all over the place
You’re all over the place
An endless Eden.
Until I take one of you aside.
Gazing deeply,
I see you for the first time.
It takes time
to know you.
I’ll stay.
-Harold Feinstein
Red Ranunculus, 2003
Stamen Wreath, 2004
“I first began shooting flowers in the mid 80′s. I would go up to the roof of my small Greenwich Village studio and hold blossoms up against the sky to see the translucence of the petals. That series of 35mm photographs was entitled Sky Flowers and I had many of them printed as dye transfers and cibachromes.
In the late 90′s I began to experiment with digital photography and became one of the first to use a scanner as a camera. This resulted in seven books of large format color photographs and the Smithsonian Computer World Award for digital photography in 2000.
During the production of my first book, One Hundred Flowers, I became so absorbed by the flowers that I would awake at night and write short poems inspired by them. This soon became my collection I call, A Garden of Psalms. Here is one of them:
You would not contain yourself!
All that light
All that love.
In a sun,
In a galaxy,
In a flower.
Some call it the big bang.
LIFE Magazine later created a short video of my flower photographs using the same title.”
White Yellow Zinnia, 2003
A Garden of Psalms (transcript from video)
“I did not consider myself religious when I was younger, but in this journey with the flowers — which I truly believe to be messengers from God — I began to see God’s work all over. Looking at a flower closely, no matter how wild or wondrous your imagination is, just what exists in the flowers we see is such a miracle. It’s a gift…and honoring the gift with your work is your responsibility or the way of showing your gratitude.
And so the simple technique that I teach my students is: “When your mouth drops open, click the shutter?” And it is this shock of recognition, this joy, this wonder that shows itself in great art. To me photography is a way to do just that; to call out in a moment of awe: “Will you look at that! Will you look at that!”
Getting people to receive…to see the gifts they’ve been given.. life itself! Life along the roadside, with the flowers and the weeds, and the pebbles and the trees, and the sounds of birds! And looking up and seeing the clouds, the light and the shadows. We’re surrounded! We’re in it! And did you know that the Persian word for paradise means “an enclosed garden?” We’re in paradise, and we don’t see you and we don’t see it. What a waste. Wake up! Wake up!”
Yellow Vermillion Gerber, 2006
“Oh God! I just want to pay tribute to it all! I want to exclaim and proclaim and sing the joyous sounds of tribute and awe to all that my eyes behold!
Whatever is within the flowers is within us. We are a part of this universe! Whether I’m looking at a human hand or looking the galaxies of shooting stars or the flight of a bird…something marvelous is going on and I’m part of it. We’re all part of it!”
More by Harold Feinstein
Pink Ranunculus, 2004
Ordinary Grace
Fear came knocking, faith opened the door, but no one was there.
—Chinese proverb
I recall a Haida elder taking me on a short hike inland from the eastern coast of Vancouver Island to see the end of the swimmer, his name for salmon. It was a magical place. We followed a stream in which the salmon were so thick that I’m sure I could walk across the stream on their backs and not get my boots wet. In a quiet green pool, female salmon were laying their eggs, waiting for the males to cover them with milt. Eagles were perched in every cedar, fir, and spruce surrounding the pool. We hiked back to the coast and sat on the rocks at the edge of a stony beach where orcas come close into shore to rub themselves along the smooth pebbled bottom. The elder spoke to me of the swimmer. “Fred, you understand that the swimmer dies after spending himself completely for the end for which he is made.” Then he looked at me and, without speaking, asked me, “Can you be like the swimmer and spend your life completely for the end for which you are created?”
His question is not a vague abstract attitude toward humanity in general but points to a single meeting in which the miracle of life is shared. I recalled Jesus’ teaching, ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Mathew 22:37). And words by Rabi’a al-Adawiyya, an eighth-century Islamic saint,
“How can you describe the true form of something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?”
The elder reminded me of Paul. Paul was in my kindergarten class. He had leukemia. His doctors and parents were afraid that rambunctious play would hasten his death. So, for six months I included Paul in our play in a variety of ways so that he didn’t get tired. For example, when we went outside to play, I carried him around the playground on my shoulders or he rode on my back when I was a horse.
One day about six months into the school year, Paul came to me and asked me to invite his parents to school for a meeting. The four of us met the following afternoon. Paul was in charge of the meeting. He spoke calmly and clearly. “I want to play with Fred. I know that I’m not going to live as long as the three of you. But I want to live my life as if I were.” There were three crying adults in the room with a four-year-old “therapist.” Paul went to each of us and sat in our laps hugging us. Paul knew what he was asking. I don’t know how we did it, because we never talked, but we agreed that Paul could come and play.
When he came to school the following day, it was like letting a tornado into the classroom. He was very excited and his play was exuberant, passionate, and joyful. He was exhausted by the end of the morning. He stayed home and rested the next day. Because he played so hard when he came to school, Paul could come only every other day. About a month later, Paul died of leukemia. At the funeral, his parents and I asked each other if we had done the right thing by letting him play. We agreed that it was the right thing to do. That night I thought about what Paul taught me. Paul’s trust was not in me, himself, or mom and dad; it was how he lived. Some would say that he trusted in God; Paul never used the word. Paul knew what he was doing. He chose to play and die rather than live and not play.
Such moments stand out now like lighthouses on some far distant shores guiding me gracefully into unknown encounters that cannot be found by seeking. Playing with Paul I felt the joy and sadness, the richness and spontaneity, and the tragic poignancy of childhood. A childhood that each year, bit by bit, slips away beyond memory and is gone. Paul invited me to join him. The simple, overwhelming truth is that exploring the unknowns in a child’s play becomes an exploration of an immense unknown within myself.
Paul was a fault line in my life. Nothing in my life was the same after playing with Paul. I had been living on the far side of a broken connection with self, other, and God. I was broken and Paul helped fix me. Aljebr in Arabic means “reuniting broken parts.” A similar idea is expressed in the Kabbalistic ideal of tikkun olam, “repairing the world.” In Japanese the word kintsukuroi means “golden repair.” The idea central to these phrases is a process of repairing what has been broken. In Japanese pottery, every crack is part of the history of the object, and it becomes more beautiful precisely because it has been broken. These cracks are repaired with gold. Love is creation’s repair process in which our flaws are repaired with love instead of gold.
I have often thought about Paul and how he taught me to love fully, right now. His choice is an act of trust in life, which is given in trust. I have come to understand that when a heart is humble enough to live without fear, it is the first faint stirrings of life’s beauty seeking flesh and blood expression. Paul’s courage demonstrates that trusting in love is not merely a nice idea nor an ideal, but a no-nonsense way of living one’s ordinary life. Paul was a swimmer.
The Labyrinth and the Black Madonna
The Labyrinth and the Black Madonna
When I was a nineteen-year-old architecture student I spent two weeks in Chartres Cathedral, studying the labyrinth. Most visiting Chartres are there only for a few hours—they are struck by its beauty, its perfect stained-glass windows, its sculptures which are some of the finest medieval art. They sense the holiness of this ancient pre-Christian site, which belonged to the Earth Mother, the Black Virgin, before it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. But to spend two weeks inside this building is a very different experience, and I found myself completely immersed in sacred space. Chartres was the “blue-print cathedral” for the Gothic movement, and is an almost perfect geometric and harmonic creation. (One of the spiritual centers of medieval Europe, Chartres had an esoteric mystery school that taught sacred geometry as well as sacred music.) There is even a tradition that the stained-glass was made by alchemists, transmuting the light. Chartres Cathedral is an instrument designed to attune the soul of the worshiper, harmonizing the energies of heaven and earth.
We stayed in the nunnery next door, and, together with a friend, I worked to accurately measure the labyrinth—a circular mandala-pattern, forty feet in diameter, depicted in blue and white stones near the west door. We moved away the chairs and spent hours following this ancient circuitous pattern that images the journey of the soul, the path to the center of the psyche.[1] Medieval pilgrims would kneel their way round the labyrinth’s maze until they reached the center, where they would find an image of the Minotaur (removed at the time of Napoleon), and then turn and look up at the magnificent west rose window, whose twelve-fold mandala images the heart center with luminous beauty.
While there, one evening we witnessed the arrival of hundreds of students who had walked down from Paris. They surrounded the cathedral, joining hands, and then entering the nave, each person holding a candle—an individual and collective prayer. This simple and powerful image reaches me now half a century later, as a pandemic and ongoing social injustices call out for prayer, for our shared humanity. And this image of the labyrinth also speaks to the journey we are on—individually and together—a journey that takes us step by step back to the center, where we confront the beast of the Minotaur and then turn to the beauty of the heart.
The coronavirus has faced us with our darkest fears, sickness and death, and also shown us our shared humanity that has come together in this crisis—the single lights of care and compassion, that link together to form a community of love and support. And we have also had to face the breakdown of our economic system, so fragile it seems to be blown over by the breath of a virus, leaving millions unemployed, day-laborers destitute and hungry, food lines growing. Despite all the warning of a possible pandemic, there was no “plan B,” just the defenses of denial by authoritarian leaders, more concerned about politics and power than people.
And now as we begin to emerge from lockdown, from forced isolation, into what world are we returning? Our leaders, our corporations, custodians of consumerism, would like us to “return to normal” as quickly as possible. But what of our shared journey, our fears, our suffering and love? As a piece of graffiti in Hong Kong written early in the pandemic stated, “We can’t return to normal, because the normal that we had was precisely the problem.” Should we go back to cheap flights and disposable goods? Should we continue with our exploitation of nature, the imbalance that caused this crisis—the loss of habitat and biodiversity directly causing animal viruses to spread to humans—and the racial injustice and the economic structures that ensure the poor and destitute suffer most?
Racial injustice has also meant that in the United States many people of color, particularly African Americans, and also Native Americans, are experiencing more serious illness and deaths due to Covid-19 compared to white people.[2] And the continuing divisiveness of racial injustice, combined with the ongoing acts of police brutality, have brought protests to the streets of many American cities. The killing of George Floyd and so many others has struck at a deep wound in the American psyche, and we are witnessing both heartfelt solidarity, as well as agony and rage across the country. Once again there is a linking of hands in peaceful protest, but also a country trembling on the edge of violence. On our shared journey we need to embrace this collective pain with its roots in inequality. In a country already battered by the pandemic, do we have the strength to hold true to our deepest human values—equality, unity in diversity, justice?
And what does this say of our shared future? Do we dare to really acknowledge that our image of “normal” is over, even though it appears we have no systemic change radical enough to answer our present ecological crisis and the interconnected social justice and economic equality that are so vitally needed? And in addition to the current crises, some of us have already seen an even more dire future. If the last months have shown our collective response to a well-documented and foreseeable pandemic, what does it say for a future of climate collapse?
Divisiveness,[3] injustice, and exploitation, surround us, while humanity and the Earth cry out for a different way of living. There is a pressing need to transition to ways that value life’s inherent unity and interdependent nature, ways that support our diverse human and other-than-human communities. Our culture has indoctrinated us with the idea of progress, but like many of our present patterns of denial this just covers over an older knowing we have lost, the ways of our ancestors who knew what was sacred and held the balance of the Earth. Part of my own journey has been to reawaken to these ancestral memories—memories of a simpler time, when humanity was still young and the Divine was a tangible presence in the air around, like the first sweetness of spring, buds opening, birds calling, “a strain of earth’s sweet being in the beginning.”[4] There was a knowing present then that has now become deeply hidden—a knowing of the sacred purpose of creation, of its beauty and wonder. And this knowing was coming alive, speaking to human beings in all the myriad voices of the world around, in the streams and storms, in the cries of the birds and the animals, in the first language of life. It was the joy of life communing with us.
It was a time of wonder, when the colors of creation sparkled in the air of our dawning consciousness. Then all was known in its true sense, and every tree, every animal, every person, and every dream or songline knew where it belonged. And here, in this world, where human and divine could meet and recognize the wonder of what is, spirit and matter did not know any division. That time was a prayer without words, a prayer because all of creation was alive with light, with the song of the sacred. This is what I remember.
So much was given at this time, when the soul of humanity and the soul of the world were bonded together, and the Earth showed her generosity. The land was pristine and its sacred nature known and honored. It was a time of beginning, the time of the “Original Instructions,” when the sacred names of creation were given to human beings, first to the shamans, healers, and keepers of the sacred ways—the names of animals that evoked their power, the names of plants that revealed their healing properties, the names of rivers and mountains that ensured that the world was kept in harmony and balance—and through them humanity and the created world came into relationship and were woven together in praise and thanksgiving. There was a purity of intention in this relationship between humanity and the Earth and all its myriad creatures; their partnership had a sacred purpose.
Later it all began to change, and that is the story of separation, the myth of the Fall; and the patterns of distortion that covered the Earth became stronger and stronger, until today we find our self in a world that has lost its way, that is spinning more and more out of balance. But this memory of how it was in the beginning, this story that is so ancient, that belongs to the Earth at our very beginning, has also become my own story because the Earth is calling, crying out, and I know that there is another way to be. And as each crisis is an opportunity, in this moment between the in-breath of this pandemic and the out-breath of our collective push to return to normal, I am drawn to return to this way of being with the Earth, something so essential and long forgotten, this note that belongs to a deep love for the Earth Herself.
We cannot return to the innocence of this earlier time, but this bond between humanity and creation remains, hidden beneath all the debris of our culture, the inner and outer wasteland we have created. It is part of the link of love that holds everything together, the mystery and power, the primal magic woven into the inner structure of the Earth, long known to mystics, shamans and healers. And if we look carefully, attentive to what is around us, this wonder is still present—in a child’s joyful smile, wildflowers opening to the sun, a fox found curled asleep in my garden. Underneath all of today’s distortions we can reconnect to this magic, this awakened relationship with the Earth. It needs to be remembered.
Yes, there is the final message of the labyrinth: the love and light that shone in midst of the darkness, the simple but essential values of care and compassion that hold us and bring us together through this crisis, and belong to our shared journey. But there is also something essential that was present in my early experience of Chartres: the connection to the Earth, the Black Madonna, the ancient mysteries we have long forgotten.
There will be no simple answer to the coming years, except the love and prayer that we hold in our hearts, and the companionship we live with each other and the Earth. We are the inhabitants of a civilization that has lost its way, that has forgotten that the Earth is a living sacred being. And so we stand at a door never before opened, at a crossroads never before reached, when the fate of humanity and the whole web of life hang in the balance. What does it mean to be present at this time of a great dying when the wells run dry and the rivers are toxic? And where are those who hold the balance of the worlds—the rainmaker sitting in his hut holding an inner equilibrium, the monk whose prayer beads and mantras keep the worlds in tune? Yes, a few essential things remain, like joy and love and the beauty of spring blossoms, the stars or a sunset. And in our hearts there is a seed of a future that returns to the beginning, to when the Source ran free and the names of creation sang in the wind.
[1] The result of our work was an article, Chartres Maze, a Model of the Universe?, by Keith Critchlow, Jane Carroll, and Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, which suggests that the maze is a symbolic image of both the planets and the psyche.
[2] See “Coronavirus in African Americans and Other People of Color” by Sherita Hill Golden, M.D., M.H.S., published by Johns Hopkins Medicine.
[3] A divisiveness dangerously encouraged by social media, as evidenced in the algorithms of Facebook. In 2018 Facebook’s experts found that the platform exploited the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness, feeding users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.”
[4] What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.
‑Gerald Manley Hopkins, “Spring.”
Biracial Identity | Seeking to Be Unconditioned
Biracial Identity | Seeking to Be Unconditioned
Already at nine years of age, we sensed that perceptions weren’t truths. We knew that fear-generated anxiety narrowed choices and exacerbated hate. We saw that racism had no color of origin and wondered at life’s purpose, when love for your fellow man seemed conditional rather than unconditioned.
We were army brats in the late fifties and, after a stateside birth, spent the next six years on a base in Frankfurt, Germany. As an African-American soldier, our father was originally stationed at the US Army garrison in Mannheim, an industrial city along the Neckar River. That’s where he met and later married our German-born mother.
Their union was struggle-filled, aggravated by cultural, social, and economic legacies prevalent in both countries that fostered racism and gender inequality on the one hand, and strong bonds of devotion and loyalty on the other.
Essentially, we grew up socially isolated because we weren’t black or white, and culturally isolated, precisely because we were both. When we returned stateside as second-graders, we childishly determined not to claim any specific ethnic identity, to walk the middle line amidst an American population in deep crisis over how to engage with a burgeoning mixed-race population of children.
School-days were frankly hazardous and encompassed years of enforced engagements and rejections. Classmates were rarely kind and mostly of the ‘noble’ variety—those that ‘taught’ us what different meant. Being bi-racial offered up daily opportunities to reflect on our otherness and viscerally experience the unreliability and superficiality of perception, even our own. Why was it important to choose an identity? Wasn’t being human enough? And, being human, how could we get beyond the bias and see clearly? Was identity connected to purpose? At nine years old, these were questions we desperately wanted answered.
By becoming watchers and listeners at an early age, our need to self-protect jump-started the search for the truth of this human experience. We recognized early that thoughts influence emotions, which in turn motivate action. In the intervening years, we were guided toward wisdom teachings, personal transcendental experiences, and, finally, a spiritual tradition that required dedication and active partnership to engage the benefits hidden within the labyrinth of life.
Now we know that the labyrinth of life is unicursal, so getting lost, like being alone, has no basis in reality. Each biofield is connected somewhere in a quantum reality waiting to manifest perception into experience. So, we’re exactly where we directed ourselves to be at this point in life, in a maze that’s unique to each of us. But unlike an ordinary maze that has physical branching pathways, our labyrinths evolve as we walk—no turn-offs, just curated choices, like quantum probability branches waiting to be weighted as we choose to experience life’s lessons.
The questions we posed at nine years of age were answered around thirty. Parmahansa Yogananda, world teacher and author of Autobiography of a Yogi, told a truth-seeker, “Though the drama of life is governed by a cosmic plan, man may change his part by changing his center of consciousness.” As a species, we could, he professed, “level up”: that is, shift consciousness to a broader awareness to access a cloud of experiences leading more swiftly to the center. What lives at the center of human experience? Freedom. Freedom of the self from ego attachments.
With a wall all around
A clay bowl is molded;
But the use of the bowl
Will depend on the part
Of the bowl that is void …
So, advantage is had
From whatever is there;
But usefulness rises
From whatever is not.
— Lao Tzu
excerpt from Blakney’s 1955 translation
The Way of Life, Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu’s wall provides structure for the makings of a bowl, as the body-mind offers scaffolding for the drama of life to play out. However, to attain the “usefulness” that Lao Tzu claims arises “from whatever is not,” we need to affect our own prison break by recognizing opportunities to evolve.
We’re not alone with our struggle. Rare moments of connection-by-light and the peacefulness of unencumbered joy experienced during meditation provide a sporadic love note as a boost to continue the hard work of consciousness growth.
Over the years, we watched people struggle after being confronted with their own biases. It’s natural to resist change. But perceiving that change as a big step towards detachment makes it easier somehow to persevere and not succumb to temptations by taking-a-lateral. Laterals arise out of a lack of devotion to the evolution of self and a limited awareness of the primacy of loyalty to that journey.
Strengthening devotion involves a parallel journey of 1) authentic acceptance of life’s context and content, 2) an increasing ability to adapt to change in the present moment, and 3) an unwavering willingness to expend effort to evolve personally. Trust and allegiance become paramount in an effort to transform a self-oriented sense of loyalty into one that claims all of Life as family. These ways of being may seem fairly clear-cut and reasonable, but we’ve found they are really dense and difficult to execute. Without loyalty, self-awareness remains limited; a sense of the Sacred is blurry. And detachment? Impossible. But loyalty is built upon the broad shoulders of a devotion fortified by an evolving understanding of fidelity and love. There is no cleansing of the body-mind of attachments, perceptions, and dependencies without an expanded acceptance of love and union. What is union but the awareness of Self merged with the greater cosmic awareness that is all creation?
What lives at the center of our human experience? The final freedom. Freedom to choose who you want to be in relationship with every other being. Freedom to know that your path is your own. Freedom to engage with the labyrinth and co-create your future. Freedom to be unconditioned.
Shelterless in the Time of COVID-19
Shelterless in the Time of COVID-19
I have a deep concern for what is happening with the homeless in Los Angeles, especially in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. I wondered if any programs were offering assistance, and so decided to head downtown with my camera to document what was happening on the street.
My first thought was to put together a photo essay to bring attention to the situation, tell the story.
I have always believed that when shooting, you bring yourself to the photograph, your own feelings, your bias. Yes, the photo is about the subject, however it also about who you are, and how you feel as an artist, your heart, your compassion.
The gentleman sleeping on the street with his wheel chair as a resting place really moved me. I wanted to be respectful. There is a tenderness to the image – peace. That was one of the first images I captured and it set the overall spirit for more than a week of shooting.
There is love, and in fact there needs to be love when expressing human suffering. Compassion.
As an African American I am destroyed at times when I see black folks on the street, living at the margins of mainstream society. I recognize that past disparities and inequalities have placed us here as a people.
Simply, therein lies my connection / humanity.
Gallery
Becoming Medicine
Becoming Medicine
We are living in disruptive times, yet there have been other times as equally disruptive. People lived through pandemics, plagues, pestilence, famines, natural disasters, slavery, genocide, oppression, and wars upon wars. How did they do it? I believe there is a secret well of resilience and wisdom within the human being—located in the heart—where we find our medicine.
The name for the current pandemic, the coronavirus, comes from the Latin word corona, meaning “crown” or garland bestowed for distinguished military service.” It derives from the ancient Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root sker, meaning “to turn, bend.” PIE is a common ancestral proto-language, hidden beneath the surface of most modern languages.
I have been working with Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) since 2014. He often speaks of the mother tongue. Joseph is a member of the Southern Ute people and grew up at Picuris Pueblo, speaking English, Spanish, and Tiwa. As a mystic, he looks for underlying unity and likes to read up on science. Since our DNA traces back to Africa, Joseph says, “We all come from there; we are all one.” He also says, “Some people call me a medicine man. I don’t know about that—I just work here.”
Joseph is always telling me that we are all connected. “What comes around, goes around,” he says, explaining how the medicine wheel works. Sometimes listening to him gets my own head spinning in circles, but that is how it is when you are initiated into new ways of thinking and new ways of being. Initiation requires entering into disorientation, letting go of who you thought you were so that you can become the medicine you are meant to be.
Joseph Campbell describes the Hero’s Journey as a wheel too: there is a call to adventure, you enter the disorienting unknown, and, after many trials, you discover a healing medicine which you bring back to society, but society rejects you because they are still coming from the old paradigm. Persisting, you help society re-orient to a new world. The personal and the collective are interconnected. This is one of the teachings of the virus.
By 1969, the word “coronavirus” was in use, so-called for the crown-like spikes that protrude from the virus membrane, like a corona. The Sun has a corona. NASA describes it as “the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere … usually hidden by the bright light of the Sun’s surface.” The corona is something that is there, but difficult to see, or can only be seen at unusual times, like during a total solar eclipse. Paradoxically, there are some things we can only see when the light is obscured.
“COVID-19” sounds like a king of some ancient dynastic lineage, wreaking havoc. COVID-19 has a crown of receptors around its central circle. You have probably seen the image; people even say it is beautiful. COVID-19 binds to human cells throughout the body. Yet, we can think of this virus having many external binding sites too: the healthcare system, the financial system, materialism, capitalism, fossil fuels, the stock market, racism, xenophobia, politics, globalism. Everything it touches, it reveals the cracks. The virus shows us that many of the systems we thought were strong (maybe even “great”), such as our economy and the US healthcare system, were actually quite vulnerable.
We are at war with the pandemic, but is the virus our real enemy?
The virus is of the natural world, maybe originating in bats—nocturnal mammals who do not have great vision, but “see” things in the dark through echolocation. Maybe COVID-19 is teaching us to see things we normally do not see. Maybe it is teaching us to sker—to turn or bend. Maybe it is teaching us to live like we are in a monastery, with reverence, and see that the Earth is a beautiful and fragile place we need to care for and respect. Maybe the virus is only the messenger. In the Spring 2020 issue of Kosmos, Hartsell and Edwards ask, “What if the Virus is the Medicine?” What if the virus is here to cure us?
Of course, there currently is no cure for COVID-19. When there is no cure, what kind of medicine can you use?
Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) and I have been working on the idea of becoming medicine. Becoming medicine is an initiation of transformation that begins with seeking, then finding/receiving, and lastly giving to others the medicine one has become. Joseph tells me:
“In English, medicine is something that still needs to happen, but in Tiwa medicine is already there; it is a power. Every human being is a power. Originally, when we were brought into being, we were given the instructions. Part of life is that we would be given surprises along the way. It just comes upon you and you can’t prepare for it. …Wah-Mah-Chi, that is God’s name in the Tiwa language and it means Breath-Matter-Movement. All you need to know about the virus is to connect those three things, Breath-Matter-Movement, with your heart and lungs.”
The human heart is our medicine bag. The heart is an empty muscular sack with four chambers that we fill with depleted, deoxygenated blood and which the heart and lungs replenish and rejuvenate into rich, oxygenated blood. The heart willingly accepts the worst blood and the best blood. It does not keep the good oxygenated blood medicine to itself but gives it away to the body. The heart’s wisdom is that we are all connected and that to hoard (money, masks, or toilet paper) is to take away from someone else who is just another part of yourself.
In order to know who we are, we need to let go of who we were, of what we thought was important—to embrace transformation and start a movement for living in balance. Here is what Joseph told me about our life with the virus:
“We are at the right place, being in this pandemic. It may seem like we chose it—that’s why we’re here. I have to be here to balance the other side of the planet. We are very much an integral part of all the other families that exist on the Earth and we have to do the best to be ourselves. We have to do what we can, and help how and when we can.”
Joseph Rael has been teaching me about visions. He’ll start by saying, “I had a dream or a vision.” Then he will tell me the vision and sometimes say what he thinks it means.
Recently, I had a dream or a vision—I was walking down a deserted alley at night and came across a huge bat skeleton trapped in a wall. My first impulse was fear and a desire to get away from it. I was worried I would be crowned with the coronavirus, COVID-19, from the dead bat. I took a breath, felt the matter of my body, stopped my movement, and sat down next to it.
Maybe it would speak to me or give me some wisdom for these unprecedented times. The bat said nothing. It started trying to get out of the wall. I helped pull it out.
Maybe the bat would thank me and give me some wisdom. The bat was silent, though, like a guru, or maybe just like a dead bat skeleton.
We took off flying.
Through the darkness we were flying. I was learning to use senses I did not know I had. I was learning to feel my way through the darkness, avoiding obstacles I could not see, but I could feel.
Walking the Labyrinth
Walking the Labyrinth
This is a time of sorrow and wonder. Many hard and painful truths are there for us to see, as well as stories of human courage and healing. We are seeing it is possible for the Earth to heal too. Where I live, it is the peak of summer’s glory – everything fresh and alive – even as the pain of racial division continues. Fresh flowers and fresh wounds.
The accelerated pace of change is dizzying. Could anyone have predicted, on the eve of 2020, that the coming months would unfold like this? In truth, many have been sounding the bell for decades, warning of pandemics, climate chaos, rising gun violence and deepening systemic racism. Yet, only now are we collectively waking up to the intersectionality of these concerns. The virus is forcing us to scrutinize everything, finally revealing the web of fractures in our social, political and economic systems. Like you, I struggle to imagine what the future will be like for our children and their children, and how to make the right decisions for them now.
I chose the theme of the labyrinth for this edition of Kosmos to represent our collective journey in this moment. A labyrinth is not a maze – we can’t get lost. It is however, a mystical path with twists and turns – a deliberate, metaphorical journey of the heart – to the ‘center’ and out. We are not alone in the labyrinth. Others are taking the same circuitous pilgrimage, and yet it is a journey we must take ‘by ourselves’, filled with strong emotions. Friends have reported a kind of fog that lately settles over them..a mix of confusion, fear, and ennui. The labyrinth can feel this way, and it is OK. It is not a journey that always offers answers, but it teaches us to work with uncertainty.
The writers in this edition of Kosmos are on labyrinth journeys. Maybe you have felt yourself to be on such a journey too. We chose essays that expressed experiences and feelings, not rhetoric or opinion. And contrasts – one art gallery contains portraits of flowers, the other, faces of people without shelter. There is the journey of activist Ruairí McKeirnan, hitchhiking Ireland to find hope; and the lived experience of two biracial sisters, seeking identity. There is John Bell’s journey to heal white racism, and Lilia Clement’s quest for meaning after a 50+-year career on Wall Street.
Each step we take, banal or profound, affects outcomes, not just for ‘me’, but for all. Will I wear a mask in public? Fly in a plane? Eat meat? Grow food? Join a protest? Two ideas can help us: accountability and reverence. To be accountable is to answer personally for the outcomes of our choices, actions, and behaviors. No more excuses. And I like this definition of reverence – ‘a feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe’. What does it mean to live a life ‘tinged with awe’?
My children teach me a lot about accountability and reverence. When my daughter joined the protests in New York City, she said her white skin compelled her to show up because she is statistically less likely to be injured by law enforcement than a person of color. And my adult son reminds me each day that we live in paradise, as I join him on walks in the forest, by the cool stream. He is the first to spot a fox, or the Great Blue Heron, his warm brown eyes tinged with awe.
We were careful with this edition not to make pronouncements – ‘Collapse is inevitable’ ‘A new era of unity is dawning’ – because we just don’t know. Both may be true. As Zora Neal Hurston said, ‘There are years that ask questions and years that answer.’ 2020 feels like the former. Maybe we can’t fix the world yet or predict the future, but we can acknowledge that our actions and words have effects, and we can begin each day with fresh commitment to offer our accountability and reverence to the situations we encounter and decisions we make.
Please keep Kosmos and our wonderful founder Nancy Roof in your heart, as you live in ours. For twenty years, Nancy (now age 90) and her circle of luminaries helped us prepare for this moment. Many of the threads that we must now weave into a future, have long been examined in-depth in Kosmos: Regenerative culture, global citizenship, consent-based governance, spiritual ecology, the commons, living earth, local living economy, intentional community, peacebuilding, mindfulness, interspirituality. These models and practices, and many new ones, always have a way of (re)arriving just in time, when they are most needed. And they have something beautiful in common. Nancy reminded me the other day, that like sheltering-in-place and nonviolent protest, they each reflect in some way our instinct to ‘take care of each other’.
Let’s never underestimate that instinct, the human spirit, the human heart. We journey by ourselves, together. And step by mindful step, we find our way home.