Hi Friends - I just heard from an acquaintance who told me that many of his students “believe we’ve destroyed everything”. I know the feeling. But the feeling can be real while the information is more complicated. The following came to mind:
I hope your students will come to see that we haven't destroyed everything, especially not the capacity to repair the repairable, and to imagine something new in place of that which can't be fixed.
There are so many things that used to hurt so many people which now are considered beyond the pale; so many opportunities to live for the sake of living; so much value placed on the expression of honest vulnerability, the nurturing of equitable community, and to imagine life through the eyes of the other. There is more concern for treating the ecosystem as sacred - and seeing ourselves as part of it, and there are more people involved in actually doing something about it than ever.
There appear to be more people willing to take a look at their unearned privilege and how they might channel it into service toward the common good, and more spaces in which we can all ask for the help we need. The crises we face are indeed real, and there are clearly people misguided enough to think they want to make those crises worse. And they might. But with some good elders to initiate us and hold us steady, and a community of peers committed to the journey of conscious evolution toward the common good with whom to share our lives, and - I think - a fierce commitment to exchange trivia for really living, I think we'll be ok.
Such thoughts have been easy to access in the past few weeks as, one after another, three great elders crossed the threshold into death, and an outpouring of love and mourning ensued.
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Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been an "imaginary friend" to me for decades - his voice and presence in my mind, perhaps the clearest example of the kind of leadership the world needs, balancing humanizing warmth with self-giving courage. I have not learned his lessons, but I am sure many of us today are thinking about how we might ask his inspiration to guide our own lives.
Archbishop Tutu’s passing a month ago occurred a few weeks after that of Elder Malidoma Somé, and a few weeks before Thich Nhat Hanh. This feels like a major returning of elders to the source. It is important to honor this moment, and to find ways to remember the lives of these pioneers that actually embodies their teachings. This may be especially true if we did not know them personally, for the actual teachings of inspirational leaders can often be trivialized by talking about them rather than seeking to live in the light of what they taught (and teach) us.
It would be a waste of their memory to merely quote their most famous words. John O’Donohue talked about “training peoples’ fingers to unpick the knots that they had been tied up in”, by puritanical religion, selfish politics, scapegoating culture, individualistic economies alike. Likewise these elders didn’t want to be idols, but in all humility they may have reluctantly accepted the mantle of being icons - in the sense of being symbols or models of how the rest of us might also live. In one of the communities in which I live, we often speak about how each of us may perhaps know a person of extraordinary vision and courage, whether or not their names are ever going to be known beyond the street or town where they live. As with Archbishop Tutu, these local icons are not perfect people, by any means - but that’s part of the point: to consciously surrender and co-create a life in which we aspire most not to any worldly achievement or monetary success, not even to being well thought of, but to loving well. Sometimes love means sacrifice. Sometimes it means deciding to walk right into suffering. Sometimes it means looking at ourselves with the same gaze of kindness we find easier to show others. Sometimes it means looking up from the troubles of the day and seeing that we are never alone, never stop learning, are never without an invitation to request help for ourselves, or to help make things better for others. I can’t imagine a better way to live.
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When I think of what Archbishop Tutu represented for me, these words come to mind - just some thoughts, welcoming yours too.
* Refuse to kill, even with words.
* Practice delight as a spiritual discipline.
* Seek to learn the difference between empathy (a feeling that can overwhelm and lead to inaction), and compassion (a choice arising out of concern for others, that may more cleanly lead to action that does not have to debilitate). In other words, actively participate in the protection of the vulnerable, but know that the whole world is not yours to save - there are millions of others who care just as much, or more.
* Name your own vulnerability, not for the sake of attention, but because you are not invincible, and the task of healing the world will not be served by pretending that any of us should be.
* Make some nonviolent contact with your opponent. Or at the very least, speak and act in such a way that confronts them with the truth that you are as human as they believe themselves to be, and that you see that in them too. Imagine a world in which both of you can be at peace.
* Laugh at what's funny, dance when there's dancing, and when there isn't dancing, consider starting some.
* Radical kindness to all, and active anger about injustice are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they probably need each other to prevent either toxic positivity or perpetuating more violence.
* The victory we envision must include room even for the former oppressors to live in peace and unafraid.
* Start where you are, and do what you can. But definitely do it.
Til next time,
Gareth
PS: There's still space available for the Medicine Stories weekend with Dave Wilcox & me in Santa Monica, February 18-20. Details here.
PPS: My book How Not to be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything is Terrifying is currently available for under $4 in both hardback and Kindle editions. As my beloved friend David Dark would say, there are literally billions of people who have yet to read it, so if you wish not to be counted among their number, you know what to do :). Click here if you'd like to buy one - or a few billion copies.
