Reflections on polarities

Greetings Everyone,

  It is difficult to know what to say or how much. America has been shaken. And now New Zealand has too, but by entirely different events. My heartfelt prayers go out to all who feel scared, fearful, angry, confused or disillusioned. Kia Ora to my friends in New Zealand.

We are living in difficult times and what saddens me most about this most recent American election are 4 separate but related issues:

1      - That we are all being manipulated to think, feel and thus believe that we have to be on one side or the other and that whichever side you choose, the other one is evil, horrible and must be silenced and defeated at any cost. This is not true and this false narrative must be stopped.

2    -  That we have elevated denial to dysfunctional degree and instead we see and hear only what we want to see and hear. We ignore what doesn’t fit our model of what we think is going on. The increased use of denial to cope with a challenging world lubricates our inward spiral towards dis-empowerment and detachment and makes us less able to think, feel or act authentically.

3    - That the fine arts of diplomacy, inspirational leadership, deep listening and creative cooperation seem to be relegated to the trash bin when they are some of the most important tools that are needed now to get our divided country moving forward towards a better future for all.

4    -  That civility and basic decency seem to be fading from the cultural discourse and are being replaced by a sense of righteous entitlement and permission to bully.  I find this deeply worrying.

I know that you come here to find inspiration and connection to something sweeter and deeper than the chaos of modern living… and I will do my best to dig deep and bring forward what creative expression that I can in an effort to celebrate the beauty and magic of this world and our lives here… but this moment has been a big hurdle to get over/through as our collective has been deeply shaken.

What I know to be true beyond all the drama in the airwaves is that we are all connected, no one is separate and that we will get thru this. Nature delivers her own shake-ups: floods, earthquakes and all manner of upheaval and she recovers afterwards, just as we do when exposed to such unexpected and traumatic shifts. We can learn from her example: that every single thing is needed in an ecosystem, whether it is a mighty oak or the delicate, microscopic threads of mycelium that connect the roots of the trees deep underground….ALL of it is needed and crucial. Every rock, every flower, every bug is a part of a greater, magical whole and we each are needed now too. Every voice matters, even those we disagree with. However, as the now-dominant species here on this planet, no matter what we disagree on, we must learn to live more respectfully with the earth that is our one and ONLY home and we have to do this together.

  So on to some inspiration…

As a meditation on how useful it can be to engage with the opposite of our point of view, I give you an image of a sculpture I did earlier this year:

Blessed Be to you and all your Loved Ones