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First Response : Calling Your Soul Home
November 9, 2016
While we wait for goodness to wend its way back towards us, we cannot ignore time and the body, our aging, our extinction - or the effects this election might have on the bodies and extinctions of our fellow humans, animals, plants, air, and oceans. But since many of us are feeling stunned and ripped apart right now, and since we've been presented with something of a black box - no one really knows what's about to occur - it's important to pause a moment. We've just seen what happens when passions take over, and the antidote is probably not going to be more of the same, even if we think our passions are different.
So for right now : A man will become president who thrives on chaos and so creates it all around him. He also craves attention so that, moment by moment, he can find out who he is. My advice to myself : Don't give him the attention. Don't get sucked into the chaos. Take a little time to get unstunned, to grieve, to start to stitch up the rips. Mr. Obama is president for two more months. Take the time to sink roots, deeply, into what sustains : love, the natural world, art - whatever it is for you. Let us begin to protect everything that's been put in harm's way by healing back to each other. Let us refuse to bring chaos into our homes and our hearts. Let us turn our gaze, these days and nights, to what we care for, not what we dread.
If we do that, as the lineaments of our catastrophe become clearer we'll be ready to lay the groundwork for the return of goodness, deliberate as a pilgrim.
