Photo by Lola Wilcox
The wooden sign in the picture once hung on the door of a cabin during that year’s Great Mother and New Father conference on story and poetry. There was a similar sign with different sayings on other conference buildings’ doors. The sign designer sent me this one after the conference ended. The words on the back are:
Afrikaans:…whistle, whistle, the story is done.
The sign’s place in my house is on a bookcase under a bouquet of flowers that change weekly.
This Solstice day marks our Sun’s high or low point in our earth’s cycle around the sun—a story of one year. Our moon’s story is told twelve times a year. When sliding into sleep the story of our day is done. Ashes in the ground mark a body’s story as over. A theatre or musical performance is rehearsed, played, and afterwards its story is done. All stories have endings.
A Story of Planet Earth
A Solstice turning has been happening since the planet started circling the sun. Geologic history suggests many different stories have come to an end before the story we are in right now. Seeing the dinosaur bone statue at the Natural History Museum in Denver’s City Park as a child was my first awareness of the earth having different stories at different times. There were no dinosaurs outside my bedroom window.
We are living a story whose end may be more dramatic than the end of the dinosaur era’s. Our planet is heating up. Soaring temperatures are melting the polar ice, drought brings fires which burn the forests. There are stories told to counter this description, but it gets harder to dismiss what’s happening. Recently funding for climate monitoring systems was cut, and scientific and academic institutions are supported by those funds.
Sweeping Generalization
The story we’ve been telling for several millennia is based on having a dominant group subdue everything else. Countries spend billions to ensure enough dominance that no other country will swallow them. The dominant group tells a story of strength and wealth. The wealthy at the top of the hierarchy can do whatever. Those further down the ladder have less wealth and strength, and system design keeps them that way. To play the dominance game one wins (gets more) or loses (has less).
This dominance story will end with a very different planet with far fewer of the living creatures than are here now. One proposed outcome (the clathrate gun hypothesis) suggests that the instability of frozen methane (methane clathrates or hydrates) stored under the ocean floor and in permafrost will defrost and methane rather than oxygen will dominate. We don’t breathe methane. For the methane planet a new story will begin.
Whistle, Whistle: A Different, Hopeful End of the Story
Very recently I was thrilled to read an article titled ‘An Equal and Habitable world is possible: Academics set out Sweeping Vision for Planetary Survival.’ Focus on the words Equal and Habitable.
The publication headline made me angry. “Academics” in the current dominant story are not respected as being practical, or grounded in reality, and their “theories” can be passed off as daydreams. The whole article was tucked into “Environment” rather than main news.
Three Step Plan
Honors to Dr. Joanna Macy for the The Great Turning idea with David Kortan and Chris Johnstone (writer) who also describe the transition from an industrial-growth society to a life-sustaining civilization. The authors of the Equal and Habitable World article present a PLAN that shows how by doing three things humanity can heal the earth’s climate, change the political and the economic focus to one of education and healthcare, and give the workers of the world a two-and-a-half-day workweek.
The HOW includes the necessary redistribution of the upward flow of money to a horizontal one, potentially circling the world and including every living creature. I’ll summarize the actions here. The link to the article is in the references. The article precedes a worldwide conference in early June to begin to implement the plan.
Different Behaviors are Necessary
The article is an arrow pointing out a direction to travel to reach a different end of our current story. To foster these ideas into mainstream reality will require new beliefs, language, and behaviors. Dominance is deeply embedded in us from the moment we leave the womb.
By Rachael Resch of Nia Focus and Intent.
Changing Our Beliefs and Behaviors
To break free of dominance for each one of us requires a journey of dramatic change. For many of us it is a lifetime exploration. We find helpful tools. One of my early ones was Transactional Analysis: Parent, Adult, and Child roles. Are you being Parented? Responding as a Child? Its practical tools taught how to counter dominance in embedded hierarchy while continuing to live within the system.
We live our lives according to our beliefs and values, and other people may observe, even explore with us. You explore with me when you read these blogs. To make anyone else do what I say is a dominant behavior. I cannot make you sort your trash correctly into the recycle bin without becoming a dictator. There is only one person I can change – myself.
The above image of the Buddha is from one of my Nia exercise classes. The Intent card chosen from a basket of group generated cards was Oneness. Dominance dissolves in the idea of “oneness.” I asked permission to use the image for this blog because the hope of the article, the upcoming conference, the current advocacy of thousands of people, is that we embrace every diversity and being as One.
The second card says Earth. Turning inward. Earth’s Oneness requires us Turning Inward in order to change our behaviors. Behaviors change when we envision a new way of being. Behavioral change occurs more successfully when there is a map from current to new behaviors.
Raised in the Christian faith I had a variety of experiences in different churches. I have no expertise in any other faith. I have exposure to a few Indigenous People’s beliefs. I have friends who are lifetime converts to Buddhism. If you do have long experience and expertise in another belief structure, please share with us how the following concepts are embedded in your faith. (Possible guest blog coming up!) One behavioral map I trust is Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, but not as it has been translated for us by the mindset and viewpoint of a sequence of dominance based cultures.
It’s important and useful to see parallels between Jesus’ situation and ours. (Claude AI Research, my writing). Do parts of his situation sound familiar?
- Where Jesus lives and works is under the iron grip of Roman rule with soldiers in the streets.
- The richest strata of his own people are in cahoots with the Roman oppressors.
- Taxation is creating widespread poverty.
- Farmers are forced off their land by costs and lack of resources.
- The oppressive situation sows division and unrest.
- People are polarized politically, ranging from the Zealots advocating violent revolution to Collaborators (like Jesus’ disciple Matthew who was a despised tax collector) to Watchers to Gloomers sinking into despair.
Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount and redefines religious, political and social values. Repeating: He redefines religious, political and social values.
He’s preaching on a sloping, bowl-like hillside in northern Israel which overlooks the plain of Gennesaret, a fertile and populated area on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The natural topography and winds coming off the water create excellent acoustics which allow his voice to carry to the large crowds.
The words Jesus says are recorded in Matthew 5:3-12. Another version is in Luke 6:20-23. I wanted a translation taking the meaning from the complex Aramaic language Jesus was speaking. Aramaic words have multiple possible meanings. Below is Neil Douglas-Klotz’ translation in Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus, Harper, 1990. Rather than experience them as a rule (domination over your way of being), let them flower in you. The top line is what you may be used to reading. The A line is what Jesus truly said in Aramaic, and it has very little similarity to the translations.
1. “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
A – Blessedly ripe are those realizing that breath is their first & last possession, theirs is the One’s “I can!”
2. “Blessed are those who mourn, they shall be comforted.”
A – Blessed are those in emotional turmoil; they shall be united inside by love.
3. “Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth.”
A – Blessed are those who have softened what is rigid within; they receive God’s strength everywhere.
4. “Blessed are they who hunger & thirst for what is right; they shall be satisfied.”
A – Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice-righteousness; they have the power to birth a new society.
5. “Blessed are the merciful; they shall have mercy shown to them.”
A – Blessed are those who, from their inner wombs, birth mercy; they shall feel its warm arms embrace them.
6. “Blessed are the pure of heart; they shall see God.”
A – Aligned with the One are those whose lives radiate from a core of love; they shall see God everywhere
7. “Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called children of God.”
A – Blessed are those who plant peace each season; they shall be named the children of God.
Jesus offers a radical alternative to both Roman tyranny and the violent or worldly politics of the day. He talks to and heals anyone of any background or faith or political persuasion. By blessing the marginalized, the meek, and the persecuted Jesus challenges dominance and suggests another way of life. He holds zero interest in becoming a “King” which is how the dominant power structure interpreted his mission. Jesus’ message can exist within the power structures of the Roman Empire, and requires no military, private police forces, or tax collectors.
It does take a tiny hope, similar to the woman in the gospels who says to herself: If I can only touch the hem of Jesus’ robe I will stop hemorrhaging.
And Jesus includes a warning—
8. “Blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of right; theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account…. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
A – Blessings to those who are dislocated in the cause of justice; their new home is the province of the universe. Renewal is yours when you are reproached and driven away by the clamor of evil on all sides for my sake. Then, do everything extreme, including letting your ego disappear as did the prophets, for this is the secret of claiming our expanded home in the universe.
It’s useful to know what the founder of Christianity really said. It didn’t help the Earth or us that the Roman Empire adopted this faith and the Roman Catholic Church translated it into Latin. It is difficult to believe in a religion that was and still is used as a weapon to subdue and colonize populations, including our own.
The Great Turning to Our New Story
Please read the article and answer this question:
What would I do
with the four and a half days a week
I am not “working”?
And basic needs are met worldwide?
And health and education are available for all.
I believe we would say “Once upon a time…” and begin a new story.
Here’s how my version of the new story might begin:
Once upon a time there was a world whose people chose to change their cultures of domination to ones of equality and reciprocity. It was a Great Turning. They sang a simple chant:
Earth my body.
Water my blood.
Air my Breath.
Fire my Spirit.
(Joanna Macy)
They embraced themselves as Earthlings, and protected their home.
Next Steps:
The Guardian Article: Read the article a couple of times, think about it. Encourage your friends to read, study and discuss this article, as an Arrow pointing to a possible hopeful future.
Follow the Justice Project Report: https://globaljusticeproject.wid.world/
When it is fully available in June I hope to read, study and discuss the report with the goal of choosing one focus to help birth the new story.
Meanwhile, I am listening to the language I use to uncover the inner structures of my thinking for assumptions I make based in dominance culture.
Many of us are already working on massive projects to protect our mother world. All praise.
Comments:
Share how you personally, in your own life, are creating this different ending to the story we’re living now.
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