The great unraveling
The great unraveling
Here’s an image to work with:
our culture is a worn, woven basket, beginning to fray. we can no longer pretend what we were doing was sustainable, sustainability includes death and decay. but we have razed the fields and forests, and now there are no new reeds to harvest and begin anew - there’s nothing left to gather. instead, we are unwinding – with the help of this virus - thousands of years of work, arduous work, that created the vessel that has held patriarchy, capitalism, greed, fury, and fight along with all the rest. with the unraveling, what is spilling forth? and what will be re-woven once the reeds are restored to a material strong enough to hold all our ingenuity?
it’s messy, here at the beginning, ugly even. greed is spreading in the isolated wealthy, fury in the oppressed and underserved, fear in our officials, fight in those who house patriarchy in their hearts and think it necessary. that’s leaking out too, running amok right now and seeming to have a hand in everything. When it’s run it’s course though, patriarchy and the powers of oppression will fade into the landscape. earth uses everything; all the beautiful and terrible that we could possibly conjure is turned into compost. the greed that is coursing through our culture right now will feed the worms that churn the soil. the fear that is fueling the debate over what to do with the fact that we are living alongside a confusing, lively virus, will water the soil that has become hard with years of human neglect. and the fury and the fighting, that will most definitely provide enough energy to shake the seeds to life, the seeds that we most want to plant. my seeds are: wisdom, ethic, reverence, and utter surrender. yours will add to the diversity of what’s possible for generations to come.
and the basket? what of this basket to hold us all together? i like this metaphor for our social construct because a basket is always made by human hands. pine needles never fall in the shape of a vessel, tule and sweetgrass never grow in a circle. we are essential in creating the constructs that we live inside. maybe those fibers have some life left in it yet. maybe with a good re-soaking, and some heartfelt songs and dances as offerings, the plants will continue to offer what we most need. maybe this time, we will see the generosity that the plants offer as a gift is to be accepted, and worn like the most precious necklace. maybe we will remember that our own hands are needed to re-weave what would otherwise go untended, that we are in fact, a vital part of this breathing ecosystem we inhabit. maybe our newly woven basket will be strong enough to hold our greatest gifts as humans, our most beautiful utterances.
or maybe not, but that’s not an image that offers any hope, for surely if we continue to live by our fears, wisdom will continue to evade us as a species. Instead, i propose we see the basket - see it unraveling, yes, but also see that what falls apart feeds the thirsty earth. this may be what it will take to remember that our very bones are made not of stars, but earth, and getting close to the earth again, together, is the only way we might find our collective strength to do something different. really different.
let’s keep unraveling, all the way back to the beginnings of progress. there are coals there, singing into the darkness, shimmering with wisdom. change they say, change again. movement is everything, the dance is what makes it all worthwhile. let the body warm and churn. let the heart glow red. let the brilliant ideas burn, blacken, and crumble, then get quiet. see what the earth has to say…stay.