Friday, December 20, 2019
Blessing Amid Collapse: a Solstice Message
Three
and a half years ago, I posed
this trap I had set for myself to a
South Indian sage. Folks
were not awakening in time to prevent the collapse many tough-minded
folks saw coming. I was failing my mission. His answer:
"Enough is enough."
For the next year I struggled
with these words. The next
summer, I
suddenly got it, interjecting
"Enough is enough!" into a conversation I was having with a
Quaker elder.
She smiled knowingly. It
was not mine to carry the weight of awakening the world! I felt
tremendous relief, a huge lightening of my load. The cliche goes
"let go and let God." Something very like that occurred.
But
now I
no longer had a "mission." I tried to show up when I
could, to help where needed, but there was no deep inner call.
I was living my values, but not my passion. My
soul longed for that deep
call. I felt suspended, no
longer a self-professed failure, but ineffectual, just biding my
time. I nodded politely at those who still saw me through the lens
of activism or prophetic speech and writing, recalling their image of
me during the early years of the millenium. "Damn, McGahey went
to jail for us and our grandchildren!"
some thought loudly.
Earlier
this month I went to a retreat where I was challenged to uncover my
deepest hurts and doubts, and to fight my way past whatever it was
that was holding me back. This was framed as "warrior energy,"
supposedly our birthright as men. The
night before going to the mat to recover my essential energy, I was
asked to frame my mission. Oh that. I
needed to get on with the reframing I had left off the last time I
designed a workshop, a couple of years ago. Things were unclear
then, and the memorial service for a founder of my landtrust
community intervened, causing me to cancel the workshop. It was
scheduled for the same day, and all but one of my registrants planned
to attend.
The
first night of the retreat,
I came up with this: "I co-create a world where folks accept
that the old world is dead, but a new one will emerge,
by helping others grieve the loss and celebrate
the story of the regenerative universe." As I listened to
others' first mission
formulations, mostly clear
and direct, I realized I needed
to dig deeper, to
simplify.
The evening ended with an affirmation. But
I needed two: 1)"I
grieve the world we are destroying." Hardly an affirmation!
Then, 2) "I celebrate the Creator's power of endless Creation."
This one, though hugely affirmative, was not a self-affirmation.
On
Saturday night, thoroughly exhausted, facing my moment of truth, I
really struggled to state what it was that was missing for me. I
felt the need
to tell the story summed in my first paragraph. But before
I could finish, caught up in words, I realized that what I lacked was
my own blessing. So I fought like hell to claim it, physically,
going to the mat. When I had claimed it, I roared at those around me,
"It's mine!"
I was too embarrassed to share my affirmations the night before,
but this time when the time came, it flowed: I joyously
accept my own blessing, generously sharing it with those around me. My mission is in
that affirmation. It may be expressed in a workshop or retreat,
quite similar to the one I planned two summers ago. But the leader
is not the same person, for now he comes from a place of blessing and
gratitude, not doom and lack.
The mission, if I
remain grounded in it, gives me energy to affirm and bless others
anytime, any day, no matter the circumstance. As I rework my
retreats and return to my writing, I don't need to withhold blessing
from those around me by sinking into doubt and despair.
At Meeting this
past Sunday, I amplified the deep message I had been given. And I
spoke of its shadow, the sin of despair. Giving in to despair is a
refusal of our gifts, a sin against the Creator and Creation. It is
thus worse than the eco-sins Pope Francis has recently added
prominently to the ways we fail the divine.
I once wrote in
these pages that Jesus's prayer, "Forgive them for they know not
what they do," did not apply to the modern crucifixion, the
ongoing crucifixion of the Earth herself, perpetrated by our arrogant
species. But that statement, both logically and morally correct, was
essentially from the place of despair. We need forgiveness even when
we do know what we are
doing. And that forgiveness will come through
the remaking of all
Creation, as the Creator has done forever. I don't know anything
about a new
heaven,
but there will certainly be a new Earth, whatever wreck we may
make of this one.
Labels: Collapsing Consciously, eco-sins, ecocrisis, Jesus, Pope Francis, regenerative universe, warrior energy
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