So Many Roads to The Great Turning
A meditation from the Clown of Interbeing, and an invitation to the Festival of YES
I’m sending this newsletter out intentionally on July 4th, because I want to spur you to think about INTERdependance.
On that theme, let me tell you a story about a meditation I recently led:
I put on a red nose and colorful clothing. I put down the character of “Dan” that I habitually play, and took on a different character entirely: “The Clown of Interbeing.”
The Clown of Interbeing doesn’t care about accomplishing worldly tasks for his own gain. No, the Clown of Interbeing has a zoomed-out, spaceship earth perspective. He is intimately aware that We’re All Connected and We’re All In This Together.
The Clown of Interbeing wants to inspire all people to see our interdependence and interbeing. He wants to inspire folks to live with service — with the harmony of the whole planet — in mind.
As the Clown of Interbeing, first, I served tea for the guests. Then I lit some incense, and put on some soft music.
I began the guided meditation:
I talked about the idea of Interbeing — that as we drink tea, we are drinking water from a cloud, and delicious molecules synthesized by a tea bush. In a very real way, we are connected to the cloud, the tea bush, and the soil under the tea bush. When we urinate outside, we give the nitrogen back to the soil.
I had everyone visualize a place in nature that they loved.
Then I had people visualize that place in 200 years, if the world goes on with “business as usual.”
I had people imagine someone in their life who wasn’t doing well. I had people think of all the causes and conditions that got them there.
I talked about The Great Turning — a term which describes moving away from our extractive civilization based on industrial growth, and towards a life-sustaining civilization.
I had people imagine a child from 200 years in the most optimistic future possible, a child from a future where The Great Turning happened.
This child thanks you for your role in the Great Turning.
I had everyone write down a personal mission statement, and some practical actions they could do. I invited people to form accountability buddies with people from the group.
I asked some people what they wrote down, and the responses were diverse. A friend who does real-estate photography said that he wants to get into more natural building. Another friend talked about calling lawmakers. Other people had more internal actions around love, kindness, and prayer.
A few friends and I recently visited the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. We saw this painting there, which vividly shows The Great Turning:
One of the things that became apparent to me while doing the visitor session at Dancing Rabbit is that there are so many different helpful actions one can take.
One guy at DR was into creating twitter campaigns for political candidates, spending his time with his fingers on a keyboard. Another was doing regenerative agriculture, spending most of his time with his hands in the dirt. A visitor to DR was a climate scientist, spending her time crafting mathematical models of the carbon cycle. There was no one course of action that was “correct.” There were “so many roads.”
In building community, too, there are so many roads. We can join an intentional community, or we can build community in our lives by hosting meals or doing hobbies with others.
So Many Roads, by the Grateful Dead, is becoming one of my favorite songs. Here are the lyrics:
So many roads, I tell you So many roads I know So many roads, so many roads Mountain high, river wide So many roads to ride So many roads, so many roads... So many roads, I tell you New York to San Francisco So many roads I know All I want is one to take me home From the high road to the low So many roads I know So many roads, so many roads From the land of the midnight sun Where the ice blue roses grow Along those roads of gold and silver snow Howlin' wide or moaning low So many roads I know So many roads to ease my soul
It can be a toxic idea — I think — to believe that there is only one road, only one “right way”:
“Working on community gardens is useless. We need political change!” or
“Calling your congressperson is useless. We need direct action” or
“Working on green building is useless. Natural building is the way to go.”
The above kind of thinking reeks of dogmatism and false certainty. I certainly catch myself being really certain, from time to time. To move forward though, we need pluralism. We need many roads, not just one.
There are as many ways as fingerprints to nudge our society towards the Great Turning. And we don’t know the long-term ripple effects of any individual action.
I don’t know about you, but my individual actions often seem small, limited, and inadequate, when I think about the magnitude of the changes that I want to see in the world.
A few days ago I came upon this quote, on the wall of a Catholic Worker house, which acted as a salve for my soul:
People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.
A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread into all directions.
Each one of our thoughts, words, and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.
The Clown of Interbeing just wants you to take as many small, imperfect actions as you have the energy for. Let’s not worry too much about hypocrisy or not doing enough. There are so many roads, so many beneficial actions, which will nudge us towards The Great Turning.
The Great Turning needs all of our diverse skills and contributions. There are so many roads to ease our souls.
Credit: The meditation above was based on one led by Danielle at Dancing Rabbit EcoVillage, and by conversations with Nix, another volunteer there. The clowning I do is inspired by Patch Adams and everyone at the Gesundheit Institute.
The Clown of Interbeing will be next performing at the Festival of Yes, a festival that is being put on by my friend Alex Chmeil. Check out the link above if you want to attend!