We are the ones we've been waiting for

Finding a path between fear and faith, understanding and action, awareness and resistance.

Wow, the old Chinese curse, ‘May you live in interesting times,’ is upon us with a vengeance. What are we witnessing now?

It sure looks like some of the worst people in the world have managed to obtain enough power to abuse everything—people, systems, ideas, themselves… yes, they don’t know it, but they are abusing themselves too. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Corruption comes with a cost.

Their dreams of unlimited power are puffballs of ego and fear that will eventually pop in the encounter with inexorable cause and effect. In a contest between human will-to-power and reality, reality will always win.

I acknowledge that great harm may be done in the meantime. Great harm is inevitable, because will-to-power has no goal other than to use manipulation and force to get what it wants. And what it wants doesn’t care about you. In fact, it’s possible that what it wants needs you as a scapegoat, someone or something to hate, to fear, to be against. That is the unholy energy that drives will-to-power.

What is beyond the reach of tyrants

If you are anything like me, as you read the news each day, you are cycling between nausea, fear, and a desire to burst into tears over all that is so wrong and sad in this perplexing world of ours. The sad and wrong I am referring to is us. Human beings. How incredibly stupid and petty and short-sighted and selfish we can be. I hate to say it, but how evil we can be. Evil = actions that arise from the above named fear and greed-driven qualities.

I can’t dis our species without saying that we can also be creative, loving, kind, wise, courageous, and brilliantly effective at bringing forth what is best in us and in others.

And we can evolve. We must evolve. We have too much power not to. Pretty much all the problems in this world have been caused, are being caused, by the discrepancy between our power and our limited understanding of and lack of respect for the natural systems from which we arise.

Sure, maybe Earth will get hit by an asteroid and our demise will not be our fault, but it’s more likely that we will have offed ourselves, because we weren’t able to achieve enough collective maturity, as a species, in time to protect ourselves from ourselves.

So, who are the ***holes here?

I’ve been using the word ‘we’ a lot in reference to the human species. But it is important to note that there has always been a subset of ‘us’ who are particularly rapacious, cruel, and care for nothing except their dreams of total domination.

For a long time I’ve felt that humanity was a sliding scale, with more or less hard-wired good people and more or less hard-wired bad people at either end, and most of us slipping and sliding one way or the other depending on circumstances, influences, etc. Many of the spineless toadies who are groveling at the feet of the men in power at present might be much better people in the right circumstances.

Even more so for the poor souls who worship the Golden Calf and voted for him. If their real needs were being met, if they felt safe and understood, they would not have had to vote for an obviously terrible person who suckered them into believing that he was ‘on their side.’

The wannabe dictators who are trying to destroy our government are an embarrassment to the species—craven humans without self-awareness or humility… It is so painful to watch as they slash and burn their way towards a fantastical dream in which all dissension is crushed and they get everything for themselves.

Do they envision a world in which nothing scares or upsets them any more, and everything fits into their idea of how the world should be? Or is cruelty part of the fun? Must there always be violence against ‘enemies’ to keep interior discomfort and awareness at bay?

What is beyond the reach of tyrants

Tears and fears

I am scared. There’s a part of me that feels like crying all the time. What I am looking for in myself is courage—confidence that I can trust myself to respond creatively to the moment.

I have to do a certain amount of ranting. It’s an emotional response to what is so ugly, so stupid, so tawdry, so full of it. Does ranting help? I don’t know… it feels like a necessary starting point. I hope that the ranting I do will look at what is wrong in a way that seeks to understand why it is wrong, as well as to excoriate.

The weirder and scarier things get, the more I need self-grounding. Self-grounding is anything that helps me to feel connected to my body in the eternal present. Dancing, singing, moving, meditating, praying, feeling gratitude—all the feels, whatever brings me into my relationship with the present, the presence… the presence I trust, the presence I love.

This is exactly what the people whose actions I abhor don’t know how to do… do these men (and some women too), do they ever sit with themselves, and feel their own loins and hearts in the context of the great mystery which commands, without commanding, our humility and our service?

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

~ John F. Kennedy

From the wellspring of self-grounding flows creative action. Art is a form of truth. Not Truth with a capital T, just little truth… the truth that there is a quality of life beyond propaganda, beyond an agenda, that has the power to awaken, enliven and encourage us towards greater understanding and awareness.

We are the ones we've been waiting for…

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Yup… all we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given us… a tall order.

There is direct action like calling your representatives, going to protests, writing postcards, etc. This is important. There are lots of people doing lots of good things. If you can help in this way, great. I so appreciate all the strong intelligent voices that are responding directly to this moment with clarity and passion.

Every kind of creative response to the particulars of who, where, what you are is possible. Whatever you do from your own center helps us all. The more you can feel your own complex, nuanced, probably wounded heart, the more the right path for you will show itself. Not all at once; just moment by moment.

Let’s have faith, my dear friends, in ourselves, and in each other. Let’s keep talking and sharing and inspiring each other. Who knows what kind of good mischief we will get up to?

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I first wrote this piece in 2021 and I republished it in 2023. It makes even more sense now that the mob is operating on a world stage with such impunity.

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Here is another piece by Hamilton Nolan, a writer I am greatly appreciating at the moment, comparing the current so-called ‘administration’ to gangsters.

Gangster Party

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Rob Brezsny blesses us as I wish to bless us… Thank you, Rob!

We Invoke Blessings

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The last SNL Cold Open was so brave… just straight up silliness with pull-no-punches satire of the meeting with Zelenskyy, and Mike Myers making very appropriate fun of what Elon Musk is up to these days.

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