Tag: foundations

In Love

It’s all just one big love story, you know. And we love it. We love every second of it. The ups, the downs, the twists, the turns, the heartaches, the triumphs… all of it. As I will point out again and again and again, our story is our world. We tell the story that we do, and live the story that we do, because we are in love with this thing called life. Forever seeking to get ever closer to its core, its heart, its mind, its essence, which at the end of the day is nothing but our own. The world reflects us back to ourselves perfectly. Even though we often don’t like what we see in that mirror, we intuitively know that there is something more, much more, beneath the surface image. So we keep engaging in an effort to find it, to find ourselves. 

Sometimes we make up stories that don’t reflect our true nature, or the nature of the world that we inhabit. It’s o.k., we all do it, and perhaps have to in order to come to understand what we are not. I do tend to think that is a necessary step on this crazy journey called life. One by one we can, through a process of deduction, cross off this and that as not the real me. Eventually there will be nothing left standing but the real you. Paradoxically, of course, that will be the same moment that you come to understand that there is nothing that is not you. Go figure. Ah, but what a moment of sweet liberty, and of complete responsibility at one and the same time. There is no escaping this end, but go ahead and try if you must. 

Houston is a swamp. There, I said it. The founders of Houston were speculators who sold it as something other than a swamp, something more like a new beginning in paradise. The Place upon which they laid out their new town, however, likes to send up reminders every so often. “I am a swamp,” she says. Houstonians pay her no mind. We are too busy writing a different story. We are busy creating a different version of paradise, which requires transforming the swamp into something that it is not. The swamp has her own mind with her own ideas about the paradise she once was, so in protest she sends out more frequent, more stark reminders. “I am a swamp!” The city floods. We think we must conquer this swamp thing once and for all, and so we try even harder to do so. This will not end well. The swamp will win. 

The swamp will win because you can’t fight millions of years of ecology, much less the billions of years of geology that it rests upon. We are infants in comparison to their hard earned wisdom. We would do better to start by examining our own story. Is it in alignment with what we now know to be true about the world and our place in it, or is it off somehow? When we begin to deeply ask that question, to face our unexamined assumptions, we begin to unearth not only ourselves, but everything we have buried alongside us. To jump to the chase, we must face that the worldview, the very foundation upon which Western civilization has been built, was off about the nature of reality: 

  • The world is not an objective place, separate from our subjective experience of it.
  • The world is not made up of dead, mechanistic matter that has been imbued with an extraterrestrial spirit (in the case of humans only).
  • Life is not a competition. 
  • Life does not unfold in a linear process of cause and effect. 
  • We are not separate entities.

Yet while we may have been mistaken about these assumptions, our path has not been a mistake. We had to come to know what we are not before we could move into what we are:

  • The world is intelligent and in a constant state of co-creation with everything in it.
  • Matter and energy (spirit) are one and the same thing.
  • Life is a collaboration.
  • Life emerges out of a complex, integrated network of interactions such that every little action effects the whole in ways that we cannot predict.
  • We are inextricably interconnected. We are One.

We have written this world into existence:

  • We wrote patriarchy (hierarchy with its associated powerlessness) into existence.
  • We wrote separation into existence.
  • We wrote exploitation into existence.
  • We wrote shame into existence.
  • We wrote oppression into existence.

…and on and on. We can, therefore, write a different story. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, “When you know better, (write a better story).” 

The house that I now call home was a camp first built by a guy named Jack Murray in the late 1940’s. Jack loved both nature and culture, as evidenced by the library of photos that he left behind of his extensive travels (which we now possess). He also painted. His painting of his beloved Lake Hortonia still hangs in our house. Jack was a neighbor of Shannon’s family when she was growing up in Brandon. He shared his beloved spot with them and they, too, fell in love. Understanding this, Jack essentially willed his camp to them as one of his final acts of love. Shannon spent her summers here for most of her childhood, but summers frankly weren’t enough. They wanted to live on the lake year round, so out of this love they built up and out. They winterized and moved in. Permanently. Being good Vermonters, they did all of this themselves utilizing only the skills which resided within the family. They built their dream. They created a new life for themselves.

They created to the best of their understanding, skills, vision, imagination, and resources. They knew nothing of nutrient pollution into the lake. They knew nothing of species depletion. They knew nothing of climate change. They knew nothing of the dismantling of collective life. They knew nothing of the oppression that is associated with our way of life. But now we do. It is therefore up to us to imagine a better future, to write a new story, and to create a new reality. 

How to begin? With the foundations, of course. We must unearth our unexamined assumptions, bring them to light, and start over again with a new worldview based on our better understanding. Still in love. Still with a great sense of gratitude for the love that went before us. People ask us every day why we didn’t just tear the house down completely and start over. Well it’s because too much love had gone into that house to just throw it all away, into some landfill somewhere. Our job is to pay the love forward by constantly reaching not only for our true selves, but also for the true Lake Hortonia. There is a story that is true for everyone and everything, and it wants to be known. We must reach for it again, and again, and again, and again right up to our very end, so that we too may pass this place along to the next generation in our final act of love. 

Foundations

A funny thing happened on the way to fixing our foundation… a pandemic brought our project to a screeching halt. If I had a different life experience to date, I might be inclined to deem it incredibly bad timing. We hit the green light on the project in early February and then spent the rest of the month prepping. This involved packing and shifting our contents, demolishing the front porch, clearing the site, finalizing our construction loan, and moving ourselves out along with a few possessions that we would need over the coming months. All of that had to be done by the end of February for the March 1 start date. Over the next two weeks our site team lifted the house ten feet into the air. Then the word came down. Vermont ordered all non-essential businesses to shut down. Besides that, our crew couldn’t get concrete to pour the foundation. We were at a standstill. Our partially demolished house has now been lowered back down to a reasonable height as we wait. There is no telling when the project will resume, much less when construction will be far enough along for us to move back in. 

In the meantime, we had just moved in to the basement of our friend Jean’s house when COVID-19 took the U.S. by storm. And here we thought that the hardest thing we would face would be keeping our dogs separated. The dogs were indeed challenging with two dogfights and multiple injuries to show for it, but honestly the high anxiety of our human situation was worse. Imagine being quarantined at home, only you are not at home. Therefore even the slightest bit of remaining control that any of us might have- control over our own domain inclusive of our response to the situation- was also lost to us. While we are truly grateful to Jean for opening up her home to us, we knew we needed to find our own space and give hers back to her for the wellbeing of us all. 

I cannot say how fortunate we truly are. We happened to have a backup. We have Tiny Drop, our tiny house located on our off-grid mountain retreat. The only complication was that there is still two feet of snow on the ground. We can’t even drive up our steep driveway yet. Our water supply is fed by a spring that runs down the mountain. As soon as we realized we needed to make our move up here sooner rather than later, our first order of business was to find out if the spring was running and if we could get it flowing through the pipe down the mountain. The spring was running, but the pipe was still frozen. Fortunately, again, we had enough extra pipe sitting around that we were able to divert water from the existing inlet to get it down the mountain far enough that we didn’t have to hike all the way up to the spring every day to fetch water. Good enough. We made our move.

We relocated a week ago. Certainly this life isn’t for everyone. In some ways, life here is the equivalent of “glamping.” But it is perfect for us and for our dogs. It is perfect, especially, for riding out a pandemic. Our place here is completely off-grid with no cell phone connection or internet connection. (This post is coming to you from my car via the free internet out of the Free Library in Brandon.) We literally have no connection to the outside world other than the cars that we hear go by down below. That alone has been a huge relief from the constant flow of collective anxiety jamming up every artery of our hyper-superficial-connectivity. Then there is the social distancing, which frankly can’t get any better than this. We have no neighbors. But the very best thing about it is that it puts us right into connection with the very thing that we need more than anything right now- nature. 

Mother Earth. You’ve got to love her. Snow, rain, cold… bring it on. When the sun comes out it is nothing short of glorious. We feel so incredibly grateful that we are going to be here to watch the season change in this place that we fell head over heals in love with over six years ago. If I haven’t made this clear already, spring hasn’t arrived on this side of the mountain yet. It’s beautiful in all seasons nonetheless. Although I have been warned about mud season, so perhaps I should hold off on such a bold declaration until I have fully experienced that. It will be here just as soon as the snow melts. In the meantime, I have a long standing tradition of posting photos of my Vermont “office” to irritate all of my Houston friends. Not to disappoint, here ya go!

Foundationsoffice

Now that you have the picture and the update, let’s talk. Nobody knows how this thing is going to go. Yet I think it is safe to say that whatever we considered “normal” will likely never fully return. We will come out if this profoundly different than we were when we went in. It is possible that this moment will catalyze a full on paradigm shift. Then again it might only be a significant pre-tremor to the full on quake to come. If we are being honest with ourselves, however, we must realize that a paradigm shift is imminent. We simply cannot continue to inhabit the earth in the way that we have since the dawn of Western civilization. That game (of separation) is over, whether we are ready to admit it or not. 

And that is downright scary. It’s terrifying to not know what comes next. It is disorienting when our foundations crumble beneath us and our sense of home becomes completely compromised. Trust me. I get it. Many of us, most of us, will fight to rebuild what was in order to get back to normal. Yet I will remind us, as many others are, that our “normal” has been extraordinarily out of balance for a very long time. When we live in an unhealthy situation, it is very difficult to see that from within it, particularly when it is all that we have ever known. Our best chance of gaining perspective is to get outside of it for a bit. This is that chance. It might be the only chance that we get before full on collapse, if that collapse doesn’t come quickly. 

While paradigm shifts seem to come out of nowhere, they actually don’t. They are the result of a slow build up of pent-up energy that knows a better way. When that storehouse reaches a tipping point, the system literally gives way to the better understanding. The change seems sudden and certainly catastrophic to life as we know it. Yet it has been coming for a long time. I think the critical thing to understand at this moment is that we are not alone in this. That is to say that the “better understanding” is not something that has to or has been coming from us alone. Gaia will have her say. If we continue to insist on “othering” her, we can be sure that we will not like what she has to say. She has the power to vote us off the island. How silly would our conception of this being the era of the Anthropocene seem then? 

On the other hand, if we move to heal our relationship with Gaia, if we move into an awareness of interbeing, then we will have a very good shot at being a healthy part of the new paradigm. That paradigm will be more joyful, more loving, more harmonious, and safer than the one we have been inhabiting. That paradigm will support the evolution of the system as a whole. It must. That is the way of life. We can only dodge the way of life for so long. Again, time is up for that charade. This new paradigm will look nothing like anything that we are used to. It is time to open ourselves to welcome this new reality, as frightening as it may be to leap into the unknown.

Fundamental to fostering a state of interbeing with Gaia and all of her constituent parts is to once again acknowledge her and every aspect of her as sentient. We must meet her as an actual living being. Not metaphorically, but literally. As I mentioned in my last post, this is extremely hard to do from within the confines of Western civilization. I am imploring each and every one of us to find a way to break out of those confines. I offer this reading list to support us in getting there:

The Dream of the Earth, Thomas Berry

The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, Charles Eisenstein

Earth Acupuncture, Gail Reichstein Rex

Please, please take this opportunity to read at least one of these. They all very clearly describe where we are, how we got here, and where we might go from here. In short, they point to the underlying worldview, the foundation, upon which we have built the world as we know it. This worldview has put us on an unviable path. Nothing short of examining and reconstructing our worldview is going to get us onto a viable one. 

If you are able to get out into nature, perhaps start by greeting her as you would a person. In fact, practice greeting anything that you never would have spoken to before as if it is a living being. You may feel crazy, but that’s only because our existing world paradigm has taught you otherwise. If you had grown up in an indigenous culture, developing such relationships with all aspects of Gaia would be a very natural and essential part of your existence and wellbeing. At this point in the game, I would argue that you have nothing to lose and the world to gain. 

Last things last. I have to say that in this moment I could easily feel like the world is out to get me. I don’t. On the contrary I feel incredibly and perfectly guided, supported, and protected. I sense that I am exactly where I need to be at this very moment in time. I hear humanity awakening to and asking for the higher understanding that we are needing to face this moment. I hope that in your quiet moments you feel the same. Godspeed.