Wow, here we are another year down the road! The wood (ironwood, Japanese cedar, eucalyptus, kiawe) for this year’s Winter Solstice fire has been split and stacked and smudged. The patient tunka sit quietly in their stoic prayer robes. We will be sparking grandfather fire at firstlight, invoking the ancient medicine and blessing of the Sun. It is time once again to let go of what no longer serves us, to purify into the possibilities of tomorrow. To humble ourselves in the sacred womb of Mother Earth, to breathe in its timeless prayer. To welcome the seed of Spring that is germinating in the darkness of mid-Winter.
Let me begin by expressing my gratitude that you are reading these words, that we are touching in some small but significant way across the miles and lifetimes (it often seems). I am grateful for this chance to circle up. I am aware that some people choose not to engage about the current state of the world. I do understand and respect that choice.
Accordingly, please be forewarned that my witness-bearing and sharing in the missive that follows does indeed address head-on some of our more disconcerting contemporary realities. And I do range widely and long this year and for that I apologize. This letter was twice as long prior to my final edit. I even felt compelled to include footnotes and an addendum for the sake of comprehension.
These are indeed historic times which have spawned my ensuing elegiac meander through metaphor and meaning, as I have struggled to keep my eye on the poignant poetry of it all. In a world which increasingly evinces a “showdown mentality”, our collective anxiety levels are off the charts. Anxiety comes in a plethora of flavors: election, climate and eco, nuclear, extinction, economy, health care, security, AI, et al. These are in addition to the plain vanilla anxieties inherent in modern life. It can all seem a bit much, demons in all directions. It is an embattled world, with over 30 active armed conflicts globally. Nationally, suicide rates and mass shootings are at record levels.
My way of processing the “stresses of life in 2024” was to assiduously write down my thoughts and feelings as the wheel turned through the four seasons. What follows is not a political statement but simply a report on how I personally read the events of this past year. My primary concern is that we establish a sustainable kinship with Earth on behalf of future generations. It does not matter to me whose hand is on the tiller so long as we have enlightened leadership steering a course of responsible stewardship.
In that regard, I offer Winter Solace on this Winter Solstice in a year of seemingly endless doom loops. I have no idea how my comments may land. I may have cut my wisdom teeth on a long line of failed philosophers but the thoughts and opinions expressed herein have been distilled solely from my own imaginings and reflections, such as they are. If they tweak you or move you in any other way, please shoot me a line. The intent of this letter is connection.
Thanks to human meddling, Earth has now tilted an unprecedented 31.5 “on its axis and consequently humanity along with it. If there is a magical tilt button, no one has yet pushed it. We have tilted and tipped and slippery sloped ourselves into the “Big Melt”, releasing dangerous levels of methane from the melting Permafrost. It’s more than a little unsettling to see the synchronistic parallels that have permeated the collective subconscious.
The fires that devastated Maui last year opened my eyes and permanently seared my vision. I cannot unsee what I have witnessed and continue to witness. The fires of transformation continue to consume our home planet, its flames eating away at our very roots. The classic imaginings of Hell as a fiery landscape are not without substance.
The world in which we find ourselves on this Winter Solstice is not one our grandparents (or even parents) would have recognized from the days of yore. The American dream has all but evaporated for a considerable portion of the younger generations raised on social media replete with its erosive shadow of disconnectedness and inadequacy. Their longing for a deeper connection to a sense of purpose and self-worth is palpable and profound. It is undeniable that a mountain of difficult truths have been staring all of us humans down this past year, yet who more personally so than the young ones coming up? How does anyone wrap their head around the possibility of an “end-time”??
The existential crises in the offing can seem a crushing weight, a game-changer. Yet to believers like me, these same crises may be the very sparks that enliven the spirits of youth to rise to the challenges facing them, to step up and face the gestalt of so much global uncertainty. It is clearly the imperative of these younger generations to find a way forward, to blaze a trail informed by “hallucination-free insights”, to borrow a phrase from the scary world of AI. This vision, at the very least, is one of my prayers for the world.
Personally, I am confident that help is, in fact, on the way. It may not be at all what we have imagined. At least, certainly not white knights, motherships, the calvary charging over the hill or any other Hollywood version of a miraculous bail-out. But whatever form it takes, humanity has “skin in the game” and will have to do its part, at whatever the cost. We should know by now that there is no free pass and magical thinking can only take us so far.
I certainly do purport the efficacy of prayer at this hinge moment in history. At the very least, if we plan to bet on the future, it is only prudent to hedge that bet as best we can. The form of prayer I have in mind is fueled by neither false hopes nor any set of specific beliefs, but rather is potentiated and empowered by knowledge, both empirical and historical. To wit, that the fundamental defining characteristic of “our” universe is expansion. Also to wit, that the history of humanity is threaded with countless references (stories, tales, legends and myths) to intervention (so-called divine or otherwise).
Any sense of hope I still have is anchored to these two concrete facts which shape my call to prayer: to ask for and receive help by allowing the universe to expand through us (ie, to grow larger by becoming more humane) as individuals and species. More on this elsewhere. To be clear, I am not advocating for any kind of “hail Mary” pass. But if that is all you’ve got, I would say give it your best shot. Use whatever is in your unique wheelhouse. My Dakota hunka taught me that the purest and most genuine form of prayer is how you live your life, how you walk in the world….every step, each breath. Fall down, get up. Correct and continue. You are not alone. You walk in the company of your Ancestors.
What gives wings to intercessory prayer is to be humble, sincere and grateful. You can use whatever story suits you, if you even need one. True intercessory prayer supersedes all stories about whom or what one is praying to. The Great Mystery is a very large target which never begs the ultimate eschatological questions. With all due respect, I agree with Hernan Diaz that “God is an uninteresting answer to an interesting question” but that should not in any way be a deterrent to a meaningful relationship with the ineffable. Is it not our profound ignorance that empowers the various gods of our imaginations?
Meanwhile, here in the so-called “united states” of America, 2024 was an election year, which serves up a whole other level of epistemological obfuscation. From all the chest-thumping and bluster to the sword-rattling and swagger, the dark drivel spewed by the patriarchal edgelords and the alarming beat of war drums, there was so much writing on the wall (and between the lines) that it was hard to decipher any meaningful message of where we might go from here. Other than over the brink, that is. The merchants of false hope, the wannabe demigods, the forces of both Light and Darkness were all jockeying for something: your attention, your dollars, your votes, your “likes”. Given the type of rhetoric being flung around playing so loosely with the truth, at times it felt like we had indeed embarked upon a collective descent into lunacy.
I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the beginning, literally. To state the obvious rather simplistically, prior to the Manifest Universe there was the Unmanifest Universe. It is inarguably logically true by definition that before the “known” existed the “unknown”. Mu. The Great Silence. Initial Singularity. The Primordial Darkness that held the seed of Light within itself. At some point, in some mysterious action or reaction that no one truly understands, the seed of Light sprouted expansively, and the “known” universe (our home sweet home) has been expanding ever since.
That was 4.5 billion years ago. Everything that has transpired since that epic cosmic launch is recorded in the firmament, in the vast library of stars, planets and a whole host of heavenly bodies. As relative newcomers onto the scene, humans have been reading these starmaps for tens of thousands of years (“time immemorial”) and most everything we know comes from this source. We are, truly, “stardust” as Joni Mitchell poetically observed, adding pointedly “and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden”.
Eschewing the biblical version of Eden, and casting it in contemporary currency, my interpretation of the Garden is the so-called “goldilocks zone” that uniquely supports life as we know it. And the beleaguering question of the hour is exactly how do we get back to the garden? This monkey’s fist of a knot is like a roundabout in which all the main avenues of human enterprise (social, political, scientific, spiritual, philosophical, psychological) intersect. In ancient times, it was said that “all paths lead to Rome”. Today all paths lead to the center of the wheel, the compass rose that reveals where we are (and where we are not) in terms of the Garden. The last stanza in “Stardust” is prescient: “we are golden/caught in the devil’s bargain”/and we’ve got to get ourselves/back to the garden”.
Have we not been caught in the “devil’s bargain”? It is a question that begs an honest answer. Like Baby Bear’s porridge, the atmospheric conditions in which humanity has survived and thrived have been “just right”, neither too hot nor too cold. One wonders for how long we can afford to ignore the clarion call about the rising heat of the water we frogs in the pond have been enjoying.
An interesting aside about the Goldilocks moniker. In the original cautionary version of that folktale, titled “Three Bears”, the intruder was a mean old ugly witch (not an innocent blond tween) who dared to interfere with the natural order of things, causing a lot of havoc as a result. When the Bears discovered her transgressions, they used a number of different means to kill her, that meddling crone, ending with impaling her on the church steeple.
For as long as there has been history, the story has been rewritten and reshaped by those in Power. One wonders how long it might take a newly elected regime to brand themselves (the election winners) the so-called “good guys” , redefining the “losers” as the “bad guys”. The prospects are chilling. One also wonders what will be the rules of the game in the new Republic.
The social fabric that has held humanity together and to account is woven by many threads. There is legitimate grave concern that it shows signs of unravelling. By both metrics and optics, it is shockingly apparent how dangerously strained the social and political threads have become. The scientific threads are stretched tight in the face of unprecedented challenges from every direction of the multiverse. And the various threads spun from the humanities are straining to weave a web that can capture and contain what we need to know.
Hunkered around the light of Fire, in all directions, the philosophical and psychological seers have circled up and are scrying the troubled waters looking for guidance if not an epiphany, in the rising steam. And right beside them, the esteemed historians and spiritual leaders are shuffling the deck of tough questions desperately seeking pragmatic answers. What fundamentally defines “humanity” (and its trademark “consciousness”)? What is the fundamental natural characteristic of the Universe? What is the relationship between the two? Can we talk? Shades of Plato!! How do we find our way out of the cave and back to the Garden?
If there were to be a “dream team” of participants in this unique and critical Chautauqua, I can think of a few names I would nominate. I bet you can too! There are certainly encouraging sparks rising from the concerted efforts of the zeitgeist, some of which may already be reaching the stars to help shape the map of our future. Speaking of future-think, it is notable that once again the most popular baby names in 2024 were “Noah” and “Olivia” (visions of the olive branch upon the Great Flood’s recession). The perpetuation of our species has its own intelligence. Parenting today requires a belief in the distant shore. Gate’, Gate’, Paragate Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha.
Meanwhile, the mainstream religious leaders (at least those who plant their flag on exclusivity or sanction violence in any form) have their own circle, in the center of which is a mirror instead of Fire. Oops! I just leaked out a bit of cynicism. My bad. Mea culpa. To quote my 12-year-old granddaughter, “I’m sorry. It’s ok.”
Everyone is entitled to their own story, imho, but we do need to keep it real. I just have no truck with fear-fomenters or hope-hustlers, and there are many such hucksters of the Holy plying their nefarious exploitations in the name of “religion” (with the seductive proposition of “re-linking” lost souls to their salvation).I find myself dancing here on the edge of a much deeper philosophical enquiry that arose during the drafting of this letter, which is not the venue for such an enquiry. Thus, I have “cut and pasted” these ruminations into a separate essay that will appear as a blog on my website. It is, in short, my witness statement; a relatively short treatise on the meaning of Life as I have come to understand it after a lifetime of considerable deliberation.
However, the precarity of this existential moment demands that we put our most immediate attention to the daunting task at hand. Whatever meaning, if any, Life might ultimately hold rather quickly becomes a moot point if we in our ignorance and arrogance stray too far outside the Garden that we have enjoyed for the last several thousand years or more.
Highway ’24 was indeed a rough patch of road but may well be remembered as a walk in the park compared to the promised shake-up (and shakedown) just over the horizon as Trumps Revenge Tour 2025 hoves into view with its vitriolic exhaust darkening the sky. A scorched earth policy featuring the extirpation of woke folk and the “radical left lunatics” who dared to oppose him is only one of the planks in the new ship of state. Anon, thither we sail into the imbroglio.
One does not need to be a quantum physicist to recognize that something is seriously amiss. A soulful triage of our predicament reveals that humanity’s kinship with the Earth absolutely must be healed and restored before any talk of moving the patient out of the ICU. The odds of that happening in the new regime, as rapacious and short-sighted as it looks to be, are somewhere south of zero.
The dark cloud of denial that hangs over Trumpland will likely preclude even a Band-Aid, no less the transfusion of efficacious wisdom and responsible caretaking that is so desperately needed. Purging any reference to climate change on all government websites as has been threatened will only exacerbate the possibility of a flatline in our not-too-distant future. The Denier-in Chief and his billionaire bros, thick as thieves, are about to descend on Washington, ostensibly intent on burning down the mission while selling marshmallows to the highest bidders. If things get too hot, and you have been suitably beknighted, you might have a shot to join Donald and Elon as they abscond to Mars. Time shares on the Red planet, anyone? Mars, the mythical God of War.
Our collective addictions have weakened our very humanity. The most obvious one is fueled by oil and could easily drive us to clear-cut and deep drill ourselves into oblivion. The other is a cancerous growth of unsustainable and unbridled “wanting and getting” material things, the endless loop of consumerist craving (wherein lies the root of all suffering according to Buddha’s Second Noble Truth). The ascendant overlord plays to these and even darker shadows from our subconscious swamplands.
As an alternative reality, imagine feeding those hungry ghosts by channeling their appetites into growing our humanity and compassion rather than our GDP and our stock portfolios and our waistlines. To be divorced from the very earth that sustains us is indicative of a lethal soul sickness, a crippling pandemic the likes of which makes Covid seem like a seasonal flu by comparison.
I imagine that it has not been easy for anyone to keep an even keel in such troubled waters, no less to parse the emergent new paradigm. It has certainly demanded two hands on the tiller and an unblinking weather eye. There is no maelstrom more powerful than the collective fear of the unknown, a veritable black hole on Earth.
We all must find the best way to navigate, I suppose, as suits our respective circumstances. I tend toward slowing things down, putting “more space between the breaths”. Daily naps. Frequent forest bathing. Ocean time. Whatever it takes to re-wild my soul, to de-colonize my mind. To keep the picture as big as possible. The analgesic balm of poetry. Monthly purification ceremonies. The mercy of forgiveness.
Inspired by the teachings of the Dalai Lama, I have frequently sought refuge in my good intentions in addition to my quotidian rituals and routines, which reliably continue to engage and sustain and ground me. I write and I read and dance as often as possible to plant my prayer in that timeless and tribal kinesis, to discover what prayer is praying me and how it time-binds me to the Old Ones, visceral memories rising like sap.
And, predictably, time does march on. During these “increasingly philosophical” years, I find myself on the thin edge of winter. I feel the chill on the wind and acknowledge the frost on the pumpkin, part of the joy in living the full measure of life. Time is shapeshifting all of us but, lest we forget, we carry in our quivers sharp arrows of language which allow us to heroically engage with the inevitable. Will Shakespeare addresses his reflection in the mirror thusly: “Devouring Time, blunt thou thy lion’s paws.” (Sonnet 19)
Aging is an invitation to bear witness to the various tipping points in one’s personal landscape. It may not be easy but at least it should not be a surprise. Letting go with grace is a gift that comes with many blessings. A quick calculus of loss and diminishment maps the road of senescence ahead, a “succession of surrenders”, ultimately culminating in giving up the ghost. It is some consolation that there is at least one absolute certainty in our future. There is something about expiration dates that sharpens the point of life.
Conscious Eldering is neither for the weak nor the timid but is, I submit, worth the effort. While the walls of the narrowing chute of time may well be limned with Grief, if one can recognize and appreciate the profusion of tender mercies which bloom all along that winding road home, (aka, “count your blessings”), one may at last have finally found the key to the elusive Philosopher’s Stone.
As it turns out, it was you, all along. You! You are that precious Stone. You, tempered by fire and water and transmuted into the most perfect version of yourself, a spiritually purified human soul. And with that epiphany, a sweet release back into the Mystery, having completed your mission here, thank you very much. Oops…. I almost went down another rabbit hole.
Soldiering on in pace with Time is not without its challenges, of course, including the Sisyphean task of restraining the inexorable “email inbox creep” below the mythical mark of ten thousand. I find it peculiar that is such a difficult mountain, one of many rising up from the multiverse. Take AI for example. It may very well be the white knight that will rescue us, but it also could be a Trojan Horse ushering in an Orwellian future from which there is no return.
And while I keep a cautious distance, I must admire any emerging force that focuses on aforementioned “hallucination-free insights”. I have certainly experienced enough of the other kind to appreciate the difference. However, I remind myself that when treading in such unfamiliar territory, discretion is still the better part of valor, to paraphrase The Bard’s Falstaff (Henry the IV).
I am deeply grateful for the various small pleasures afforded this year by the “twin treasures” of simply living and living simply. The surprising catharsis of daily puttering, for example. Watching my 11-year-old granddaughter surf for the first time. Trekking to Oregon to visit my boys in their home turfs. A steady infusion of good literature, balancing fictional fun with revelatory essays on the gravitas of the times. A father’s pride in my two sons who have grown into their middle years with such resilience and enthusiasm for life. And equally proud of my luminescent granddaughter who has matriculated into an arts-focused middle school in which she is deepening and developing her creative self-expression.
I was even blessed with a visit from a high school buddy and his wife, their first trip ever to Hawaii. Wahoo and I got stoked on surfing together back in the 60’s and we used to dream about Hawaii. Sixty years later we finally got to be in the islands together, although we passed on surfing this time. He claimed the swell was not big enough for a man of his talents.
Not surprisingly, in this world of comings and goings, death did not skip 2024. My birth mother, just shy of her 92nd birthday, left with a smile on her face to join our ancestors in the middle of winter. It has been a great blessing to have known her for the last 7 years of her life. Scattered over the past four seasons, I watched a number of friends and beloved pets cross the rainbow bridge. I found myself shifting my angle of emotional repose with each death, my familiarity with the dimensions of grief deepening. I am reminded time and again about the exquisite role of grief in coalescing gratitude. Grief, that indefatigable teacher, is a whetstone upon which to sharpen gratitude. If the ghosts of loss should get inside you, gratitude can help them find a way out lest they take up permanent residence.
There were other types of death as well, unique to our times. The death of expertise, for example, and perhaps the death of a certain innocence. The blinking out of far too many species at an alarming rate in what has been termed “the sixth great extinction”. Sadly, perhaps even the death of foundational democratic ideals in a story still being told on a national and global stage. Some dreams die hard.
The wheel of samsara is always turning, of course, and with it the endless cycle of deaths and births. The prophetic birth of the white buffalo calf, Wakan Glis (translated as “sacred return”) in the wild Yellowstone herd just weeks before summer solstice was an extraordinary phenomenon which, in the words of Chief Arvol Looking-Horse, was both a “warning and a blessing”. A few months later, bearing my mother’s name, my great niece incarnated in mid-summer and lives now in what had been my mother’s home for the past decade. On Discover’s Day this fall, a young kitten literally dropped into my path and has taken up residence in my heart. And then there were two, naturally.
And who even knows what new ideas and innovations are being born in every passing minute? The magic and mystery of life continues unabated, for now. I try to keep an open mind, abstain from doom-scrolling and opinion polls, and avoid falling (in all the myriad ways one can fall).
For most of 2024, we were carpet-bombed with so many mixed messages, heady cocktails infused with fake news and fear-mongering soundbites, that it truly was “weird” to borrow the coin of the day that had been circulated in the currency of the recent campaign. The word itself (spelled “wyrd” at its birth) began life as a noun. A wyrd was something a person had, essentially their “fate”, which had been determined by forces beyond their control or understanding (karma? the sins of the fathers? written in the stars?). Inexplicability and deviance from the norm, even creepiness, accrues to this mysterious thing “fate”, with which we are all inflicted. There are few things more enigmatic than Destiny. It seems our whole society and culture has been actively playing out its “weirdness” according to the script and the 2024 election was a perfect stage for it.
The one possible glimmer of hope in any election year, at least for the first 10 months, is that a certain percentage of “leadership uncertainty” will become less uncertain come the morrow of Election Day. Or not, given recent history. One got the unnerving sense that all bets were off. In the uncharted seas of 2024, there was still a whole boatload of longer-term uncertainty waiting to set sail post-election, albeit with a new skipper at the helm facing the same shitstorms gathered on the horizon: Ecological disaster, nuclear Armageddon, the rising specter of AI, the seemingly tenuous foothold of sustainable life on Earth, and the whole terrifying litany of doom post-Pax Americana.
All the unsettling warries and worries of these past 13 moons have only been exacerbated by the hardened hearts of haters and misogynists whose darkest instincts seem to have been unleashed during the campaign. Think Pandora’s Box on steroids. This unsettling situation gave me great and ponderous pause, right up to Election Day.
And then, suddenly, we were there. November 5-opening day of Lame Duck season-finally scrolled by and we found ourselves on an entirely new page in a book still being written. While some leadership uncertainties remain, there was suddenly no longer any question about exactly who would be at the helm wearing a red cap. For better or worse.
To underscore the significance of the moment, I flagged November 6 on my calendar as the Day of Infamy. The fragmentation of our national psyche confirmed. Acting on a surprisingly voodooish impulse, I stuck a pin in its heart. The journalist David Brooks had succinctly confirmed my worst fears: “After decades without much in the way of moral formation, America became a place where 74 million people looked at Donald Trump’s morality and saw presidential timber.” Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees!
Dark and daunting though the thickening forest may appear, the river snaking through it continues its inexorable way to source. We must trust the river. A full-blown MAGAtized Trump 2.0 with virtually no effective guardrails is indeed extremely sobering. It is unprecedented in our almost 250-year history. It looks to me like America’s proverbial chickens are finally coming home to roost, our lofty aspirations and democratic ideals unable to outrun our national karma. Looking for some slim glimmer of hope, I remind myself that in this oppositional (what goes up must also go down) world which we call home, even chickens must return to Earth to survive. Even Chicken Little.
It felt to me as if a tsunami had just scoured the landscape of our American ideals, triggering some “bad acid” version of a Blakean vision. What yesterday seemed a placid harbor of refuge and safety was today a waterless abyss of primitive darkness, its sloping shores ringed like Wagner’s Circles of Hell in red, white and blue. Meanwhile up on the banks all the bottom fishers and feeders wearing MAGA hats were angling for the spoils. I was left standing on the high moral ground of righteous indignation. I reminded myself to breathe. I tried to empty my mind. I unplugged from anything electronic, seeking refuge in my own devices.
I replaced my old Nepalese prayer flags, wind-tattered, sun-bleached and worry-worn, with a new set. Their bright wind-horse colors (five elements and five pure colors) hold the latent memory of hope. I metaphorically lowered Old Glory to half-mast. Invoking WS Merwin, I planted a tree. I stared up at the mountain and howled in silence. I gazed out over the blue Pacific and set my tears free. I had a friend over for tea and conversation with no words. I lit a candle, wrote a poem, danced my grief. I smiled at a stranger. I learned a new ceremonial prayer song.
Now that we have crossed the Rubicon (and hopefully not the Styx) we will soon be waking up to the living nightmare of an authoritarian regime into which we have foolishly sleepwalked, to paraphrase Liz Cheney. Like many people, I am still aghast and grappling with the potential ramifications of such a radical sea change in governance. When a convicted felon and pathological liar creates an exclusive club named “Truth Social” and claims it to be the sole source for the real story, he turns the tables on truth and tilts them the way he wants. What could possibly go awry? There is little question that our global “enemies” are already sharpening their knives in anticipation of flaying open the seams of hatred and fear that have so deeply divided this great country that we naively and euphemistically call United. And now, tragically and prophetically, the beast that lives in our collective psyche has apparently been uncaged.
This looks nothing like the Great Turning some of us had the audacity to envision, but it may very well be a Great Reckoning. It has also been called the Great Capitulation, bending the knee to the new Leader of the Free World. One would not guess that this same seriously flawed character would subsequently be handed the nuclear codes and the keys to the kingdom as Bully-in-Chief, surrounded by his sycophantic minions. If asked to name the author of this sci-fi thriller, I would think Orwell or maybe Heller, if not Vonnegut. Perhaps it would be a stage play, a Greek tragedy.
He sparks his online bully pulpit with inflammatory rhetoric which is lapped up eagerly by millions (an alarming segment of the populace and, of course, electorate) who are somehow in his thrall. He has taken the great melting pot that is America-whose proud torch-bearer was once Lady Liberty-and turned it into a cauldron of grievances in which he foments the dark energies and toxic sludge that lives deep within our psyches. Once the new sachem is officially seated, there will likely be hell to pay.
It has long been the case that irony and paradox define the landscape of my musings. There is a practice in contemporary Zen Buddhism called “Not Knowing” which is essentially maintaining an empty (open as opposed to closed) mind in order to see things as they are. It is a timeless and pragmatic discipline, extremely efficacious in navigating the otherwise disorientating “world of ten thousand things” with all its smoke and mirrors.
The Know Nothing party was a political movement and force in the mid-19th Century that was nativist and populist, very much aligned with anti-immigration and racist sentiments. The name came from their policy of denial. Their xenophobic ideology was largely informed by conspiracy theories. The parallels with the current heir-ascendant (for indeed something has died) and his followers and enablers are striking. Paradoxically and ironically, what distinguishes the free land of Not-Knowing from the newly minted and malevolent fiefdom of Knowing Nothing is an abysmal gulf of ignorance, populated by millions of people who apparently choose not to know. What is. The truth. Ya know? It’s all about Wu, as I see it.
Perhaps the most unlikely source of inspiration for me came from a campaign sign stuck in the lawn of my friend’s neighbor. It read “Presidents are temporary. Wu Tang is forever”. It struck me as a buoy if not an island of truth in a sea of mostly hyperbolic palaver. I initially had no idea what it even meant but I sensed that it was significant. It is a reassuring reminder that Presidents (along with kings and dictators) are indeed temporary, an inarguable fact. But Wu Tang and immortality?
To be clear, I admit I did not even know about the hip-collective out of Brooklyn that probably inspired this sentiment. But, reading between those hopeful lines, and knowing that Wu-tang had a much older referent in the storied Wudang Mountains of China, I took the bait and was not disappointed. These sacred mountains are infamously the home of the legendary Shaolin Temple and arguably the epicenter of Taoism.
One of the fundamental ancient concepts in Taoism is Wu Wei, the practice of taking no action that is not in accord with the natural course of the universe. In other words, to follow the watercourse way, ie, go with the flow. Wu, for short. This would get my unqualified vote on both a personal level as well as a national one. Post election, the word “wu” became my code word to shift any conversation that seemed to be going too deep down the doomsaying rabbit hole.
Of course, it’s not just Presidents that are temporary. So too is everything, including so-called civilizations, monarchies and democracies notwithstanding. Ephemerality defines us despite our fascination with Immortality. A Facebook page is an ironic footnote: at last count there were over 30 million open Facebook accounts in the names of people long since deceased. I suppose it’s never been easier to leave your mark on the world, even if it’s just your name floating somewhere in a mysterious cybercrypt.
One election cycle in the USA will not solve the massive problems staring down humanity. The new regime may forestall, or it might exacerbate humanity’s multiple crises. We cannot see very far around that corner but the writing on the wall does not bode well.
If the election had been “stay the course” versus “realign with the universe”, I would have been out waving signs for the Big U. In lieu of either direction, we are now heading into the great unknown. Considering the rogue’s gallery being tapped for Trump’s cabinet, it appears that a state capture is unabashedly underway as unthinkable as that may seem.
I must add that Wu-tang does not have sole claim to “forever” status. So also does Extinction, that startling fact of non-life euphemistically known as “blinking out”. At risk are not only foolish humans but also the hot frogs and hungry bears, thirsty fish and lame ducks, young cats and aging lions, wind horses, buffalo calves and parade elephants mentioned herein. Plus, trees and rivers and streams, O my! And, of course, just all of life as we know it. The stakes could not be higher.
Death and Extinction have the same permanent address: “absence”. It is the defining feature of both states that are mostly incomprehensible given the limitations of the human faculty. Given the world’s wobbly legs today, maybe we don’t have 7 generations left, maybe not even 4. It may be small comfort but even if we stop being who we are, what we are (expanding energy, stardust) will continue. The universe will likely still be expanding in the post-human epoch. By way of consolation, I remind myself that the energy from which the human species has evolved doesn’t disappear with the species extinction. It is so much bigger than that.
I am just one aging man halfway through his 8th decade living on a remote tropical island at the far western reach of the Empire, but I have drawn a line in the sand, nonetheless. I adamantly refuse to yield to defeatism. I will instead double-down on the melioristic vision that tempers my mettle. It’s been more than a half century since the political repression and gross misgovernance of the Nixon administration drove me to take up residence in a foreign country. My loyalty now lies with this land and this island and with living aloha, no matter how our beleaguered nation may get reconstituted under the incoming caudillo.
I adamantly refuse to kiss the ring, drink the tribal Kool-Aid or dance to the raw primal music of the atavistic post-truth masses. I will not abandon the polestar to which my moral compass is calibrated. If I must choose a hill upon which to die, it would be in defense of Earth first and foremost. Our kinship with and responsible stewardship of it. Closely following would be to take a stand for future generations by defending the democratic ideals as envisioned by the Founders (and their wives) of this country, even as unattainable as they have proven to be over the past 250 years.
I think it is important we do not confuse the slang word “woke”, so often used disparagingly, with “being awake”. The word “woke” has been weaponized to undermine the very heartmind (compassionate intelligence) of America. And to weaken the hard-won freedoms that have come at such great cost and effort. To be awake is to see things as they are, to bear witness to truth. To be awake is to remember the truth of who we are, our humanity. I pray that we all remember to be kind. And that we remember to be grateful.
I am curious what your guidance tells you about wayfinding on the uncertain road ahead, how you try to read the lay of the land. In terms of positive actions to take, my helpers are pointing to the starmaps and the wisdom of the ages that have been passed down through all the different channels. The delivery system may depend on the host culture, but the truths are universal and timeless. We each have our own matrix, so to speak, but we are all paddling the same canoe.
For me that means the triad of ancient traditions with which I am most familiar. I call it a triad of “sustainable/survival” as compared to the triad of “success” (fame, fortune, power) and the triad of “fulfillment” (relationship, purpose, service) which are so often crosswise to one another. This “sustainable /survival “triad contains all the elements of the latter and completes both of them (third leg of a triangle). It addresses the questions of who, how and what. The where and when, of course, is here and now. The why is self-evident.
Wu wei. (Aforementioned, I sometimes refer to it as the “Church of What Wants to Happen”. See also Footnote 1)
Aloha (see Footnote 2)
Mitakuye Oyasin (see Footnote 3)
In these final days 24 years into the Third Millenium, this observer sees our most daunting challenge to be a reconciliation between Truth and Hope. In this epic epoch of our own undoing, the line between visions and nightmares can get blurry. As a coping mechanism for a hopeful minute in the lead-up to the election, I had dream-timed myself into an audience watching some edgy avant-garde mash-up of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, “Wag the Dog” and “King Lear”. Hubris was headlining and featured songs by the Sirens, FX by the Furies. Circe herself was handing out ear plugs along with the playbills and other fake news from the land of “woke”. I don’t know who that smirking joker was handing out Truth Social broadsides along with the blindfolds. In the wings, ideological warriors were proudly “standing back but standing by”.
It was all Greek to me but it still had the unmistakable elements of a classic tragedy. And then the curtain came crashing down. The lights have yet to come back on.
Enter stage right: the chaos and confusion of the impending shambolic kakistocracy. For some, a realized vision. For others, a sinister nightmare in the wings.
And now here we find ourselves on December 21, 2024. The shortest day of the year means it’s also the darkest. This is the cloak worn by Winter Solstice. But it also means that light begins its slow return on the morrow, the annual doffing of the cloak that bestirs Life. Something no Emperor, King or President can do anything about without betting the ranch. It is this slender reed of hope germinating in the darkness that I will carry in my heart swaddled with prayers as we round the corner into 2025, plunging headlong into history in the making.
So, my friends, bleak though the immediate future looms for the American experiment, I do wholeheartedly embrace the “hope” defined by the perspectives of Seamus Heaney ( “Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.”) and W.S. Merwin ( “On the last day of the world/I would want to plant a tree” ) . I am encouraged by the trust in “the system” expressed by my younger brother (whom I have yet to meet for the first time). I do believe in the human spirit to rise above adversity and to persevere no matter how strong the headwinds. I also firmly believe that this strength is mercifully in our hard wiring as humans. Our humanity, as precious as it is, will either prevail or, tragically, it will fail.
In closing, I turn once again to the iconic poet William Stafford’s prescient poem “A Ritual to Read to Each Other” for my closing prayer:
If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
We have now come full circle. I offer tobacco to each of the Seven Directions. I have put you and your ohana in my prayer ties and I offer them to the fire as we put our shoulders to the wheel and grow slowly toward the Light. As we rise once again, mercifully, from the ashes to greet it.
Be well, stay strong and close to the Earth. Support the young ones coming up. Plant a tree. Balance grief with gratitude. Mind your prayers. Stay in touch. Keep your heart open. Walk in Beauty (“each step a prayer, each word a word of love”). Above all, Stay awake.
Lastly (less it be lost in the labyrinth of alliterative language), please feel my sincere wish for you and yours to enjoy a peaceful and fulfilling holiday season. And, once again, I pray that your seasonal turnings be true and in alignment with your highest aspirations. May your stars shine brightly and all your ducks line up in a row. May your hopes and dreams continue to prove up. May we meet again at the next go round. Returning hopefully, as it were, to yet another Beginning.
FOOTNOTES
1.According to Taoism, the “superior” (ie, refined) human aligns his or her life with the fundamental expansive nature of the Great Mystery, Wu wei. In Hawaiian, the word for water is “wai” (pronounced “why”). The word for wealthy is “waiwai”. I find solace in the poetry of such languaging. To the contrarians and climate-deniers who might relegate waiwai and wu wei to the woo-woo realm of the “woke folk”, especially coming from a Boomer named Streams, I grant that it is your freedom to believe that only dead fish go with the flow. This argument however holds no water, as it were, since everything returns to Source as will be revealed to every living thing in the full measure of time. Indeed, the truth is that “We are afloat in the Great River/All are carried along/Some swim against the flow/They, too, are carried along.” (from “Aphorisms for Thirsty Fish” by Wu Hsin)
2. Hawai’i, storied land of rainbows and waterfalls, is widely known for its spirit of Aloha. It lies at the heart of Hawaiian culture. The lightworkers and wayshowers and peacemakers of the world would do well to consider the transformative power of Aloha to help restore a sustainable kinship with Earth and with each other. “Aloha” is not some “woke” pipedream. There really is no proper translation of Aloha into English. The word “love” is too general and spread too thin. “Aloha” means a feeling of respect and expansion which leads directly to one’s kuleana (Responsibility) to malama (take care of) the land and the life that the land sustains.The living practice of Aloha ties directly to taking care of the planet. This imperative of “doing what is right” is enshrined in the state motto, attributed to King Kamehameha. To do what is right. Wu wei. The elders tell us that the true measure of Aloha (and by extension, one’s very humanity) is “what is in your na’au (heartmind)”
In pidgin be: “No need choke words. ‘Nuff awready. Spread Aloha, change the world.”
3. Mitakuye Oyasin means “all my relations” and refers to the fact that all life is sacred and deserves to be treated respectfully. There are no exceptions. This is one of the ways we honor our ancestors and the spirits that guide us and protect us. Our thoughts and actions and beliefs affect everything in the great web of life. There is no more noble a calling than to live your life in a way “so that the people may live”, which includes all the future generations and the planet which sustains them.
ADDENDUM
(What follows are a selection of some of the more astute writings that I have read on various walls, both on the face of them and between the lines. I do have a penchant for the poets, prophets and philosophers who dare pen truth to power)
WORDS ON THE WALL
Nobody says it better than Puck: “Lord, what fool’s these mortals be!”
The Bard, again, on this not being a new story: “What’s past is prologue” (The Tempest)
Carl Jung, on the inside story: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate” (or in certain cases, “weird”)
Gerald Ford, succinctly: “Truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our government but civilization itself”
Hannah Arendt nails it: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
E.O. Wilson weighs in: “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleothic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology”
King Kamehameha, on what matters most: Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ‘Aina I ka Pono (“The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness”)
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