Babes into the Woods: Agnostic Notions of Apocalypse
The labyrinth in the nave of 11th century Chartres Cathedral in France is believed to have been inspired by Sufi numerology. There is only one path to the center, each pilgrim follows the same winding journey through eleven layers. Eleven is a sacred number symbolizing one facing the one. (1:1) The self facing God, or the inner world facing the outer world.
Part 2 of 4: Systems Change Series; Where is humanity headed?
We are plastering the cracks in the walls of an old temple. The beams inside are rotted and a tower just fell. Do we even worship here anymore?
It’s Easter morning and the fifth day of Passover. I’m up watching the sun rise in Senegal. Today 210 Countries and Territories around the world have reported a total of 1,781,383 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
In Europe and the United States more that half of the population is waking to a major holiday in the midst of a seemingly unfixable tragedy.
Under normal conditions families would attend community worship today.
These houses of worship would encourage reflective spiritual practice in the collective. In their finest moments they would create sacred spaces that encourage the pilgrim’s journey (inward)for the betterment of all humanity and life on earth.
On the shadow side, some houses of worship would encourage common-enemy connection where the “us” is defined in opposition of the “other.” Brené Brown calls this “counterfeit connection” which undermines intimacy and the pleasure of connection. Ancient dogmas can be used to shame and build obedience. Such teachings pull communities away from a shared journey of liberation.
A modern day horseman, COVID-19, is a pestilence that has no gender, no class, no religion and no ethnicity. It has brought earthly powers to their knees.
In the US especially (my) people are experiencing suffering and transformation. Anger, blame and victimhood cannot as easily distract from inner work. Money, guns, and drugs cannot protect our safety. Curses thrown at the universe are met with a hollow silence. Prayers and reflections are bringing peace.
“Apocalypse,” translated from the ancient Greek, simply means “unveiling.” It is a revelation of mysteries previously unknown or unseen by us.
Today’s holidays, though usually worshipped in separate houses, are connected at their core by rejoicing in the defeat of death and the gift of life restored.
If we listen to our ancestors we might hear guidance for today in these stories.
From the feast of Passover in Judaism we may glean the need of a collective rebuilding following a period of slavery or entrapment. We witness the celebration of a people escaping death and setting new traditions that embrace liberation. Traditions deeply rooted in community.
In the resurrection story of Christianity we find the universal human experience of awaking after a period of deep suffering and loss. The first to mourn the loss of the child of God were the same to be astonished by his resurrection. The Christ-like (enlightened) mind of clarity, free from judgment and in kinship with others, is achieved by letting go of earthly power in a reckoning with grief and anger.
During an April 7th call organized by the Wellbeing Project, English poet David Whyte explained COVID 19 as an invitation to “drop down into this new internal horizon inside the human imagination.” As in the ancient pilgrim journey, here we hold the conversation between the interior world and the exterior. Whyte suggests we are often biased toward the conversation with the outside world because the one inside can be scary and takes courage.
Similarly, international and community development practitioners seek solutions outside of self, and outside of community. Every day a thousand new tech, digital, or material solutions are launched. Most have merit. The are celebrated and most of them disappear.
Much of this is a distraction from the next frontier of our collective liberation. How do we build the inner dimensions that will enable planetary flourishing. As long as only some of us are “fixers,” “innovators,” “visionaries” or “solvers,” we are making others non-visionary. We are again distancing from the very people we are.
If we see problems and experiences as belonging to other people we will cannot connect in a way that will transform us. We will always be in judgment. We will never be in kinship.
This is one of the great lessons of the Dark Angel of COVID-19. Our global wellbeing, or bliss, or paradise, or heaven awaits in a space of kinship and innocent, uncontrived joy. To get there we might say we must repent.
Can collective beliefs improve our chance of planetary survival?
Recall the homeless youth of the SHINE program I wrote about in part one of this series. Their early experiences of powerlessness and loss caused them to see generosity as an act of liberation, of power. They saw that by giving you get more, not less.
What would the development world look like if we all thought like the previously-homeless kids of the SHINE program?
“Repent,” translated from the original Latin means to “re-think.” It calls for changes on the level consciousness and connectedness. On the level of belief.
We must model the beliefs and behaviors that will best serve our happiness and well-being on this planet. Nothing we rely on in life — from money, to kindness, to public institutions — would have been built or exist today without belief followed by aligned behaviors.
It is now clear that our very democracy will not work unless we believe in its principles and act on them by engaging in meaningful discourse, voting, and upholding the oaths of office taken. Time and time again studies show that human beings make decisions based on what they BELIEVE their society expects of them. This is why hundreds of thousands of people may vote for someone who will not care for their interests. Because belonging in that social group is more important than daily survival.
Belief is a conversation with society about how we belong. Faith is a necessary tool to check in on belief daily and be involved in co-creation. Which myths do we now need? Which ones no longer serve? This conversation is not linear.
How do we worship/believe in the moment of apocalypse to bring about greater liberation? How can we repent (rethink) to lead us to salvation?
Mindset or belief change is a necessary pillar of systems change. Institutions are ruled by the mindsets of people who write and ratify policies, charters, missions and procedures. For these to be formed and upheld, people need to believe in them. For these to be abolished, people need to share a new belief.
We can leverage belief to change systems.
Belief-changing knowledge is something we intuit, but it is rarely provable. The fast-moving complexity of social networks and human perception outpaces the tools at our disposal to understand them. Even brain science has yet to fully understand consciousness, the apparatus through which we make meaning. And yet we are asked to prove things that are deeply known in our consciousness — like the relationship between kindness and generosity. And the relationship between respect and engagement.
The price of belonging in the development world is that an organization must falsely polarize is world into binaries like “perpetrators and victims” or “rich and poor” or the “educated and uneducated.” This creates a destructive mythology in which politicians, ideologues or religious leaders are called out as problems when they cannot single-handedly shift the whole system. They can be called in through the other reasons they are loved by those around them — as parents, worshippers, philanthropists and economic drivers. This more humane lever is rarely used because it is complex and takes time. This quick-fix framing prevents systems from changing at the level of belief because entire parts of self are not involved.
Fortunately organizations like Tostan have developed methods of monitoring and tracking the changes in attitudes, perceptions and beliefs that shift during important and pivotal community-level programs. These shifts in “social norms” are linked to changing behaviors that influence institutions of governance and commerce around them.
This is a call to makers and shakers in systems change and social impact to deepen the inner-work lens on your outer-work practices.
First start within. Here is — A Time To — a ritual to do at home, a medicine moment to honor and release all that we are asked to let go of and let die. Created in collaboration with the gifted Lydia Campbell, we aim to demystify ritual and make sacred experience available again. To anyone, anytime, anywhere.
Then, bring your community! Here are some ideas to embody playful innocence and create the spaciousness to integrate lessons of the apocalypse/un-veiling:
Remain open to the intelligence and power of the collective in your institutional interactions and decision making. Blow the doors off your private meetings and throw away the mythology of the “expert.” Do not compete. Do not consult. Slow down and collaborate at every level.
Give away all of your information about best practices, resources, innovations in the field, unconditionally and believe it will come back. You are modeling a better future grounded in a positive belief set — it will return to you.
Fall in love with this new future and let go of your own plan on how we all will arrive there. Do this individually and collectively with organizations and actors you worry may be a threat to your unique proposition. Be vulnerable. You will find you have much to learn from each other and more is indeed more.
Invite celebration and joy in the processes of being and becoming together. Allow a culture of generosity to override a culture of scarcity in spirit as well as resource. Be sure to play and be creative without a designated end goal.
Focus on the way that gifts are made with trust and partnership and let go of celebrating the amount of a gift. Everyone has something of value to give.
In the words of the Buddhist sage Shantideva, “All the suffering there is in this world arises from wishing our self to be happy. All the happiness there is in this world arises from wishing others to be happy.”
Now is a time to bravely step forward with new vision. And in this case, the new vision we are being asked for is inner vision. Time is running out to repent.
