Tag Archives: separation

Rejection’s good side

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I’ve been submitting work to journals lately and have received two very kind rejection emails in the last two weeks. While it’s never fun to be rejected, I’m also curious to dig into it and reflect on what lies beneath the surface. Rejection isn’t the same thing as failure, but it sure feels like it on one level. What happens if I play with Lincoln’s famous words about failure?

What concerns me is not whether you’ve been rejected, but whether you are content with your rejection.

For much of my life, I’ve gone to great lengths to avoid rejection: playing it safe, drawing inward instead of reaching out for help, not rocking the boat, following rules, doing what’s expected of me by others, conforming to societal norms. Continue reading →

We are all in this together

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I woke this morning haunted by two phrases chasing through my dreams: “We’re here to make the world safe for —” and “We can eliminate all evil,” half-consciousness laying bare the emptiness of such phrases, the mistaken assumptions about who we are, how much power we have, and why we are here in the first place.

When we tell ourselves that we are here to cleanse or perfect something — whether it’s us, the environment, people with different skins, alien cultures, or desperate terrorists — we totally miss the point. Perfection is one of those goals born from the story of separation. As is curing, rather than healing. Or cleansing, rather than embracing. Continue reading →

Storying our way to vibrant communities

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Shoes_620wOften, the things I think I’m seeking in life are already present, so close I’m not even aware of them. Like the fish not recognizing the water it swims in. I may jump on a particular bandwagon, like longing for “community,” as a sort of magic talisman that’s going to right the sinking ship of modern civilization, only to be shown, in beautifully concrete ways, that it’s right here, all around me.

Last night, my next-door neighbor and I were both coming home late from meetings. He stopped while closing his front gate to call a hello through the darkness and ask if I was all right. Then he said, “Did you hear about R?” (Our 55-year-old across-the-street neighbor had just informed my husband a few days before that he’d had a heart attack in mid-December, necessitating shunt surgery. It was the first we’d heard about it.) Continue reading →

Naming the dominant stories of civilization

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Last summer, I attended a course at Schumacher College, a veritable Shangri-La of New Story in theory and practice. It’s a beautiful, gentle place overflowing with wonderful, brilliant people who actually walk the talk, and have been for over twenty years. I went to the Dark Mountain course, which brought together the two founders, Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, with a self-selected smattering of people who identify with their Manifesto, “Uncivilisation,” and other writings.

We spent a lovely week telling stories, listening to master storyteller Martin Shaw, and talking about a wide range of aspects of this threshold upon which we live. One of our ongoing conversations was about the ways in which the dominant stories show up and what they would have us believe. (Not the “they” that people like to blame when feeling the tightening screws of power-over dynamics, but “they” as in the stories themselves.) Continue reading →

Another way to heal the illusion of separation

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The poet and essayist Mark Nepo shares a teaching from the Tao that “the world in all its mystery and difficulty cannot be improved upon, only experienced.”

“Ultimately, we are small living things awakened in the stream, not gods who carve out rivers. We cannot eliminate hunger, but we can feed each other. We cannot eliminate loneliness but we can hold each other. We cannot eliminate pain, but we can live a life of compassion.”

I like the humility of this, the recognition that we are not at the center of it all; we are merely players in the great drama of life. While it may be a comedown for some, it certainly takes the pressure off. We don’t have to control and orchestrate everything after all. What happens when we surrender to the truth of this? Continue reading →

Nature is speaking, but I think you heard her wrong

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Conservation International has just unveiled a new message campaign, “Nature Is Speaking,” which has well-known celebrities speaking as and for “nature.” They each voice a character, such as Ocean, Redwood, or Soil. The sad thing is, there isn’t a speck of love here, and even the films’ expansive cinematography does nothing to draw you in, or elicit any emotion besides dismay and possibly guilt.

At the end of each spot comes the tagline, “Nature doesn’t need people. People need nature.” It’s the meanest sort of message, casting Nature as the all-powerful, disapproving parent who indulged us for too long and is now cracking down. Taking back her power, or at least throwing it around to scare us straight.
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Leaving (and returning) home

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Our ancestors spent many millions of years swinging from trees. Most likely, climatic shifts caused us to come to the ground, learn to walk on two legs and discover uses for our clever hands other than hanging from branches. Walking and running on two limbs, making and using tools with the other two — these are radical changes that separated us from the rest of our animal kin.

When we left the forests, we left the cradle of our evolution and we’ve been leaving ever since. Most of us forgot to return, even for a visit. It would be like if I left home to go to college and failed to call or write a single letter (we didn’t have email or texting back then), never returned for Thanksgiving dinner or breaks, simply severed all ties with the family and never looked back. Continue reading →

Reconsidering our origin stories

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What is your family of origin? In this tapestry of a country with its multi-cultural past, how often have you heard or asked that question? My grandmother used to put it differently, just straight out: “What kind of name is that?” Which, translated, meant: “What is your ethnic background?” Although she had great curiosity and zest for life, in this case, the subtext was less generous. She was a WASP to the core, and a dedicated xenophobe.

At our Restorying retreats, we ask people to introduce themselves by starting with the phrase, “Once upon a time,” and then tell about their birth as if being interviewed by Hans Christian Andersen. I like how it brings people directly into the mythic “everywhen” mind that immerses them in the realm of symbol and archetype. Why does this matter? At the heart of living into the new story of connection and belonging is a reconsideration of our origin stories, both personal and cultural. Continue reading →

My child knows when we encounter the Wandering Stranger

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Second of a seasonal series. In which my son sees Santa Claus in the off-season and gives him an applesauce packet.

Something I’ve been playing with in this time between stories is to give my intuition some breathing room. To let my imagination peek beneath the surface of things, which are not necessarily what I assume them to be. The Irish know that magical threads run through the weave of daily life, and that the invitation to notice is always present. This season, I’m going to practice touching into that magic in moments of connection with other people, or even other beings not human.

When we bring our Christmas tree into the house this year, I’m going to imagine it standing in the forest, a quiet home for birds or squirrels or insects. The Yule Tree is an ancient symbol of the season, inviting a deeper attunement with the living world through its spicy smell, the prickles or softness of its needles, its rich green color, and pleasing form. Continue reading →

Shale gas drilling and the many faces of interdependence

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I just finished “The Real Cost of Fracking: How America’s Shale Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food,” by Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald. It’s got me thinking about interdependence, the reality that we are all connected through myriad threads, whether we acknowledge it or not. This book is full of gripping stories of people whose lives have been turned upside down by shale gas drilling in their pristine, rural communities.

On one level, it’s a nine-chapter slog through egregious practices by sloppy, greedy drillers and their disregard for farmers and for public health, as well as their shocking ignorance of the laws of physics (I mean, who really believes it’s fine to spread toxic wastewater on roads to “keep the dirt down”?). Continue reading →