This much, we know, the future storytellers can say. What will they go on to recount? What ensuing drama will they recall?
That is partly up to us, of course, because we are living it. We cannot make the realities of end of oil and climate change go away, but we can choose how we’re going to respond.
Once again the theme of storytelling re-emerges, this time Macy is using it as a tool to help people today understand the story that we are apart of now. If we can do that, we can also see that we are the protagonists and have power to shape our stories––shape our collective future. More and more I am drawn to storytelling as a life giving, social justice enhancing, heart educating, world changing tool.
It seems to me that there are two kinds of response to massive collective trauma. One is to contract–to close down in denial and fear, to tighten the heart and the fist. The other is to open up–open eyes, heart, hands, freeing the capacity to adapt and create. We know we’re capable of that, because it is happening now all around our world.
Opening up seems counter cultural in a society so immersed in fear mongering, distraction, and greed. But just as children learn to be afraid and selfish, they can also learn to be open. What does that look like?
This Great Turning alters none of the facts about end of oil and climate change. It cannot save us from the immense and painful challenges they bring upon us; but it does enable us to engage them wholeheartedly, with wisdom and courage. For, like those two mudras–Fear Not and Touch the Earth–it grounds us in our mutual belonging.
In that mutual belonging is our solidarity–with past and future generations, and with each other. There is no end to that resource. It will never run out.
