11 How Do We Get There From Here?

Six months into the pandemic, the old realities had fallen away.

Some people still talked about going back to the way things were, when we could once again resume “normal” life.

I knew there was no going back. And even if we could, I for one didn’t want to go back to the way things were, as if that was the best we could do, the best we could imagine?

Human beings are endlessly creative. I did not believe for one second that the world as we lived it was the best or the only world possible. I wanted something much better. And so, I suspected, did everyone else, even those people who would have thought they would be happy if only thing went back to the way they’d been.

I needed to imagine that in this dissolution of old realities, and breakdown of structures that were never meant to sustain human life, something much better was emerging in this chaos.

Listening to the news only added more evidence to my sense of despair and overwhelm. Movies depicted an apocalyptic future where the earth was already destroyed, and humans lived in in hiding, trying to survive being captured by the monster/aliens intent on enslaving us.

These stories alternated with stories about a Disneyfied past were nice well meaning people lived according to the unquestioned rules of patriarchy, white supremacy and heteronormativity and were supposedly better off for it. 

I am hopeful by nature.

I wanted better stories to feed my imagination. I didn’t want to deny my pain or others or pretend away injustice and inequality.

But I knew that the only way to get from here, where we are now to someplace new and better began with imagining something better was possible and that despite whatever we had experienced or witnessed or done, we were capable of creating it, this better world, if we could hold a vision of it, long enough for the vision to take hold .

I started listening to channeled messages from various people channeling Archangels, Ascended Masters, Nature spirits including the spirits of the trees and the living earth herself, known as Gaia.

The “Woo News,”  as I called it,  was mixture of spiritualism — channeled messages from Archangels and Ascended Masters, — evangelical infused conspiracy theories about white hats and black hats, as well as messages from benevolent beings who according to these stories were part of a much larger cosmos and here to help.

I learned how to discern from these various stories, which stories were ones that uplifted and connected people together, and which recycled old paradigms of control.

I hear a lot about decisions and plans and activities all taking place behind the scenes, that couldn’t be “officially” acknowledged, that assured listeners that a more just and compassionate world, was on its way.

It sure didn’t look that way.

It’s possible that I have been deluding myself with fantasies in order to avoid a future is too painful to face

Most days, I cling to tenuous threads of hope, choosing to believe the chaos is a necessary part of the creative process, and that something new and wondrous, is in fact, emerging.

Perhaps it is not entirely coincidental that it was then that I met Hilma af Klint.