Desiderata, 2021, recycled

Where I still stand

In this season of the nourishing dark, I love to slow down and go within. While others travel, I stay still, quiet, by the fire, walking along the beach, looking across the water to the North Cascades.

I review the year, savor the experiences, recall the people, look for the soul’s footprints in the forest of events. Today I stumbled on this post from nearly 4 years ago, and it seems apt for this moment. Why write a Desiderata twice. It should be evergreen, right?

What could possibly go right?

With the changing of the guard in the big house across the country, I am drawn to declare, again, where I stand and the world I speak for. It seems like dark times ahead to me, though I know there’s a big tent of optimistic people in red caps thinking that happy days are here again. We shall see.

To draw my mind out of near-term catastrophic thinking, I sat down to articulate what I see is possible beyond these breakwaters. What look like tragedies are also just the conditions we get to work with now. Every sentient being for all time has been up against the tides of change, sanguine in times of plenty, shocked in times of want.

And then, stumbled on the 2021 version. You can read the original post here, or just enjoy the shortened Desiderata 2025 below.

Desiderata Easter 2021

I declare that I have to say this for my own dignity, sanity and integrity. I need to say where I stand in this world, even if I feel like a fool saying it, given how the devastating story running our world has eaten through the social glue and the natural world.

I don’t like feeling like a fool. I like showing that I know the score, that I’m not naïve.

However…

I have to say this today as I feel the tides of our times eroding the sand of my truth around my feet.

I believe the world is made of love. What else do you call the glue that holds us together, that holds people in community, that holds trees in forests with the duff of the ancestors and the mycelium of fungi binding them into an ecology, that makes gravity our fundamental attraction to the heart of our home planet.

I believe we live in a world of relationships, not a world of things. We took a very wrong turn with Descartes. I mean, why base your society on a European man, alone, in a room of his own, ignoring his body, thinking that thinking itself makes him real.

I believe every living thing has a natural right to unfold its destiny in a world literally designed to meet all needs of all creatures, even as I know that life is full of risk, challenges and death comes to every life.

I believe that reciprocity is the natural relationship between all living beings, and between the chemistry and physics of the earth’s systems. Everything serves everything else. It can’t be otherwise, really.

I believe that mutual aid is a natural inclination of the heart. We want to help others. We want to share our surplus.

I believe in generosity, in cups running over, in the parable of the talents, in Jubilee years and Wopilas and Potlatches. Generosity isn’t dependent on who or what we like. It’s what our hearts want to do.

I believe that community is the basic unit of survival. Individualism is a mistake, though individuation is the royal road to maturity. Personal responsibility is always required, but that doesn’t mean selfishness or hard-heartedness are justified. Cultivating the skills of community – listening, showing up, resolving conflicts equitably – is pro-survival.

I believe that conviviality – the joy of one another in public places – is the fruit of building safety, generosity, mutuality, reciprocity and love. And it’s catchy.

I believe in all beings meeting all our needs. I believe in meeting material needs with materials – but not materialism. I believe in meeting emotional, relational, social, cultural, political needs through non-material/human capacities means. I believe the skill of knowing the difference can be taught, learned and lived and we’d all be more satisfied if we did.

And yet…

Even though I believe all of this with all my heart, I also know that our world is currently not designed this way.

Consumerism, the handmaiden of capitalism, teaches us to meet all needs with stuff.

Consumerism is destructive of reciprocity, mutuality, generosity, gratitude, and human bonds. Consumerism actually flourishes by breaking human bonds and replacing these with stuff. Things go better with one another, not coke (both meanings).

The design of money, finance, the economy, and banking require material growth on a finite planet and most of us can’t even imagine anymore how we unhook from the teat of this poor substitute for Mother’s love.

Domination, exploitation, and freedom-as-entitlement to the biggest or at least a bigger piece of the pie have destroyed our imaginations about what’s possible and our relations with one another. It is not in the nature of the dominator economy to make space for meeting needs relationally so everything must be financialized for the machine to survive. Even if we perish.

And yet, 2025…

What is unsustainable cannot last. All past civilizations have collapsed. Some Empires have evaporated in my lifetime, like the British Empire and the USSR. The question is: which way is it falling, and how much else gets taken down with the ship called Atlantis, or Titanic.

My podcast, What Could Possibly Go Right? probed the emergent possibilities that came as the pandemic broke so much of who we were. We are still reeling and adapting. With the new US administration," “in the midst of all that seems to be going awry” (as I said in each episode) I call on my curiosity so I can see past my judgements. Perhaps their plan of disruption is right on time, though I write this sentence gritting my teeth. If I keep speaking out of my old mindsets, I will certainly miss new “What could possibly go right” signals. I will miss the growth that comes when you don’t get your way.

Growth in the dark

In this interregnum between T administrations, I’ve done plenty of growing in the dark. I would not trade it for anything. This blog documents my reconciliation with what’s been pushed down in me, and who I’ve left behind while aiming for the light. As many posts sit in my drafts bin as have been published, and writing with Ann Randolph, Unmute Yourself, Your Story Matters, has produced another hundred thousand stories on my hard drive. (If you take the class, let me know, I may host a coming-of-aging writing time via zoom in the future).

The Desiderata from 2021 is in one of my old dominant voices, who I called Doña Quixote, the great reformer, the great persuader, the great missionary. I love this voice, and all it called into being, and I am grateful for the new, softer, elder voices who’ve come recently. I’ve written my confusions, not just my clarity, I’ve written the meditations of my heart, not just the conclusions of my mind. I feel more settled in myself, more vulnerable, less clear about anything going right - but way more accepting that if it is, it’s right simply because it’s here.

More interesting, though, is what your Desiderata might be. What beliefs have been forged in your own furnace? What values do you hold that get you through the dark? What do you think makes any difference now, and for whom, and what are you doing about it in 2025?