How is life unfolding this Monday morn?

I encounter a conversation with 2 friends, where one has the symptoms of a tick bite that could signal Lyme disease. An opportunity to see a doctor cracks open because another mutual friend is driving to the health clinic. But they decline an offer for a lift to the health clinic. Allopathic treatment has not served well in the past, so they are cautious about expecting any effective remedy. An alternative path is their preference.

Another friend announces locally and globally the surprising acquisition of a property with a new business model that could meld cooperative strategies with affordable accommodation, time-share opportunities and workshop/retreat options. Except within 2 hours of the announcement they have to apologize for pre-maturely breaking the news because the owner states the property is not for sale.

My last act of this cheerful morning is to read the first few chapters of Jem Bendell’s “Breaking Together: Freedom-loving Responses to Collapse”. Bendell contends that the world’s major systems have regressed into such irretrievable decline, that they will not recover. It looks the best we can do is confront the distressing realities the human species has created for itself and find solace in loving life for its truth and beauty (I have yet to discover if he embraces goodness too).

Bendell seems to be inviting readers into the refiner’s fire of collapse – to stop avoiding what the data and our experience are telling us. To allow deeply into our awareness, the collapse of the modern paradigm and its ultra-modern versions that have spread disaster around the globe.

But to allow the “crack in everything” is to let the light through. We must break down so we can break through.

From a living systems perspective all this is true and necessary. It is the manifestation of Thinking Globally and Acting Locally (Geddes, 1890).

From a spiritual perspective I think there is much more scope to regenerate from collapse – not merely to survive it or adapt to it.

With every weekly practise of Islands of Calm Meditation, I remind myself and others that the other-than-human life and subtle realms that co-exist with humans, offer comfort, solace, wisdom, guidance, patterns, insights, energies – alliances with Life, Light, Love –  that can lead us beyond the cracks, breaks and collapses into a wider view of cosmic reality, evolving as Gaia herself evolves herself and us (Lovelock, 2016).

I hope that Jem Bendell can discover a more expanded context for his intense research – and reach  into Cosmic Realms – even spiritual incarnation, as David Spangler describes.

On this Monday morning, I gift myself a walk in Nature. Listen to the birds. Taste the blackberries. Enjoy the sun on my face.

I lean into where Jude Currivan gestures us to Think Cosmically, Feel Globally and Act Locally. I feel connected to allies from the natural and subtle realms.  I am not alone with predictions of the world as I know it ending. I am open to the world as I know it collapsing – but into change that is so profound it calls forth a new direction, a new paradigm and a whole set of new expectations for Light and Love and Life.

Postscript

Tuesday morning gives me some assurance in savouring the message that Alastair McIntosh brought at the end Monday – Discernment. We need Discernment to cherish and be cherished by Place. Discernment to accept the indigenous in ourselves and in others and how we are all tied to Place. Alastair offers more hope beyond Clearance (as the Quakers practise), Consumption or Collapse.

He reminds us of the deep goodness of Community – that we must “hold spaces that are hospitable to the Soul”. That is the calling of Findhorn (Foundation and Ecovillage). We can offer courses in living. We have the strength to discern our challenges – whether they be Cracks, Breaks or Collapses – even to kneel as we hold and are held in Divine Fire.

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Ecovillage Findhorn, Dateline September 11, 12, 2023