"throwing the miracle away with both hands"
10 Jan 2022this morning while mixing my loaves of sourdough, i was listening to how to survive the end of the world, Sibling Series # 11: Faith and Joey Soloway and adrienne named the depression sheâs been in lately.
adrienne: âŠI know all the time that humans are struggling with figuring out a way to be on this planet, figuring out a good way to be here. I know that we struggle with that. I know that weâre barreling towards climate catastrophe and in it. I know that. But somehow it just was like too much, you know, itâs just like, god, like, we just have this incredible planet {laughs} and weâre just so focused on the wrong things. And we are so easily distracted to focus on the wrong things and, and weâre just throwing the miracle away with both hands, and all feet, and everything. So it pushed me down underâŠ
and i realized iâve been in this grief for a long time and in an ongoing way. and the phrase âthrowing the miracle away with both hands, and all feet, and everything,â just felt so accurate. and itâs heartbreaking to just watch (and participate in) it. the heartbreak comes in spurts and waves but itâs here, settled and weighty, pretty much all the time.
i have been taught my lama rod owens how to mourn everything, including when your favorite item on the menu at a restaurant has been taken off (sidenote: i really wish i could find the talk where he explored this but i canât. đ this tweet isnât that, but itâs related and good). mourning the small things prepares us to mourn the bigger things. (note imho mourning and grieving are being used interchangeably here. i havenât actually dug into if they are meaningfully different.)
so i grief and i mourn. i grieve the birthday parties that didnât happen due to covid. i grieve the global travel i will probably never do out of climate guilt. i grieve the relationship with the floor of my house some of my nibblings will never have because by the time theyâre old enough to come in my house, they wonât be crawling anymore.
and when i feel it rising, i try to stop and feel it. i play a sad song and let the tears flow.
and then, after it has passed, i look at what remains, see what can be salvaged (the 4 and 8 of cups have been on my mind the past few days), and be with it until i get clarity about what needs to be done.
at this point, i have grieved the dominant narrative america. in my mind, this experiment is failed. as far as iâm concerned, weâve learned that this idea canât exist given the way it started. i believe something like the vision of america is possible, but this pass was incomplete.
also this morning i read in brian stoutâs latest newsletter, a phrase he wrote: âwe want transformation, not revolution.â it resonated hard.
and, when i take a particular set of lenses to all the things i do, what i am doing is preparing for whatâs next. whether it be civil war or political collapse or economic collapse or climate apocalypse or public health calamity/global virus or whatever, i donât know what will hit most acutely but at some point, something will even more acutely than covid. and then another thing will. and another thing. and i am preparing, all along the way, to be with what needs will remain: our to raise our children (in the world theyâre inheriting, not the one we inherited), our need for food and shelter, our need to navigate conflict and disagreement, our need to make collective decisions, our need to be in relationship with whatâs bigger than we can see, our need to grieve and heal and transform and laugh. in some ways, everything iâm doing is preparing. but as the lauren olaminaâs dad shared wisely in parable of the sower, you canât panic people into change. shock and overwhelm arenât good tactics (no matter how much we wish they were). so i keep grieving the losses and preparing, believing that the things iâm doing will be needed.
ok. thatâs enough for now. gotta go read before the next turn of my sourdough comes up. welcome to 2022.
words / writing / post-processing
692w / 16min / 12min