Hospicing the Old, Midwifing the New

Reflections on naming what is falling apart in our world, processing our fear and our grief, and envisioning a more beautiful world.

Collapse Awareness

Jem Bendell (author and founder of the Deep Adaptation Forum) is someone I look to as a source of well-researched analysis and insight in the expanding field of collapsology. His work encourages me to want to face into and name what is no longer serving us – in my own life, in the social and political systems and structures that we inhabit, and in the ecological matrix in which we are embedded. As a friend put it to me earlier today: how can I be whole in such a broken world? 

Despair and fury, amongst other possible responses, could be considered a sane and rational responses in the face of the ecological unravelling that is befalling our beautiful planet, not to mention the social and political fragmentation that appears to be tearing apart nations and peoples. According to many experts and commentators, with some tipping points already surpassed, our current trajectory is leading us inexorably towards societal collapse – indeed some are saying it is already underway.

Radical Hope

To speak of this is not merely an exercise in doom-mongering. Looking deeply at what is broken in our world (both the inner and the outer) can lead us, amongst other things, to pose the question: what remains? And also: what is of ultimate value? These, amongst others, are good and long-overdue questions for us as humans, pointing us, perhaps, to a landscape beyond despair that we might call radical hope.

What this means, for me, is akin to Julian of Norwich's 'all shall be well'. This is not a naive clinging to a desired magical outcome, or a spiritual bypass to override suffering, but rather a deep knowing that despite evidence to the contrary, we are part of a universe that is inherently good and, as Einstein put it, friendly. Ultimately, I believe, love can and will win the day, even though the means whereby this may occur is beyond human fathoming. In this sense radical hope is no mere fantasy, it is the ontological bedrock upon which we stand when all else is stripped away.

The Great Unravelling

For some decades, the author and activist Joanna Macy has been naming the Great Unravelling as the precursor to the Great Turning. Systems theory and other bodies of wisdom describe this perennial insight in different ways, and we all have first hand knowledge of it through the cycles inscribed in nature and in our own bodies. Even so, it seems trust in this underlying pattern doesn't come easily for us humans.

Whether we lean into it gracefully or resist it with all our might there's no escaping it: change is the only certain thing in this life. Sometimes it's necessary to embrace disintegration and death as the necessary prelude to something truly new coming into being. Spiritual surrender (not the same thing as passivity) is always a wise option, especially, as Maya Angelou reminded us, when we have no choice. 

Doing it Differently

Turning to the practices, the ways, that can guide us towards true wisdom and enable us to 'do it differently' could help avert, or at least mitigate, the chaos that is likely to ensue as the structures that uphold business as usual continue to come apart at the seams. This means, amongst other things, doing our inner work and adopting social technologies that will enable us to collaborate and cohere effectively. These are not just nice additions to the real business of rolling up our sleeves and getting on with the task at hand, but essential means of facilitating a soft(er) landing as we descend down the ladder of industrial growth madness.

This is a live inquiry for us at this time in the Gathering Gates, as we seek more and more to discover the ways that will help us tap into the grace, power and creativity to turn this unravelling, this falling, into a positive disintegration: an opportunity to radically revision, renew and rebuild. My heart's knowing, informed by prophets and mystics both past and present, tells me that tinkering around the edges, or covering up the cracks isn't going to do it. This ship – forged from out of a worldview that sees you and I and all created things as separate entities in a world of other – is going down.

Hospicing Modernity

I like the title of Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti's book Hospicing Modernity. It suggests to me the possibility of a loving transition that honours the many and undeniable blessings this epoch of separation has wrought for us. I think it's possible to do so while at the same time firmly and unequivocally withdrawing our consent from the systems of harm that this era has (wittingly or unwittingly) conjured. 

May we look to our wisdom traditions, both new and old, as we seek a benign descent, that they may guide us towards greater relational communion with each other, with the earth and with the cosmos. And may we midwife a new age built, not on opposition, or violence, but on the emergence of our true nature as sons and daughters of a living, breathing universe whose name is love. 

On Saturday 7th September, Liz Day and Jenny Haycocks are offering a workshop and ceremony on this theme. Click here to read more and to sign up.

Picture: https://www.robertmontgomery.org