Way
Forward
“All
shall be well when we are free from the will to dominate people or things or
our own souls. Our superficial motives cannot finally destroy us if we are
aware of and attend to the point of real love in the ground of being—even if
that attention be sadly weak and often forgotten.”
Helen
Luke (Old Age: Journey into Simplicity, p.89; Bell Tower, NY, 1987)
Watching
the voting process to elect a Speaker of the House last week left a nation wrung
out, without the energy to even be affronted. As we sat in our living rooms and
watched Keven McCarthy lift the speaker’s gavel, we couldn’t even scream at
what has been given away, what has been surrendered to a fractious mob. We’ve
seen worse—January 6th was worse—but this came close. It was sad.
One of
the things that happens as we grow older is the invisibility factor. At least
in America, we fade into the shadows. But the upside of this is being able to
observe from the distance of invisibility—no one knows you’re there, and no one
cares. As our powers in the world diminish, our powers of observation increase.
Within each older person is a lifetime of experience with the world—its chaos,
its nonsense, its folly, its beauty and holiness. We’ve seen great people come
and go, we’ve witnessed fools with power and ego trample on anyone who gets in
their way. And we’ve experienced the fallout from all of it. But seeing one elected
representative try to shut the mouth of another by force—well, that was new.
One thing
that we know—one thing that everyone at this point should know—is that the will
to dominate others is unsustainable. Even in autocratic dictatorships, the
people can only be forced to surrender for so long, and then the dam breaks. When
a six-year-old walks into a classroom with a 9mm pistol and shoots his teacher,
and nothing changes in the way of gun control, we’ve hit bottom. When a group
of five zealots can force the Speaker of the House to kowtow to their demands—and
he does—then we have no government in service to the citizens of this country.
So, where do we go from here? Good question.
We must
learn to pray and trust. We must summon the energy to vote with 100% of our
eligible voters. And we must understand that all things have a beginning, a middle
and an end. We are not exempt from the laws of nature.When our notions of greatness can no longer be sustained, when
domination is no longer our goal, when we are unwilling to sell our souls to
get what we want—all will be well. Until then…we watch and pray.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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