How Can We Find Our Way Home?

This past weekend I had the pleasure of reading some of my poems at the Capital Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Victoria.

Reading from a collection titled "Over There Where I Cry Mother I Am Lost" we then gathered after the service to talk, ask questions, on how we can return to a preferred future. Everyone who spoke was in touch with the politics of our day, the threats to our environment and the challenges of our relationship to one another and our planetary home. We were mostly middle aged and there was one young person there.

We are not short of thoughtful intelligent and sensitive people, but we suffer from the realization that a system drives our which is dissociated from nature and civil society. This means we find it difficult to affect change and protect our home. Out of that conversation I list several things we might consider.

1. ECONOMICS
Send letters to our political representatives, call them, let them know their duty to their constituents and country goes deeper than "jobs" and "the economy". Their reliance on lobbies who have no other interest than making the economy grow - is now destroying our home. Make noise. Get their attention. Offer alternative ways that go deeper into the problems.

2. COMMUNICATION
Do not fall back on scapegoats, threatening those who don't see things as you do, go beyond blaming to workable ideas on how we can work together. Offer hope in ideas rather than leaving it at criticism. Making claims about what "they" do leads us deeper into judgement and leaves us without ideas on how we can move forward.  Bring young minds into the circle. Listen to what they believe rather than telling them what they believe.

3. LOCATE YOUR HOME
What areas of social life do you know, what have you experienced, what skills and knowledge do you possess? What books have you read that have influenced you? Where have you come from? Your family values, your political preferences, your education level and your profession. This is where you begin because you've lived it.

4. INHERITED TRAUMA
Trauma that your parents and ancestors survived are the bedrock of your beginning as you learned how to survive. It is the lens you have inherited like your DNA and your values. How did these elements make you vulnerable and make you strong?

5. SOCIAL STRUGGLE
How did you get through elementary school, high school and university? How did you fit into your profession or work life? How much support did you get from colleagues, friends and bosses?

6. EMOTIONAL AND SPIRITUAL HOME
Where do you find comfort? In nature? In a religious congregation? As an activist? As an artist? Where do you feel effective and where do you contribute? Even warriors need a tent to return to for support and sustenance.

7. WHERE IS YOUR TRIBE?
Where you do feel a kinship? Where do you belong? Where besides social media, can you say what you feel, reveal the deepest feelings in your heart and your mind. Remember you are not alone. Nothing that thrives is alone, not even oceans and trees, not even clouds.

8. IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT
It is about what is, what was, but mostly what we can do.  Until our species becomes extinct we shall respond to the world as we know it in our hearts and minds to the best of our ability.

Preparing for an uncertain future: A Response

Janet, your essay provokes thought and moves towards defining the kind of action which this future seems to require. Nonetheless, when you say that we must become the piece in the puzzle to support and sustain what is life revering, I am not sure that all that is required is to offer alternative views in a respectful manner. That is one kind of action, yes, and an important one, especially in the face of the kind of power and privilege that does everything it can to shout down other voices. And I, as well as you, should and will continue to take that kind of action wherever and whenever we can.

However, I think there is another kind of action that is equally important, if not more so, now. I would like us all to think about and do this kind of action – the kind of action that acts out our values, not just talks about them. For some of us, for example, that might be civil disobedience of the kind where we sit down in front of the bulldozers clearing the way for oil pipelines. For others, it might be the growing of food, the conserving of water, the development of survival strategies for our tribe, however we might construe that term. In particular, I am seeing local organization of small groups around emergency preparedness in neighborhoods as critical to resilience in the conditions I now fear rapid climate change will bring down on us. And I think we have to pay attention centrally to the kinds of communication and organizational skills that will permit these groups both to emerge and to flourish. Developing and using such skills is not just enactment of our values, it will be critical to our survival.

So for me at this point, I am more concerned with these practical actions, enactments of my values if you will, and less with attempting to change minds, particularly the minds of those who have a huge investment in certain kinds of behavior. An investment that is literal as well as figurative.

We don’t have a lot of time left, and I want to use my “community time” as effectively as I can. Yes, to support those who will do civil disobedience, but more particularly to take action with others in my neighborhood to try to ensure we care for each other as well as possible when things get really difficult – which it seems, they surely will.

May Partridge - Sociologist, Creative Non-Fiction writer and Poet.