The Future is Waiting to Give Birth

"There are many good reasons to watch the unfolding catastrophe of our civilization’s accelerating drive to the precipice and believe it’s already too late. The unremitting increase in carbon emissions, the ceaseless devastation of the living Earth, the hypocrisy and corruption of our political leaders, and our corporate-owned media’s strategy of ignoring the topics that matter most to humanity’s future—all these factors come together like a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut driving our society toward breaking point. As a result, an increasing number of people are beginning to reconcile themselves to a terminal diagnosis for civilization. In the assessment of sustainability leader Jem Bendell, founder of the growing Deep Adaptation movement, we should wake up to the reality that “we face inevitable near-term societal collapse.”  Patterns of Meaning, Jeremy Lent

Lullaby For An Anxious Planet

Lullaby

Your heart swam through ocean to air

how to breathe where you couldn’t swim

no-one to show you how 

you were the ocean,  the plankton

and everything that flowed into you

also flowed out of you.

Now you gasp in the dry heat

on a sandy beach

and even though you can’t see it

everything from now on

will be a struggle

to find your legs

and catch flies for supper.

You will be told in many words

you are an isolated ego

fighting for survival until you die

and the only thing that will save you

is a good night’s sleep

and this lullaby.

(from Sleep With Me: Lullaby for an Anxious Planet, Ekstasis 2020)

The Politics of Belonging to Better Our World

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/why-george-monbiot-is-fighting-to-build-a-politics-of-belonging-to-better-our-world-1.5720535? 

George Monbiot has dedicated his energy and his writing abilities to educate us against the lies of Capitalist politics as they have developed over the last 40 years.

Nations that were once rich and powerful have become poor and powerless. We have been told we are isolated units competing for what we want because our leaders are oligarchs - people who have established their power based on personal wealth. We are broken said one of my cousins.

Monbiot acknowledges that the success of our species is based on our ability to cooperate.

This ideas program is clear and uplifting.

The Ideology of Human Supremacy - Jeremy Lent

 Human Supremacy 

"There has been a 68 percent decline in vertebrate populations worldwide since 1970, with freshwater species such as amphibians registering a jaw-dropping 84 percent loss. Insects have been faring just as badly, with reports of “insectageddon” from some areas that have seen populations crashing toward extinction levels—such as the Monarch butterflies that migrate annually from Mexico to the United States, and have declined by 98 percent over the past thirty years." Jeremy Lent

Almighty Church of Everlasting Power

 

Almighty Church of Everlasting Power

Almighty chorus for the dawn 

chickadees, hummingbirds and crows

send the moon to her next province

while a breeze whispers

wake up from your dreaming

—this is your morning. 

Church of Planet Earth 

waking for rolled oats and tea

and news from choirs

—birds, squirrels excited for reasons

I will never know, 

not being privy to gossip 

among hummingbirds in a garden 

I call mine because of a Deed

illegible to cedars

their branches crowned

with tender leaves, their 

Everlasting roots underground.

webbing the earth like a village map

roads over hills & valleys

spread quietly to feed earthworms, 

and five hundred species of insects

where thirty different indigenous languages

are spoken but not taught in provincial schools

because white settlers came in boats

and planes, believing they could survive

on green land and virgin forests

by crushing a universal mystery

into a system after centuries of war, 

famine and plagues

destroyed the homes they left behind.

Power is in your grief 

your conscience, the long poem

that was once the bible

before nuance was made redundant

—now that you have learned 

what power is not.

Chris Hedges on American Sadism - talk on Sanctuary

 "Why is the malaise of a dying civilization expressed through sadism rather than a kind of righteous anger? Here we must turn to Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche warned that those who are humiliated and disempowered are poisoned by ressentiment. Because they have been stripped of agency, they lack the power to harm those who they believe harmed them.  In short, there is no cathartic release. Ressentiment is bred from damaged self-esteem. It festers and corrodes the soul.  The powerless, and here Nietzsche is writing about Christianity as a slave religion, must expresses their ressentiment obliquely and surreptitiously, hence the coded racism, Islamophobia and supposed yearning for a return of the traditional family and “Christian” values.  Ressentiment is produced by feelings of inferiority, failure, and worthlessness.  And this ressentiment, fueled by self-loathing, expresses itself through sadism, what Nietzsche calls “wrecking the will” of those who are weaker or more vulnerable.  Nietzsche understood that this “wrecking the will” of others imparts a perverted, sadistic pleasure.  He writes in On the Genealogy of Morals,that “to see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more. . . . Without cruelty there is no festival . . . and in punishment there is so much that is festive!”" Chris Hedges on American Sadism. https://scheerpost.com/2021/06/29/chris-hedges-speaks-on-american-sadism/?

Debbie Friedman Tribute - L'Chi Lach

I posted this because the song and singing is so beautiful. Debbie passed away in 2011 but her voice carries on. Also I hope that loving kindness will make blessings for us all.