LETTING GO

So much is dropping away. Everyday. We are in a time of both—the awakening and the darkening of the imagination of humankind. Paradoxically, these two things always seem to happen at the same time throughout the human story.

For those in power in the U.S. today, the idea is to destroy the levers of democracy, so that when we go to pull them, everything they’ve been connected to will have been decimated. We see the assault daily—on financial privacy, social nets, information freedom, climate change denial, goodwill for our global community, personal rights, healthcare and food system integrity. All are under siege in ways we cannot even yet understand the ramifications. And, yes, they tell us it’s all in service of money. Voting rights, according to the GOP 2025 plan, will go away forever. Might will rule. Violence, hatred and division have already been seeded and unleashed. In a gun culture where the military has been used around the world to destroy other sovereign countries, we will see it used as a state tool here. But the more alarming tenet of this imperial masterplan is that of invading and acquiring neighboring countries and sovereign lands. This administration has said it bluntly. Everything is a capitalist possibility. If not a political coup, it will happen by political bullying and economic muscling of our neighbors who have consumer goods, waters, land, mineral and oil/ gas reserves the U.S. wants. Nothing new there. It happened at the settling of this country and the taking of Indigenous lands and extermination of Original Peoples. This country was birthed in violence.

It is time for a reckoning.

All of us, in an affluent democracy have become immune to our violent history and the difficult, prophetic conversations. It is difficult to discuss or name in polite company. We’ve been entrained to avoid and focus on our comfort and security. Be nice.

In the end, I do believe that life will prevail. But the darkness can overwhelm us. Emily Dickinson, the poet writes, “Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door”.

It is time to open all doors and take the long view of our human story. All of us are responsible now for re-weaving the broken and frayed web of connection in our country—in whatever ways we can. We are in a time of the Great Unraveling and also what the prophet, Joanna Macy, a Buddhist scholar and Deep Ecology systems thought leader, teacher and writer called The Great Turning. A turning from a human-centric, anthropocentric worldview to an eco-centric life way. A place where the rights of nature are indivisible from the human story. A rising consciousness that we cannot live without protecting Mother Earth’s health and our human and more than human neighbors (tree, water, fox, bird, etc).

She writes for an age of turbulence and collapsing systems, quoting the great Austrian poet Rilke.

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

— R.M. RILKE, BOOK OF HOURS – 1,2

What is your greatest grief daily? Where do you find solace in these times? How will you rise up—as a falcon, storm or song?!

The place of my greatest sorrow is also the place of my greatest solace. The forests, waters, air and creatures that are yet untouched. They offer beauty and “beingness”. I go there daily. I live there among the trees of Northern New Mexico. I am blessed. I am also cursed with the fear of what will come as the climate overheats and the forests dry out.

I choose carefully my diet of news and focus on ways to rise up singing and speaking out.

In these times, the poets, singers, visual artists, dancers and healers will lead the way and bring us a light for the path.

In Blackwater Woods Mary Oliver Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

—Anita Amstutz, Taos, New Mexico 2/10/25