Surviving and Not Surviving

Tl;dr: Even in times of collapse, we carry the ancient fire of survival and connection. We heal not alone, but together. We remember who we are, where we come from, and what our bodies already know. Healing is holy. And it is meant to be done together.

To that end, on a different note, our Integration Circle is off to a great start. You are still welcome to join.

I just finished Wandering Stars, the beautiful novel by Tommy Orange. It is equal parts heartbreaking and hopeful. It is about so much. It is about generational trauma. Colonization. About a kind of displacement that cannot be fixed. And it is about addiction.

The book is about:

Surviving and not Surviving

It’s about how to keep turning towards our times. Especially towards hard times. Even across generations. Even when it feels like the worst has already happened.

One of the ways I make sense of these times of turmoil is by remembering that we go way, way back. Way back before the nation state, and the internet, and writing and world religions. Way, way back even before agriculture. And accumulation. And walls. And class structures.

I make sense of these times by remembering signs of human culture go back at least 70,000 years. And that was long after we became a species. We came down from trees and adapted. Moved quickly from tools, to art, expressions of awe. And here we are. We have survived myriad apocalypse and devastation. We seem to be built for it. And often the cause of it.

That’s why I call this newsletter “Future Ancestors.” To invite the stance that turns us into keepers of the fire. The fire that has been handed to us. The songs, the stories and rituals. The good ways that remind us that we ourselves are made of earth.

But how helpful is this stance for someone stuck in a hyperindividualistic culture? Someone born into a life where the best most of us could hope for was a healthy nuclear family. Nevermind the care of a village. The togetherness of the tribe. The wisdom of many grandmothers.

Not without a shift in posture. A shift in stance and perspective. Not without trust in what these bodies already know. Trust that millennia of evolutionary practice is not something that's erased.

It is fair, important, and largely natural to be concerned with one’s own survival. I know I am.

But it is also natural to sacrifice for those we love. And to dedicate ourselves to generations to come. It’s important to go wide while we are here. Embodied upon this earth. Important to expand our circle of concern. Not towards the limbic hijacking of the newscycle. But towards real people around us. People we can touch. And feed. And be annoyed by. As well as loved by.

It’s important to go wide while we are here. And it’s important to go long. To feel long into the times that came before us and times that will follow us. All the best of the time this body are not here in this brief way we take form.

Aware of the millennia of ancestral struggle and wisdom that comes before us. The delight and despair that brings us into existence.

And long into millennia to come. And that can only come and will come if we can tend to this fire. This is the work. The invitation to remember what your body knows. And to return to the fire that lights our path. And that of our descendants to come.

We want to feel safe

Natural.

We want our safety. We need it.

Especially after experiencing loss.

We get to want safety. But not at any cost. Because before we know it, our very fear of losing more is exactly what causes us to lose too much. And the planet itself starts to burn. And too many of us keep our heads down. Playing it safe enough. But not paying enough attention to wonder how we got so gone.

Or

More likely, if you are reading this, you, like me, have a clear analysis of how we got here. And perhaps what we are not paying attention to is how our bodies might know something. Something about how to be together here.

Here is where I quote Lony, the younger boy in the book. This really got me thinking (thinking… thinking and feeling):

That’s the only good thing about getting hurt is that if it happens together we have a chance to heal and get better together, which is a chance to get stronger than you ever were before. Healing is holy and if you have the chance to not have to carry something alone, with people you love, it should be honored, the opportunity, it should be honored, and you all got selfish about it, you all got scared it was gonna be bigger than our love and then it was.

Damn.

That’s one to stay with. To sit with. To get together, read aloud and be with.

“And you all got selfish about it, you all got scared it was gonna be bigger than our love and then it was.”

My God. What can we possibly do with this?

Because, you see, we have to consider that sometimes it gets bigger than most of us can survive or even live with. Sometimes people with guns, germs and steel show up on our shores and steal our bodies. Sometimes these same people come up on our shores and steal our lands. And they have powers we don’t have. And sicknesses we never had.

And it happens again and again through the millennia. This too seems to part of how we are and how we do. No, war, conquest, patriarchy, slavery and empire did not start 500 years ago.

Let none of us forget that we were doing it to each other before. We do it. Until bad guys with more resources and bigger weapons come along. It is not wise to idealize the past. Nor is it wise to forget it.

I read Lony’s words of wisdom and I start to feel into it, to see it a little more clearly. When I consider healing work and recovery work. When I consider the precarity of late stage capitalism. The experience of empire, of Gaza, migration, enslavement, ecocide, colonization. Some make it. And many don’t.

It does get too big.

For a whole lot of people it gets too big.

Lives are lost.

Land is lost.

Language is lost.

Culture is lost.

We can’t turn towards what is in front of us and pretend these are not facts.

And these have always been facts.

In my mind’s eye I see a pattern. It is the shape of an explosion. It has a center. And a margin. And lots of shrapnel from center to margin. And there is hurt in it all. Some get gone forever. And some barely live to tell the tale. Contending with the trauma of devastating loss.

It can get so big at times, that most involved do not make it. And those who make it, don’t really make it. They scrape on by, getting by, hearts torn apart, in quiet or loud suffering before the tragedy of it all.

But those who make it only make it by turning towards each other. Finding ways to survive together. Sometimes it means hiding together. It always means praying together. And ideally singing and drumming, and dancing bodies together. Whispering the old stories. Camouflaging the old beliefs. Building deep, deep, meaningful trust with each other. And taking the longer view. The much longer longer view.

That’s how we survive. And I mean “we” in the deep sense.

Not “we” as in the collection of individuals. Because the fact is that many individuals don’t make it. Many of us don’t survive. Too many die. And among those who survive too many are just scraping by.

I am talking about the “we” that makes us we. The interior of the “We.” The "we" we know in our hearts. The deep, deep understanding that's already here. We sense it within our bodies. The hard earned wisdom of the ages.

This is both the seed and fruit of old cultures of communion.

Of communion with the earth.

And communion with each other.

The sacredness of life itself.

The understanding of ourselves as animal. That has taken form as human.

The humble awe before the mystery of what it means to be here and to be us.

I mean the “we” that somehow has come to know that there is something endlessly tragic to the reality of it all. And that nevertheless still tries to come to terms with it all. To do something beautiful with it all. The we that holds acceptance, courage and wisdom. The we that heals together precisely because it dares belief. And dares to love. Together.

Healing is holy and if you have the chance to not have to carry something alone, with people you love, it should be honored, the opportunity, it should be honored…

It is for us to do the honoring. The opportunity to heal and get better together. The chance to get stronger than we were before, together. The experience of this holy mending that only happens when we are together.

It is for us to do the honoring of those that do not make it. Of ancestors who died wise. And those who died without a chance to get wise. Because getting wise takes time.

We get to honor our own hurt. The ways in which our bodies and hearts have been betrayed.

And we get to honor those who are barely getting by.

We get to come together. Turn to one another. And hold up a torch. Light houses.

Keeping the flame that says, come here, come home, healing is here. Resistance, endurance, resilience are here. We still keep the songs right here. The medicine. Better ways of being together here.

We are learning our freedom.

You get to taste it right here.