Cronos, Logos, Cosmos

or my trip to Chicago

[At this moment, I appear to be stuck in time. It is a Monday but for me it is a Monday that was happening several weeks ago. My home in Western North Carolina remains without cell service or internet since September 27, 2024 in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene though over the weekend our power was restored. I am currently staying in Cary, North Carolina with friends who have power, cell service and internet (!) and working to write/right myself into this moment]

In these last three weeks, time itself has proved a slippery watery escape artist. Days have gone by and perhaps all that I have done is chat with people, maybe eaten with them, even drunk with them but were they days, where they nights, what were they? Logically speaking, in these last three weeks, I have traveled to Indianapolis and Chicago, traveled home, met a hurricane and spent a lot of time with trees. Chronologically, exactly in that order, in fact.

I drove to Chicago. Something about driving takes me into a time out of time, a kind of hole in time where anything can happen, as if the world were born and destroyed all in one hour speeding down the road. There, in Chicago, there was much talk and communing with kindred spirits. Large talk. Universe large. The fate of the world large. This kind of talk is my ocean, my favorite place to swim. Some might call it philosophical, occasionally political, but, for me, it is like food, nourishment that my spirit craves. Without it I feel withered and unhealthy. To say I was inspired is putting it mildly. I was charged, renewed, hopeful and happy after two days of being with the people who gathered to meet Dougald Hine and discuss At Work in the Ruins. The title for our time together became “the gifts in the ruins” most notably the gifts of our being together, our striking cross-section of age, profession, persuasion, that yielded a most delicious brew of conversation, learning, eating, walking and even taking in an art installation.

There is nothing logical about how such talk tends and heals, but I know that it does. We were talking about the fact that we are at this moment in history witnessing the death throes of a culture long past its due date, a culture innoculated thousands of years ago by some kind of wish to dominate the natural forces of birth and death, a culture dreaming of one long sunny day it would seem, eshewing even rain when water is what is needed.  We were talking about how one might foster community, ferment a new culture, in a world where the basic ingredients have gone missing; basic as in natural sources of clean water, clean air, and safe shelter.  

I know that I am full of questions. That is not news to any of you who have followed me here. Yet, holding the questions in a space full of love, in a space full of curiosity and care, this is novel. To my surprise, such a space is exactly what I found at our gathering in Chicago, a space full of strangers who are now deeply connected by the questions and the conversation, people now held in a common space, a plaza if you will, with a fountain of inspiration and care for our world at the center.

The world as we know it is dying, it’s time has come as it does to all things. But the world will also live. Not the world as we know it, but the world as it is composted, burned, flooded and born again in each of us. Ironically, this too is not news. This understanding, the one that says all things that are born will die, and be born and die and be born and die and so on, is a very very old, you might even say as old as the cosmos, idea.

Nothing and no one on this planet escapes the birth and death continuum. Might we, instead of resisting this reality, choose change? Might we care by tending rather than rebelling, by questioning with curiosity rather than reciting religiously? Might we choose change by choice rather than submit to change by force? Change by force is the change that comes from being overburdened, overwhelmed, confused and exhausted.  Change by force doesn’t need your awareness nor does it ask your permission. In contrast, change by choice is the fruit of your awareness, the change you can make at your discretion. Change by choice isn’t necessarily easy or neat, but it is led by awareness and therefore can catapult the user into the timeless time, the space out of time, where anything is possible. Change by choice is the ticket to enter the time where there is no reason, no ration, no shortage and no surplus, there is only now and now is infinite, full of promise, empty of project.

I drove home from Chicago, stopping in once again to visit my cousin in Indiana.  Another precious time of communion and conversation.  Inspired and refreshed deeply, I stepped into a weekend of meditating, teaching and being with others also enlivened by embracing this ancient wisdom about birth and death.  Death, as it happens, always takes longer than you think. The impulse to life is strong even in a body that may be weak, even in the midst of changing climate and demanding politics, the drive in us is strong to foster, preserve, to care for life. One way to care for life is to admit that some things are dying, to redirect the care and energy to the process of letting go, allowing change, choosing change by choice.

Now is the time to admit this situation, both personally and globally. The apple is falling from the tree, ripe and then rotting, rich, red, full and then eaten, changed, altered beyond recognition.

Through these last few weeks, I have been altered. Altared, made an offering, a gift. The ash of the life that was, is the beginning of the diamond that will be.