Drink Up, Dreamers - Part 3

The phone rang and I answered it. Saved by the bell. I needed some time to think. It was my daughter, Kate, just calling to say hello. When I got back to my computer, a sticky awaited: I just watched that bit of al gores documentary again about denial and despair theres something that feels true there theres something that feels right

I smiled and sat down. “What feels true to you, Todd?” I asked.

it doesnt feel right to just be hopeless I mean we dont know we dont know whats possible weve done incredible things in the past did you watch that red hat thing weve been here before people saying we cant do something and we did it you dont know whats possible dude

I’d forgotten the Red Hat video. I took a moment and watched it. “You’re right, Todd,” I typed. “The future is not yet written. And I don’t have perfect knowledge of what’s possible. None of us do. But acknowledging that we don’t know what’s possible doesn’t mean, then, that anything and everything is possible. Our knowledge and understanding is not perfect, but neither is it useless and irrelevant. It’s possible, in an infinite universe, that the sun will rise tomorrow in the west. But I feel fairly certain in my prediction that it will not.”

“The Red Hat folk, bless their hearts, are trying to make a statement about standing up to those who would keep you down. Good for them. But to make their point they buy into and perpetuate one of the most deeply loved stories of Empire: human ingenuity can solve anything.”

and you dont think thats true

“I don’t. In fact, the situation we are in now is largely the result of our previous attempts to solve problems. We’re now talking about carbon sequestration… burying carbon back underground. Why? To solve the greenhouse warming problem caused by burning fossil fuels. Why were we burning fossil fuels? To solve the growing problems of feeding and warming and transporting and providing goods for people. Why were these things problems? Because the population was growing. And the population was growing based on previous solutions to these same problems.”

I stopped for a moment to listen to Peter Gabriel:

I took the old track
The hollow shoulder, across the waters
On the tall cliffs
They were getting older, sons and daughters
The jaded underworld was riding high
Waves of steel hurled metal at the sky
And as the nail sunk in the cloud, the rain was warm and soaked the crowd

Todd pasted another sticky: so you think we should have just stayed small and lived in caves and stuff

“I think the people of this culture will have to come to terms with the fact that there are limits, and that there are rules we have to follow if we want to be long-time members of the community of life. We’ve been running on arrogance and power and control and entitlement for so long now that we hardly notice. And now we’ve run up against a situation that cannot be solved, at least in the terms of the current dominant paradigm. We’ve set ourselves up perfectly to either learn what we need to learn, or to die in the attempt. As Peter Gabriel just pointed out, we’ve been riding high. But now the rain is getting warm.”

but arent people who want to do something –

I cut him off. “To my mind “do something”, in the American tradition, is often just a sophisticated form of denial, masquerading as powerful action and awareness. We’re doing something. We’re recycling our bottles and cans. We’re making ethanol. We’re putting up solar panels. We’re making coal cleaner. All done with the best of intentions, perhaps. But such actions align with that long-held assumption of power and control, and they can keep us from stopping and listening and learning and studying and feeling the global predicament in its entirety. So that we don’t truly understand our situation. We’re stitching up the skin without even stopping to wonder whether there’s a bullet in the body.”

so your answer is to sit around in circles with new age spiritual types and cry and beat drums dude that doesnt make sense I still dont get it youre not doing anything then youre just navel gazing

“Does it seem a bit ironic, Todd, that you’re making fun of “spiritual types”? I mean, you being a spirit and all.”

Todd waited for a full minute before pasting up another sticky: oh yeah

“I’m not suggesting that people to do nothing. I’m inviting people to do something different. I’m inviting people to do the harder thing, the hardest thing, the thing we’ve mostly been avoiding.”

whats that

“I’m asking people to feel. To feel their fear, their helplessness, their grief, their despair, to sit with these things for a long time. My friend Carla is doing this work now. She has been for a few years now. She falls into doubt about what she’s doing, because this work goes against the fundamental cheermongering impulses of the dominant culture. But it’s holy work. It may be the most important work there is to do. It’s not ‘nothing’”.

I waited for a sticky. No reply. That was a good sign. Todd was thinking. I opened my email and started to read Carolyn Baker’s excellent analysis of the recent VT massacre, economics and debt, and the state of education in this culture. Then Todd returned:

so we just cry ourselves to death

“We cry first, Todd. We grieve. We face our losses, our mistakes, our guilts, our sense of helplessness. We face fully into the fact that we cannot solve our way out of our present predicament. And then, and only then, can we begin to discover what there might really be to do. Moving in and through and beyond our grief and despair, we shall find something we lost long ago.”

whats that

“Our sanity.”

so grief is sane

“Yes it is. It’s a sane response to a tragic and desperate situation. What I saw last weekend is that Deena Metzger is looking right at that situation. She does not flinch away. And because she has felt and is feeling her grief in the face of that, she has found the place of sanity. And so I trust her.”

The final chorus of Here Comes the Flood came around again and I stopped once more to listen.

Lord, here comes the flood
We’ll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again, the seas are silent
In any still alive
It’ll be those who gave their island to survive
Drink up, dreamers, you’re running dry

“The flood is coming, Todd. It’s already here. And there is no stopping it. If any of us are still alive at the end of it, when again the seas are silent, it’ll be those who gave up their islands, their assumptions, their habits, their places of safety and comfort in an old and tattered paradigm of hierarchy, domination and control. They’ll jump from the shore of the known, and into the swiftly moving waters of the flood, just as the Hopi elder has said. And all of their doing will spring from a place of sanity, grounded both in a clear understanding of the whole of the situation, and in the deep feeling work that allows us to see that whole.

Todd took a long time to respond: I need to go away for a while and think

Then he was gone. I’m going to go now too. To do more of that “nothing” that most needs to be done.

Drink up, dreamers. Drink up.