A Reminder
These are hard times. We have a global climate crisis, a global health crisis, rising authoritarianism and cruelty. Simply reading the daily news can be a real challenge to our mental health and well being.
All of this is true. You struggle with it. I struggle with it.
And yet: look out the window.
Above, the short-wavelength light scatters through the atmosphere to create a blue vault dancing with white, ever-changing clouds, bringing the rain that is life.
Below, the green things, breathing our waste carbon and turning the light of the Sacred Sun into the sugar that will feed, eventually, nearly everything on Earth.
Flitting birds: adventurers across thousands of miles of arduous migration as a simple routine of their lives. The many forms of miraculous life.
The good, good Earth.
We have come so far, you and I, from the ocean depths to land, to what was Africa, stepping down from trees to the ground, brains growing, making tools, and on, dreaming, and on, imagining, and out, to the Moon and into space.
We are the most amazing marvels we are aware of, anywhere in the Universe.
Do not forget the glory. Do not forget the wonder.
Do not forget the generous blessing of the air that fills our lungs with each breath. Nor the magic of the cycles of water than keep us alive. The magnetosphere and ionosphere that shield us from harsh radiation, sheltering a balmy, temperate little bubble within which we can live.
Yes, these times are hard. That is very true.
But this is LIFE: the Big Show! The Great Adventure! A precious, too-brief one-way tour through the spectacular glories of the world.
And we are here in a time when we can see so much, can learn so much about this amazing phenomenon of which we are a part: the Universe.
Too soon, we are folded back into the fabric of nature.
Look for the wonder, folks. Seize the joy.
Don’t forget that they are always there, even now.
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Great advice for the living. But I would personally hope that people don’t intentionally bring more humans on board at this fraught time. Supposedly “aware” people having children to experience parenthood and family, at the expense of the actual children, is (in my opinion) an unsupportably selfish act at this time in history.
However, once you (or they) are here, there are still pleasures to be enjoyed as we watch the human world wind down.
I chose not to have children. But that is an intensely personal choice and I’m not going to tell others what to do in that regard.
I’m also unconvinced the human world is “winding down”. Humans are highly adaptable creatures; one of the main elements of the vision of Atheopaganism is to create a model for alternative values and spiritual practices to those presented by the Overculture, so that even as the inevitable crash comes, we have something other than capitalism and authoritarianism to cohere around.
This helps, thank you, to be reminded to remember wonder and beauty. It is all too easy to become bogged down in despair at these times — it takes a great strength of character and considerable mental and emotional skill to keep the hope alive.
I really like what you’re doing here with Atheopaganism, and will try to follow your work as much as I can. I’m doing something similar with my work and blog at https://kokorohe.art.blog/, though with something like a pan-psychospiritual approach.
I’m interested in how we can make internal changes to our personal narratives so that we can be agents of resistance against what you call the Overculture.
Resistance is not quite the right word though — too antagonistic. I believe we can find ways of being as individuals that naturally flow us toward sustainability, diversity and harmony.