The Year Of The Bear: Reflections On The Daunting Realities of 2008 (Carla Royal)

  Something new is emerging. This something new is unlike anything we humans who live now have ever seen.

  by Carla Royal -- Speaking Truth To Power

  OK, so we were really there to watch football.  What can I say?  I was raised in a football family, and it is still in my blood.  As I don't own a television, I went to a friend's house to watch the game.  Truth is, I was there in an attempt to avoid thinking about the New Year altogether.

  So my friends and I turned on the set and began to watch the game.  Georgia Tech versus someone.  My girlfriend, Karen, is a Georgia Tech fan.  I love her anyway.  I am a diehard Georgia fan having grown up in a family with many University of Georgia graduates.   But I'm there to support her and to forget about 2008.  Of course, I also have to forget about the game of football; the outrageous salaries, the corruption, the violence, the consumption tied to the game, etc.  But today I put all that aside. Today I'm in it for pure entertainment!

  Funny thing happens.  Really.  Six minutes into the game the cable goes out.  Six minutes in and we sit staring at a blank screen.  No television.  No football game.  We bitch and moan for awhile, but then we laugh.  Someone calls the cable company.  The cable is out all over town.  I chuckle and say, "Well girls, here's the prelude.  Think this is bad?  Wait until the whole power grid goes down."

  Hours go by.  We find ourselves laughing and playing.  Talking and working on little projects together.  Karen and I are sorting her state coins.  One of my other friends is cooking up chili for us and the other is piddling about the kitchen.  Bailey, the yellow lab, is sitting at my feet waiting for me to drop another quarter so she can play keep away.  Buttercup, my dog, is snoring loudly on Bailey's bed.  By goddess, there's no television, no football, and we are having a genuinely good time!  We comment on this and recognize that we wouldn't be having this kind of quality time together had the cable not gone out.

  Karen and I leave to go to the store.  As we approach the parking lot I realize that I'm quite irritable.  After we park I take a minute to check in with myself to see if I can identify why I feel so irritated.  As I check in I become aware that I actually feel sad and scared.  It dawns on me that, yes, I'm afraid of 2008.

  I read the news.  I see what's happening to the economy.  I know climate change is speeding up.  I know that water is becoming scarcer.  I know food supplies are going down while prices are climbing.  From everything I can see oil production has already peaked.  The housing bubble has burst.  Our political arena is in shambles.  As Richard Heinberg points out, everything seems to be peaking.  So I'm scared.  Really scared.  I comment on this to Karen.  No time to talk or contemplate these things right now.  Right now it's time to get the groceries and get back to our friends. 

  So we return to the house, continue our cooking, continue to sort state coins, continue to play keep-away with Bailey, and continue to laugh and talk.   I feel a little better.   I'm connecting with my friends again.  Hours pass this way. 

  Someone notices the cable is back on!  We gather around the television to watch the remainder of a game.  At this point I don't even know who is playing, nor do I care.  As we sit there we become less connected and a bit numbed-out.  I try to hang in there until midnight, just to be a good sport about bringing in the New Year, but weariness overtakes me.  Weariness, numbness, and a bit of apathy.  This New Year ritual has ended for me. So I head home. 

  I drive up to my country dwelling.  There are no lights on, and the moon is nowhere in sight.  I step out of the car into the cold, dark night, and I take a long, deep breath.  I immediately feel a wave of calm wash over me.  I look up to the sky filled with brilliant stars.  I hear the small brook gurgling its comfort to me.  I smile.

  I step inside to get my new Native American Flute.  I'm learning to play, and for the last three weeks have taken to stepping outside each and every night after dark to play for my non-human community, for the animal and nature friends that inhabit this place, for the stars, the moon and the sweet horse up on the hill behind my house.  I play to say goodnight.  To say thank you.  To say I love you.  They all seem to say the same back to me.  I go inside happy.

  I awake New Year's Day.  Happy New Year!  Happy New Year! 

  Only I don't feel happy.  I feel scared.

  I start New Year's morning as I do every morning: on the computer reading the news about the state of the planet.  It's not good.  It's not good.  I read about residential real estate woes.  I read James Kunstler's dire forecast for 2008.  I read that the scientists are saying that the Arctic is screaming.  I read that the stock market may be poised on the edge of collapse.  I read about the end of the world as we know it.  And more.  Much more. 

  I decide to call my friends, Tim and Sally.  I'm going to wish them Happy New Year, tongue in cheek.  Sally answers the phone.  "It's Royal, C.", she says.  That's how my name shows up on her caller I.D., and that's what she always says when she answers my call.  And then she says, "You must have known that I am crying." 

  "No," I say, "but I've been struggling too."   She's sad.  She's grieving the death and destruction.  Tim gets on the other line so all three of us can talk.  I tell them I'm scared about the New Year and sad.  I tell them I'm afraid of what's coming down the pike.  Tim says, "Sounds like a sane response to me". 

  Yes, it is.  It is a sane response to look squarely at the world situation and feel afraid and sad.  And it feels sane to talk to others who are looking squarely at the world situation and feeling their way through the fear and the pain to a place of responsibility and power. 

  We talk awhile.  I tell them about the documentary, In the Light of Reverence, that Karen and I watched the other night.  It's a film about three different Native American tribes and their relationship to places they consider sacred.  I tell them how watching this movie was powerful and moving and infuriating.  We white people have an incredible tendency, penchant, for disconnection; from ourselves and from the natural world.  One Native American scholar from the Lakota tribe talked about a fundamental difference in world views between white American people and Native American people.  We white Americans tend to think in terms of our "rights."  I have a right to freedom, to happiness, to this piece of land, to my individuality, to my "stuff", to my way of life.  How telling that our own government has declared that our way of life is not negotiable!  Therefore, as a white American, I have a right to have my ski resort on sacred ground.   In stark contrast, Native Americans tend to think in terms of "responsibility."  They ask: What is my responsibility to this life, to this community, to this piece of land, to the world at large?

  I wonder about these differing world views.  Is this where we white, "civilized" humans went wrong?  Somehow, somewhere along the line we slipped down that dangerous slope from responsibility to rights.  Was it when we decided we have a right to demand this piece of land to grow for us what we want from it rather than what it wants to give?  Was it when we put the fence around that piece of land and said "This is mine?  I have a right to this land!"?  Was it when we began to look at others as separate from ourselves?  Hell, I have a right to these cheap goods from Wal-Mart.  I'M not responsible for those poor people who work in the sweatshops in other countries to produce the cheap goods for me.  After all, they choose their destiny.  And I choose mine, for "The Secret" tells me so.  

  The other night I had a dream.  I dreamed that I was talking with someone who thinks everything is fine in the world.  I talked about Peak Oil, climate change, population overshoot and species extinction.  I told her that 200 species are going extinct each and every day.  Two Hundred of MY friends are dying every day.  In the dream, I wept and I wept.

  I awoke.  And still, two hundred more of my friends died that day and the next and today, too.  What is my responsibility here? 

  The next night I had another dream.  I dreamed that I wrestled with a big black Bear.  I knew I was in trouble, but for some reason I didn't panic.  I did, however, plead for my life.  Even though I didn't panic or even struggle, I felt as we wrestled that I was working really hard at something.  In the dream I survived.  I awoke feeling empowered. 

  What is my responsibility here?   What does the big black Bear want me to work really hard at?  How empowered will I be if I do that work?  I have some ideas. And I want to ask others, "What is your work?  Your responsibility?  Do you know?  Are you listening?"

  So I'm thinking and thinking about this "Rights" versus "Responsibility" thing.  What would happen if I, and you, and we all, began to shift from a "rights" mindset to a "responsibility" mindset?  What would that mean for me, for you?  Practically?  Today? 

  Last week I read an article called Hallowing our Descent  by Sharon Astyk.

   How might we begin to "hallow" our descent? The first thought would be to recognize our companions entering into the future -- name them, "peak energy," "Climate change," and "Depletion," and call them what they are -- our future, and our companions for the long haul. Because once we acknowledge them, we might be able to get to know them, to get over our deepest fears that if we look too closely at the future we will not be able to bear it, and recognize and go on from there. Perhaps if we saw them as our companions in the future, we might be able to get over our own sense of personal punishment -- the belief, for example, that our suffering is particular, and deeply important. That is, we might be able to recognize that turning the heat down to 55 is not an unjust cruelty, but simply what is asked of us, our share of the burden. Perhaps we might even develop a sense of humor about it.

   Make Peak Oil, climate change and depletion my companions?  For the long haul?  Acknowledge them?  Get to know them? Is she crazy? 

  I don't think so.  No, I think there is wisdom in her words.  These "companions" ARE with us for the long haul. 

  We must walk into that awareness and come to a place of acceptance.  As we go through the grief and despair, we can begin to move out of a sense of entitlement and into a place of responsibility and empowerment.  We can begin to step into the work to which the big black Bear is calling us.  We need to ask ourselves, each and every day, what is being asked of us.  What is my share of the burden?  For what and to whom am I responsible?

  Yesterday I received an email from someone in deep despair.  He asked if I had any answers for him --a reason to live.  I wrote back that I don't have answers, only questions.   This is what I wrote:

   I don't have any answers for you.  I don't.  I have thoughts.  I have notions.  I have feelings.  But no answers. 

   What I know is that losing hope can be a good thing.  Sometimes we have to fully despair before we can see another way.  Sometimes despair opens up parts of ourselves we didn't know existed.  Sometimes despair can open us to new ways of seeing. 

   I, too, have lost all hope that the state of the country and the state of the world will get any better.  I, too, have spent a great deal of time in despair.  I, too, have been on the verge of death in the past. 

   I've found that as I've allowed myself to go fully into the despair and give up any hope for this culture that a new way of seeing is opening.  A new way of being.  What I'm finding is that something new is forming within me as I look at the world.  In my opinion we have to let this old, worn out, destructive culture die.  There is no hope there. 

   We must build something new and we can't do that without first letting go of the old.  That something new is going to need brilliant musicians, like you, to help us through the transition from the old to the new.  We are in that transition and it is extraordinarily painful and difficult and all are suffering variously.  We need musicians and artists and healers who can touch our souls to see us through this death and rebirth.  I don't think we'll make it otherwise.  

  So, I don't have any answers for you, but I believe you do.  I believe that beneath the despair is a wise and courageous man who knows what is required of him.  What is your responsibility as you look at the present predicament of this world with eyes wide open?  What are you called to as this culture is collapsing?  Are you carrying collapse in your body, in your mind?  Giving it expression in that way?  What work does collapse want to do in you?  Can you give yourself over to it?  And see what's on the other side of it?  We are in a time in our history unlike any other time. 

  It's a big, big story and I believe we have big roles to play if we will step into them.  Will I?  Will you?

   So you see, I have no answers.  Only questions. 

   Go into the despair, my friend, and let it heal you. 

   Go to your piano and play for this collapsing world.  Each night I play the flute for the natural world.  To say I love you.  To say I'm sorry.  To say good night.  Will you play for them, too?  Will you play for me?  Will you play for this dying world? 

  I hope so.  We need you. 

   I've been sitting with this New Year for several days now.  I'm still scared, but the Black Bear encourages me to step into responsibility.  The Stars, Birds, Trees and Stream hold out something grand to me.  I expand and shrink and shrink and expand.  And in so doing, Tim reminds me, cracks form and old layers fall to the ground, allowing something new to emerge. 

  Something new IS emerging.  This something new is unlike anything we humans who live now have ever seen.  But maybe the Boulders have seen something like it.  Maybe the Streams have.  Maybe the Mountains have.  Maybe if we listen they will awaken us and remind us. 

   The part of the mind that is dark to us in this culture, that is sleeping in us, that we name 'unconscious', is the knowledge that we are inseparable from all other beings in the universe.  

  --Susan Griffin

*** 

   Carla Royal, M.Ed., therapist and mentor, currently lives in Blacksburg, Va., where she has her mentoring practice, Beyond Therapy.  She works both face to face and through the internet.  You can learn more about her services through her website at http://www.carlaroyal.net./

LINK: CarolynBaker.com