A Prayer For Interdependence
And thoughts on experiencing joy at the end of the world.
May we release the myth of independence and make a declaration to embrace and nourish our interdependence
May we pledge allegiance to the land, to the waters, to our human and nonhuman kin, to the earth-body we call home
May we find our house of worship in the trees, the sky, the dirt, the mountains, in our own bodies
May we find new places of power, shimmering along the edges of what we think is the only way forward
May we love each other and honor life more than we love guns, oil, money, power, control, or the written word of hungry ghosts
May we midwife systems of harm to die with grace, and compost them into new ways of caring for each other
May we honor our grief, make space for deep rest, find pleasure in our pursuit for justice, and ignite transformation with our holy rage
-Gina Puorro
As we approach Independence Day here in the U.S., I’ve been thinking about how the stoic hyper-individualism that’s been peddled to us is really the last thing anyone needs right now. I’ll spare you from the long, detailed list of things that are keeping me up (doom-scrolling) at night, but I’m sure if you are alive in these times, you have a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about. It’s hard to see a path forward that isn’t going to break our hearts a million times over, and we need each other now more than ever.
Hope is a discipline I have yet to fully live into, and I tend to sway between delirious fantastical dreams of possibility, and a grief-soaked resignation to the fact that humans are not making the kinds of choices that are going to lead to us or this planet thriving for much longer. It brings a kind of grief and rage that I find difficult to carry through my 40-hour workweek, and most of the time I just want to flip my desk and scream why are we talking about spreadsheets when [insert various catastrophes] is happening?!
And yet…
It’s high summer here in New England, and there are tiny moments of awe dripping from every ray of sunshine, every shimmering firefly, every trill from the throats of birds up at dawn, ready to greet a new day. This morning, I watched hummingbirds drink nectar from sage blossoms while I savored a cup of coffee. Yesterday I visited friends who just had a baby, their eyes full with the enormity of this new love, and felt the softness of a tiny new life in my hands. I read a poem at least once a week that tucks itself into my heart and deepens me. The wild blueberry bushes are full of green tart berries that will soon be ripe and delicious. There are people making the most exquisite music and art, there are people dancing around fires, marching in the streets, feeding each other, fighting for each other, loving each other, loving the land, tugging on the one thread in the greater web that’s within their reach. Most days I don’t know how to reconcile the extremes between the beauty and pain that I experience and witness day to day. Most days I feel overwhelmed and paralyzed by the immense suffering in the world, and feel guilty for giving into pleasure and joy amidst it all.
I’ve learned so much from Jen Lemen’s Path of Devotion work, and the simple act of putting a hand over your heart and asking, what is my one small thing to do at this moment? Maybe it’s feeding your children or making a call to your representatives, maybe it’s getting a drink of water or lying in bed. What I am finally coming to understand is that in order to really show up for each other, that also means showing up for ourselves. Not in the put yourself and your individual needs on a pedestal kind of way, but in a way that allows us to build the capacity to feel our full emotional range, from joy and pleasure and love to grief and fear and rage. Self-care as a foundation for the interconnected whole, for community care, for relational healing, for taking care of the land. Understanding when we have something to give and when we are thoroughly depleted. So when it’s time to show up for each other, we know what we are able to offer. So when we are fighting for freedom, we know what it feels like. We know what we are working towards because we know what joy and pleasure feels like, and we also know how to move grief and rage through our bodies. We understand that there’s a lot to hold—all that is heartbreaking and heart-opening in this world—but with a hand on our hearts, feet on the earth, and every miraculous moment of awe we can muster, we can hold it all together.