Re-Creating the World

Hear me read this post.

I’ve stayed away from post­ing any­thing in par­tic­u­lar about the new year, most­ly I guess because not much seems dif­fer­ent. Cross­ing dates from one year to the next to me is much like dri­ving across state lines. There’s a gar­ish sign mark­ing the spot and per­haps the sur­face of the road changes a lit­tle but the topog­ra­phy whizzing by out­side remains exact­ly the same.

There is some­thing worth cel­e­brat­ing, how­ev­er, and for me, at least, it is what’s hap­pen­ing on this incred­i­ble net as more and more peo­ple con­nect in, put up their blogs, access Friend­ster or MySpace and a host of oth­er ser­vices, and fig­ure out for them­selves the mean­ing of RSS. It’s hap­pen­ing as a tor­rent of pic­tures, words, ideas and feel­ings spill forth reveal­ing what is inside us that needs to get out. It hap­pens every time we click an unfa­mil­iar name beside this or that com­ment on a post or check out some­thing new on a blogroll or tap the link that takes us on an instant jour­ney of rela­tion­ship to anoth­er per­son and then anoth­er and anoth­er all over this lily­pad world.

It is no less than a re-cre­ation of soci­ety, the total­ly amaz­ing advent of a glob­al tribe. It is deeply heart­en­ing to me to think that what we’ve found is not just a bet­ter way for strangers to meet, but that the very nature of our meet­ing is trans­form­ing. And with this comes a regen­er­at­ing sense that open­ness, equi­ty, lis­ten­ing, and appre­ci­a­tion can play their true roles in sav­ing what we have left of our plan­et. Sure­ly we are just at the begin­ning, but as I sur­vey the blo­gos­phere what comes through to me out of our phe­nom­e­nal mix­ture of pol­i­tics, poet­ry, and per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ny — and mil­lions of images — is the utter beau­ty of peo­ple. Oh, I know, there’s just so much ugly stuff out here, too. Repres­sion and depres­sion are on peo­ples’ minds. Soci­ety is what soci­ety has been and it is best to fold up the rose-col­ored glass­es right now: the world is still a very dan­ger­ous place and that also is mir­rored elec­tron­i­cal­ly. But what is good is also here, as the soul of human­i­ty is revealed with a new kind of inti­ma­cy. We are exposed by our own light.

It is enough for any of us to be moved…and I believe the heart of the world is mov­ing, if only we keep talk­ing, shar­ing, and push­ing at the very foun­da­tions of vio­lence, greed, destruc­tion of nature, and all the oth­er sources of suf­fer­ing. Isn’t this what we, through our own lead­er­ship, are to do? Isn’t it exact­ly our job to con­nect with one anoth­er and to sift the ash­es of the cur­rent chaos? Isn’t it us who must re-dis­cov­er the sparks, re-light the warm­ing fires? Isn’t it our real voca­tion to hold up the light of our dis­cov­ered (or recoverd) wis­dom and even in the midst of this present dark space help find the way to a bet­ter world?

Isn’t this what lead­er­ship has always been?

I want to invite an angel of hope to warm her­self at this, our new com­mon hearth.

At such a moment I am remind­ed of anoth­er of William Stafford’s great poems, “Ask Me.” Stafford was a poet, pacifist…and real­ist. In this poem he sug­gests where hope real­ly comes from:

Some time when the riv­er is ice ask me
mis­takes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will lis­ten to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent riv­er and wait. We know
the cur­rent is there, hid­den; and there
are com­ings and goings from miles away
that hold the still­ness exact­ly before us.
What the riv­er says, that is what I say.