Quicksilver

Thoughts Concerning September 11th

I've been thinking, meditating, researching, pondering. Not unusual activities for me but it's been rather intense from time to time since Sept 11th. I'm sure I am not alone in this, from what I've noted here and elsewhere.

Anyway, while I've been working at this thing on a few levels, "Re" words keep coming back around the bend... Re-evaluation, Rebirth, Recycle, Revisit, Renaissance, Reformation, Renovation, etc. It certainly feels like we're redoing something. We're working with old/used parts and building something new. Most everyone sees that now. There's all the talk of New War and a new kind of enemy and so forth. In some cases we're looking at the old problems in new ways. We're always redoing things in some measure, but there's a fairly reasonable consensus that what we've been up to over the last few decades and what we're looking at right now is a pretty big wave as the tides of change go.

I've been prepared for an evolutionary leap. I've said as much. I feel that it's been triggered in smaller ways for a while, accumulating piece at a time, but I was anticipating something rather large and profound to really boost it. I was also expecting that boost to be pleasant, in my sense of the Quickening I've mentioned. In retrospect that was optimistic, naive, and/or a byproduct of looking at the Quickening as an outsider of sorts. I mean, I've made personal leaps. There have been tough days, but I got over them and I was well rewarded. I hadn't pondered what happens when that process gets magnified by millions and somewhat suddenly. Up until now, we've been working in the thousands and rather leisurely.

I've compared the feeling of the Quickening to the flutter of excitement or anticipation as one might have shortly before childbirth. Well, my inexperience was showing there. Indeed I've heard about this aspect of maternity, but I myself have not had a child in this lifetime. So, I'm an outsider to the details of that process. I can stand aside and be enthralled with the progress of the fetus and anxiously watching the mother's health. I can be pleased and thrilled, as I was, to get the 'call' that the birth would occur very soon. However, I was not thinking about the dread of labor, the pain of childbirth, or the cruel awakening of a babe coming from a cozy womb into the strangeness of life outside it, ie, the throes of incarnation or manifestation, in humanity's case.

I think we're still in labor and likely a bit longer yet, but it has begun in earnest now. The global nature of this latest contraction is indeed profound. It may not be the last. Unsure. Depends on what we learn from this event and what other shakeups are deemed necessary to get us where we want to go (deemed from a spirit/collective level). There could potentially be more human activated contractions and/or, as I suspect, some natural ones. Resetting comes to mind in this, not back to some primordial beginning, but a few big events to move things apace, ala jump starts for healing our Mother Earth and inducing better stewardship.

What are we doing exactly? Where are we going? I feel that death and rebirth apply on levels from individual to planetary. Humanity has certainly been here before and many of us are personally familiar with death/rebirth. We may have forgotten how hard it was, just like the selective amnesia of childbirth. From immediate and detailed descriptions of labor, I've wondered why any woman would go through that, but they do and babies happen and it's usually a joyful outcome, eventually canceling out the pain to get there.

I recently ran onto a segment from a book called Technaissance (McGee) which draws similarities between the medieval Renaissance and the changes we've been going through, including the crises. It's one of several treatises on the topic. A wide variety of scholars and mystics are drawing this comparison, this repeat of a cycle, but noting that each time it occurs, it's a much grander scale than the last. This rings true to me. It's what I believe we're doing... renaissance, rebirth, rejuvenating ourselves onto new pathways by carrying foward some aspects, changing some and creating new ones. Again, we do this perpetually, but only once in a great while (every 500yrs or so?) do we change the game on this scope on this scale at this speed.

Students of history surely see the parallels from Renaissance and Reformation to what we see happening now and in the very recent past. We have a few plagues to match or exceed those of the Dark Ages. Five hundred years ago the expansion was from Europe into the New World and even just realizing that there was more world to explore and expand into. Today we can reach any point on the globe in hours or nanoseconds instead of months-by-ship, which was fantastic progress at that time. Today we're exploring ways to get from isolated nations to recognition of a truly global community.

Our ancestors crossed the oceans from Old World to New. Soon perhaps we can determine how to bridge the chasm between the 'First' and the Third World. Religion/Spirituality was on the move in those olden days too and the Reformation shook the cathedrals pretty hard, fighting against constraints and irreconcilable differences. Is this not what is happening today? We survived that. We'll survive this. We grew from it. We'll grow now too. Perhaps we'll have learned at last that no matter how many ways we describe it or try to define it, Spirit simply is, we simply are, regardless of our path to connect to it or our expression of it.

We may not be able to use specifics from the past as a blueprint for this transition, but we can take comfort in the realization that we're still here, we made great strides, and we're doing it again. We know how to create from destruction. In fact, it's often the only time we bother. Maybe we'll learn to change that too.

We fondly think of the Renaissance as an era when we made wonderful artistic, philosophical, scientific and religious leaps. It's true, but do we really think about what brought all of that change to fruition? We so easily forget or gloss over the poverty and inhumanity that plagued the known world, in addition to the Black Death. Thank goodness we can forget such woes. However, we did experience great pains in giving birth to the shining children whom we now cherish from the Renaissance. It's been a while. Once again we're due.

We've been gearing up since the late 1900's. We're transforming. When was the last time we had a global consensus on anything? Ever? We have now virtually arrived at a single goal - combating terrorism. The methods or specific actions are unfolding, but the will... the common will... is there, globally. What would we be able to do with that kind of force in response to starvation, violations of basic human rights, horrific living conditions, etc? It is my fondest wish that when this period of labor is over, we will have given birth to a new era for humanity and all our kindred on this planet. It is my hope that we'll collectively see to it that our Mother Earth is well tended to continue her gracious care.

Where do I begin to help with this? With me. I need to just bloom where I'm planted. If I can't get schooling to children in Afghanistan, I can volunteer to work with at-risk children in my own town. Maybe I can't send meals to starving people in South Africa myself, but I can at least click HungerSite every day and drop a few spare cans into a local Pantry collection bin at the grocery. I can't work on the minds, hearts and souls of others, but I can integrate myself and share compassion, caring, assistance from this vessel when opportunities arise. I can work for freedom and human rights by standing up for my own and that of others in my personal contacts. Even if I don't run a factory that needs cleaning up, I can meditate and concentrate energy on healing the Earth while I'm watching my own usage of water, electricity and fossil fuels.

And one more thing while I'm at it... Maybe I'm biased, but I don't see a need to knock down America or any other country in order to build the rest of the world up. The First World countries are in the only position to possibly help the Third World. You cannot share what you do not have. Some could argue that we made the Third World or keep it that way. Well, we all started from such a place. Some found their way out of it. Instead of bashing them, shouldn't we figure out how to help others rise up too? It doesn't make sense to try to fix a broken thing by breaking something that actually works.

The USA didn't deserve what happened on Sept 11th, not by any reckoning. No one deserves that, but now that it has happened, I expect we'll make the best of it. This profound moment of clarity, in the US and around the globe, is about more than governments or extremist groups or any single incident. The catalyst has been tragedy. The changes we make as a result can be triumph for humanity and the planet.

We're learning and fast. The smoke on the horizon is temporary.

09.30.2001

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