Collapse Watch

I’ve been reading Dave Pollard’s blog again. He’s thoughtful and thorough.

One of Dave’s recent posts was named “Collapse Watch.” It’s full adventure into collapse of industrial society.

Dave’s a truth-teller (as much as that can be called a thing). I find in my interactions with Dave that he’s not trying to sell a truth. It’s not a fire sale. It’s not a loud commercial. It’s not a manipulation to get me to do something. It’s more of a description. Like describing the birds chirping in the morning. It’s not, “that was a good bird and that was a bad bird and we should get rid of that bird and we should keep that bird.” It’s just, “hear the birds — chances are they’ll keep chirping whether you listen or not.”

Give Dave’s post a full read. Give yourself some time. And then maybe a bit of reflection as the birds chirp.

Lean in, even if just for a moment. Not all truths are easy, are they.

 

The Truest Statement — You Never Know

 

Last week at The Circle Way Tofino (Chesterman Beach, above), my teaching colleague and friend Amanda Fenton shared the passage below. It is from Richard Wagamese. Wagamese is Ojibwe, a Canadian author and journalist who died earlier this spring.

The beginning of wisdom is the same as its attainment: wonder. The truest statement in the world is “you never know.” There is always something to evoke wonder, to wonder about, because this world, this life, this universe, this reality is far more than just the sum of its parts. Even the slightest detail contains much more. The overwhelming awe and wonder we feel teach us more than we can ever glean or come to know of things. In the presence of that wonder, the head has no answers and the heart has no questions.

I was moved by the part, “the truest statement in the world is ‘you never know.'” It had particular relevance in this context of working in the Nuu Chah Nulth region on Vancouver Island in Canada. Kelly Foxcroft Poirier and her sister Dawn Foxcroft shared many insights with us that were drawn from their indigenous heritage. This included the statement that “for our people, everything is contextual.”

Ah…, there is something that I was looking for. The appreciation and commitment for the subjective, the contextual, and the relational. It’s a contrast to the so much dominant contemporary pattern of the objective, the isolated, and the individual. Any time you can find just a few words that encapsulate a couple of decades of searching — well, that’s a good day. That’s what was sparked for me in “you never know.”

Wagamese’s life is itself an important story. On its own, and for the pattern that it represents in the last century of indigenous, First Nations life and culture taken by European settlers. From Wikipedia, these paragraphs also moved me.

Wagamese described his first home in his essay “The Path to Healing” as a tent hung from a spruce bough. He and his three siblings, abandoned by adults on a binge drinking trip in Kenora, left the bush camp when they had run out of food and sheltered at a railroad depot. Found by a policeman, he would not see his family again for 21 years. He later described the adults in his family. “Each of the adults had suffered in an institution that tried to scrape the Indian out of their insides, and they came back to the bush raw, sore and aching.” His parents, Marjorie Wagamese and Stanley Raven, had been among the many native children who, under Canadian law, were removed from their families and forced to attend certain government-run residential schools, the primary purpose of which was to separate them from their native culture.

After being taken from his family by the Children’s Aid Society, he was raised in foster homes in northwestern Ontario before being adopted, at age nine, by a family that refused to allow him to maintain contact with his First Nations heritage and identity. Of this experience he wrote: “The wounds I suffered went far beyond the scars on my buttocks.” He was moved to St. Catharines, Ontario. The beatings and abuse he endured in foster care led him to leave home at 16, seeking to reconnect with indigenous culture. He lived on the street, abusing drugs and alcohol, and was imprisoned several times.

He reunited with his family at 23. After recounting his life to this point, an elder gave him the name Mushkotay Beezheekee Anakwat – Buffalo Cloud – and told him his role was to tell stories.

The truest statement — you never know. What an invitation to essential wonder that can and does do wonder in human beings being together.

 

Make It Six

A few years back I invented a game that I started playing mostly with my youngest son, who was then six years old. It’s called, “Make It Six.” It needed a name. The point of the game is really simple — come up with six reasons why you think something is happening. It’s an interpretive, conversational game. I made it up to stretch his mind a bit when he was making rather strong judgements about people and what was happening around him. “That person is weird,” he might say because of the hat they were wearing. “Hmmm…, OK…,” I’d tell him. “Can you think of six reasons why that person is wearing that hat?” So as to not shame him, I shared that the person might just be weird (sometimes that was followed with an inquiry — what do you mean by weird?).

At first, his response was “no.” He couldn’t think of other reasons. But then he grew into it more. “Maybe the hat was a gift from a friend and it means a lot to wear it.” “Maybe it is a dare.”  “Maybe the person wants to cover up messy hair.” The answers didn’t matter. Seeing “maybe” did. And removing the tendency to judge or impose opinion with certainty so easily — well that’s just important skill, isn’t it.

The game was easy to play. Just needed fingers to count off the six alternative explanations. We played whenever I felt it was needed — in the car, at the dinner table, while watching TV — and often, was met with a groan of resistance. But it’s one of the things I’m proud of with him, as his dad. It’s a game that carries through life to build a sense of wonder about things that seem clear, but under the surface, may not be so clear.

Make It Six isn’t just for kids and geeky dads determined to broaden perspective. What I’m realizing is that broadening wonder and perspective is something for all of us. Politically, in the United States and in many other parts of the world, there is increasing trend to polarity. There is enough complexity that many are retreating to rather strong projections of certainty. It’s natural to do this. Just like it was pretty natural for my son at his developmental age to make judgments about a person’s hat. But just as it was then for him, now, this kind of polarity isn’t particularly helpful in society.

Making good decisions and understanding things well will always be important. And, it isn’t for me to say what those decisions are. I sometimes marvel at people’s certainty and clarity. My position and instinct has always been more reflective and contemplative. Without being able to help it, my disposition is to play Make It Six with most everything. In fact, I shared this with my son just the other day when he gave me a rather vague answer about his day at school. “Our teacher did the worst thing.” I of course didn’t know what that meant. “Did she give you too much homework? Did she ask you to read a challenging book? Did she change the way the desks are organized? Did she yell at you? Did she tease you?” I told my son that Make It Six goes on all of the time in my brain and that I needed just a bit more clarity from him.

The value I hope to add in Make It Six is often a dislocation from certainty, rather than a rigidifying of certainty. When working in teams, communities, and organizations, the ability to wonder together is in fact a critical competency. Rather than vying for a version of truth about what is happening (and recruiting others to it), exploring is the game. Wonder is the game. Broadened perspective is the game. It’s not about marketing and coercing a truth. It’s about being able to be in suspended certainty, even if just for a while, so as to be in more  explorative ways together.

I’ll keep playing they game with my son. Because I’m his dad and I care about how he develops. And though I gamed it with him (access points matter right), the ability to wonder will always be essential in this increasingly complex and fast-changing world. Make It Six just offers an alternative starting place.