Tag: Interconnected world

Weekend haiku post retreat

~ meximinnesotana ~ 3 Comments

I was off the grid for the weekend, a planned retreat to my primitive place in the woods before we began experiencing as a collective the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and the chaos that descended upon the Twin Cities.

Friday the following haiku tumbled forth:

Our hearts grieve deeply

Sorrow of generations

Collective trauma 

***

On Saturday, after reading old journals and during a re-read of Dani Shapiro’s memoir devotion, the following emerged:

Our paradoxes

Ideas contradicting

And nested within

***

Ferns at 1224 Cramer
A lovely stand of ferns captured while on a hike 5/30/2020.

A part of me felt anxiety while I was off the grid, missing the news, away from the internet. I was not even able to receive texts unless the wind was right and my cell intermittently had reception. Another part of me felt grateful for the retreat and the space away from knowing all of the heartbreaking external events of the world.

I used the weekend for reading past journals (I’m up to 2016 after about a year of reviewing my collection which goes back to 1992), reflection, writing and grieving. I went on walks and listened to what my inner voice seemed to request. I fasted for 20 hours on Saturday, allowing my body to be awake to any and all sensations.

Retreating requires enormous privilege, I realize. And it is something that feeds me psychologically and spiritually. Since I was very young I have always valued and treasured solitude and personal space. I wish it is something everyone could have when it is necessary.

After a retreat, there is the return. We live together in an interdependent web. We love each other. We hurt each other. We forgive each other. We acknowledge and apologize for past misdeeds. We resolve to treat each other with more respect. We understand that how we treat others is a reflection of our beliefs. We examine and unpack those beliefs, conditioned patterns we did not necessarily create consciously.

In the end, many of us realize that we are not separate from others. All living beings contain a divine spark, an unlikely miracle of energy and matter, defying the physical law of entropy.

How can we learn to value and love all humans, and all creatures of this earth? How can we remember our divine connection, our shared fate on this small planet? 

These are questions for which I have no answers. Yet I keep asking them and my soul keeps beckoning me to live these questions as I strive to serve.

***

cristy@meximinnesotana.com

 

 

 

Independence

~ meximinnesotana ~ 1 Comment

It will soon be the U.S. holiday, Independence Day, celebrated on July 4th. This year it is a Wednesday holiday and I am posting a part 2 to last week’s Wellness Wednesday on food and social pressure. That topic is actually kind of perfect for a holiday, come to think of it. So stay tuned, I will have more to say about on July 4th.

But I want to reflect a bit on independence as a concept in a world that is highly inter-dependent. We like to celebrate our independence, breaking off from the “mother ship” as it were, England. But in truth, we live in a global world. Most of us are not self-sufficient. We depend on grocery stores, trade, power grids, service providers of all kinds, in order to live our lives.

As I consider becoming an independent consultant, I realize that even though I may be “breaking away” from the corporate world as an employee, I will likely have corporate customers. We live in a world that has unprecedented levels of connectivity, a pulsating energy of human innovation and dynamic change. Sometimes that can be exciting. For many, it can be scary.

fireworks
Photo credit link

Humans will need to evolve a new level of consciousness to understand and embrace our inter-connected nature. We are “tribal” by nature, in our evolution, trusting our groups and sometimes shared identities with people of similar cultures. But can we go beyond?

Can we look beyond the small differences in order to unite around issues such as family solidarity or global climate change? Can we recognize that we are all in this together, no matter from what nation we originate, or what our political beliefs?

I believe that the answer to these questions is: we MUST. We must attempt to look beyond the small differences and to keep our eyes on what unites us as people. We must continue to look to our shared humanity and consider how we can work together.

Truly, we may think we are independent. But that really is an illusion. On this small planet, inter-dependency is the reality. The sooner we wake up to that, the better we can craft a better future together.