Land of the Woods: Reflecting on the "Self-Sustainable Community"

After two weeks of what felt like hell in Lima, Mere and I were ready for our first volunteer experience in Peru, which was working on a farm/eco-village near Oxapampa, a town only 200 miles away from the capital, but a twelve hour bus ride because the road winds through the Andes. We spent five weeks working there, and it was an altogether both challenging and enriching experience.

The community is named Tierra de Bosques (Land of the Woods) and was founded about seven years ago by an ambitious Peruvian couple in their 30s with a passion for sustainable living. It's right in the middle of a pine forest on a plot of about 100 acres, and their goal is to become self-sustainable by building houses using materials available in the area—they have a whole carpentry on site to bring the lumber all the way from tree to finished product—and growing their own food. Since its founding, they've built five small but really nice homes, with three more under construction now. Three families currently live there, but they've already sold fourteen additional plots of land for others to move into once the houses are built. It's a super inspiring project, and on an absolutely beautiful patch of land.

The arrangement with volunteers was that we'd do 30 hours of work per week—four hours in the mornings, two more in the afternoons after a generous lunch break—in exchange for room and board. The living conditions were basic. We slept in a tent under a shelter. It took some getting used to, some asking around for thicker mattresses, some patching of holes with tape, but within a week it felt nice and cozy, and sometimes I flexed with joy when we returned to our tent and got settled in for the night. The food was also basic. We were provided with fruits, vegetables, beans, rice, lentils, flour, coffee, oil, eggs, a small amount of milk and cheese; other things we would have to buy ourselves. We also had to cook all our meals ourselves, and did so on an outdoor gas stove—except when the gas ran out and we had to cook over a campfire. No wifi, though we did have electricity to charge our phone to use as a dictionary and camera. We showered outside with a solar-powered water tank, so the water was hot if there had been enough sun that day. We did our laundry by hand, which we learned is pretty tiring.

So the living was basic, and we loved that.  Sleeping outside under a sky full of stars—the constellations look totally different in the southern hemisphere, by the way!—listening to sounds of nature, waking up with the sun and going to sleep once it was dark—all of it felt very healing. And disconnecting from the internet for a whole week at a time is something that barely any of us do these days, but it does wonders for the mind and soul. We got to a point where the thought of connecting to wifi on the weekends gave us anxiety, because there's always the possibility of encountering some kind of bad news.

As if the living conditions weren't enough of a challenge, the work we did every day was grueling, especially at the beginning before we were used to it. We spent most of our time helping to build the roof of a house. That meant working in the carpentry milling, planing, sanding, treating, and otherwise preparing lumber. Then we'd carry it down and nail planks into the rafters to serve as the roof. When we finally had the wooden roof completed, which took a while because there were always unforeseen issues emerging that had to be worked through, we terraced it so that it could be a “living roof,” meaning they'll put soil on it and grow grass and other things on top. 

It was rainy season in Oxapampa, so all that was weather dependent. If it was raining we couldn't work on the roof, so they'd find other tasks for us to do, like using a pickax to dig trenches for the water to drain properly from the dirt road, or rebuild a bridge over a creek so that it could support a several-ton tractor, or digging a giant ditch to create a water filtration system for one of the houses on site. Neither of us had ever done straight manual labor like that for a living, and it was TOUGH. 

There were some minor injuries along the way. One day I stepped on a floorboard that wasn't nailed in properly (Mere was responsible for that one!) and it flung up cartoon-style and smacked me in the face, the nail clapping me in the jaw, just barely missing a spot on my face that could have been more lethal. We still don't understand the physics of what happened, but hey. I learned through the experience that the membrane from a chicken egg is nature's best band-aid; someone popped that on the hole in my cheek and it sealed it right up!

Even though we arrived on a Monday evening, making our first work week only four days, I'll never forget the feeling of exhaustion that Friday afternoon as we trekked one hour and fifteen minutes to the nearest mini-bus that would take us back into Oxapampa, where we spoiled ourselves with the luxury of a real bed for two nights. That ended up being our routine: return to the town for the weekend and stay at the same airbnb, where the host had been so friendly and generous with us, and eat at the same delicious Italian restaurant, connect to wifi, and enjoy other comforts not available out in the sticks.

After the first week, though, we got used to it. Humans are incredibly adaptable; it was only a matter of time before the novel challenges turned into routine, and we settled into our new little life there. Of course the people we were living with were key. The residents and workers were super welcoming and friendly and we got to know and become close with a half dozen volunteers from various countries: Peru, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium. Some of them we hope to keep in touch with long term. We spent both Christmas and New Years among our new friends there, sharing delicious meals for both, and dancing our hearts out until the ball dropped for the latter. It was a great five weeks, and while we were ready to go when the time came, we were definitely sad to say goodbye.

Any wooden structure pictured here, they build. Amazing.

One of the houses under construction, Casa Luna

Building the roof of another house, Casa Cedro

Fiddlehead fern

Turning compost

Making pipes for the water filtration system

After the nail to the jaw

Granadilla (passion fruit) farm

Open-fire cookin

Our tent

Haircut

One of the completed houses, with living roof

Composting toilet

Took some getting used to for this city kid

Friends

                                      

But of course, knowing me, my mind is always busy analyzing and evaluating, and while I loved the philosophy and the people behind the project, there was something about it that I had to question. It started in our first meeting with one of the founders as he was explaining the idea behind it all. He talked about wanting to be self-sufficient, about how the world is horribly off track in where it's headed in terms of our relationship with the environment, about the importance of aligning our behavior patterns more with our belief systems by, for example, eating according to the season instead of importing whatever food we want whenever we want it. All of which I'm on board with. 

Then he mentioned the vaccine, and made it clear that he was opposed. The coronavirus didn't just emerge out of nowhere, he argued, but as a result of all the blunders humans have been making throughout the past centuries. It could have given us a chance to slow down, reevaluate, and correct our habits to become healthier and happier. We eat like shit and don't take care of ourselves, and that's why the virus is so deadly. But instead, they're pushing on us “Just take the vaccine, take the vaccine, and you can go back to normal!” 

It was nice to hear an argument against vaccines from the mouth of a thoughtful individual, as opposed to the dualistic, sensationalist, reductionist filter of the mass media. I couldn't deny the man had a point. I share his wish that the space to slow down opened up by the pandemic would have inspired more profound shifts in our culture than it has (although I don't want to minimize the ones that have occurred). And I agree that the vaccine is NOT a silver bullet, and recognize that neither the government nor drug companies have a real interest in promoting longer-term health. 

But while I admire the idealism, I tried to temper it with the present reality we're in. Of course, humans need to shift their habits and eat healthier, for example, and that will do more for long term health than anything. But while a dedicated and conscious individual might be able to change their consumption habits at the drop of a hat, as a culture, as a collective, it will literally take generations. In the meantime, covid is killing millions, and the vaccine can prevent that. Period. His response was that he's more scared of the vaccine than covid, that there's already a 3rd shot and that there will surely be a 4th and 5th and so on forever, that it's going to make us dependent on a drug and not be able to rely on our own bodies anymore. It's a point worth considering, but he avoided responding to mine: that millions of people are dying, right now, and the vaccine, which as of yet has not been shown to have any long-term negative effects, could prevent many of the deaths.

We slowly discovered that essentially everyone in the community was anti-vax and indignant about vaccine requirements. Granted, Peru has been stricter than the U.S. A new law was just about to take effect that would require people to show proof of vaccination when entering banks, grocery stores, pretty much all public establishments, and this had stirred up quite a bit of anxiety, resentment, and the feeling of being a part of an “oppressed” minority amongst community members. One person likened the situation to Nazi Germany, a comparison I found offensive for many reasons, e.g. that refusing to vaccinate is a choice, and not one based on a religious tradition that stretches back thousands of years. Clearly, the anti-vaccine stance had become a conflict point to bond and rally around for community members, and I wonder how many of the folks who have bought land there are motivated by the idea of escaping the mainstream world and its pesky virus-related restrictions. There was a whole family who had already moved down from a different country because one of them lost their job for refusing to get the vaccine.

All of this sparked a lot of contemplation in me, particularly about the sociological motivations and implications of starting a community like Tierra de Bosques. I've had the privilege to live in and observe a few different isolated communities—the colony of nudist, polyamorous, kungfu warrior monks in Italy being the most notable—and I see some common threads in all of them. On the positive side, they're idealistic. Recognizing that the mainstream world has some serious defects, they want to establish a new and more meaningful way for humans to live. They put high priority on the health of mind, body, and soul, and also on building healthy communities. They value self-reliance and eschew consumerism and other toxic aspects of mass culture. All of that is highly admirable, and I've been inspired to make alterations to my life from my experience in such communities, including Tierra de Bosques.

But I want to point out some blind spots, not about this community in particular, but these types of communities in general. First of all, their way of life simply is not accessible to everyone. Not everyone can just move out to the woods. There are over seven billion people on the planet. Even if the average person could get past the cultural barriers of moving out to the land—when your family has lived in the city for generations, it's usually not even on your radar— it requires money, which the majority of people don't have, not to mention knowledge and skills that unfortunately our culture doesn't teach anymore. It's no surprise that the folks that do this kind of thing often come from considerable privilege. Which doesn't in-and of itself mean they shouldn't do it; it can just get dangerous when a group of people starts seeing their philosophy as the key to leading humanity out of our current dark age.

When folks try to create a “new community” they often isolate themselves from the vast majority of humanity as it exists.. And from what I've observed, once they isolate from the rest of humanity, it's easy to lose touch with it, and eventually abandon it. I don't think that's their intention, just a necessary consequence of living apart from something for long enough. One person from the community expressed his gratitude that his kids haven't really had to deal with covid at all, specifically mentioning that they can run around without masks, and haven't had to be cooped up with screens. That's fantastic for his kids, it really is. They will, indeed, be healthier in an important way than a lot of kids who've suffered tremendously from pandemic-related restrictions. But won't they lose something, too? Like a connection with those who haven't been as lucky as them? And then, out of touch with the less fortunate masses, it will be harder for them to understand the importance of a vaccine, or whatever the next thing ends up being, for the collective well-being of our species.

I've noticed a superiority complex that often develops in these communities. “We are the ones with the true knowledge about the best way to live; the “normal” people on the inside world are lost, deluded, and destructive. If everyone would live like us, the world would be free of its problems.” Of course they wouldn't outwardly articulate it like that, but that's what I understand to be the unconscious attitude holding it up. Interesting, because it's also not too much different from countless communities throughout history who have opted out of the “ways of the world” to found something radically different, but that we don't necessarily think too highly of today. Take the Puritan pilgrims, for example, who fled what they viewed as a morally decaying Europe in order to found a “city on a hill” and become a beacon light of hope for humanity. Four hundred years later, the society they planted the seeds of, i.e. the U.S., looks very different from what they thought they were creating, and one would be hard-pressed to argue it's morally superior to modern Europe. Mormons may be another example. Religion was the foundation of a lot of these radical autonomous communities in past ages; these days, it's often a focus on ecology, environmentalism, and sustainability. (There are more of them than you may think, and they're all over the world; just check out WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and you'll be amazed by the amount and variety of them.)

The idea of a “self-sustainable community” has a real lure to it these days, for me as well. It makes sense not to want to rely on the state or profit-driven corporations for your survival. But it also builds community when you have to rely on people who can do things you can't do, like fix a motor or weave a sweater. I'm not sure how realistic it is to produce EVERYTHING you need within one community. If you can't rely on people with more skills than you in certain areas—mechanics, doctors, carpenters, cooks, the list goes on—and try to do everything yourself, you end up super busy just making your basic needs met, leaving little room to pursue passions outside of basic survival. Indeed, the work the folks at Tierra de Bosques had done, especially when it came to construction, was absolutely phenomenal. But they have to work so, so hard to keep advancing, and also are pretty reliant on volunteer labor. I suppose the goal is to eventually have all the necessary skills within the community itself as it grows. But then of course the dynamics of the community will slowly change and move away from its original, idealistic purpose. Maybe that's how human society evolves, and that's okay too. But my point is that you can't isolate from the rest of humanity; it's just not possible. Since we're celebrating Dr. King this week I'll bring in a quote of his: 

    "No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world. . . .It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality."

 All of this observation and reflection inspired in me an idea for a speculative fiction story that follows a character from an autonomous community in around the year 2050. Believe it or not, I actually started writing the story, which is now looking more like a novella or even novel, and have a draft of the first 30-40% of it! (Side note: I'm looking for folks to read it and give me feedback, so if you're interested, please let me know!)

None of this takes away from how highly I think of all the people at Tierra de Bosques and the ambitious project they're undertaking. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to friends and family as a good place to visit or even move to for those headed down that path. I'd also be remiss if I left out the fact that I wasn't always the best community member myself. For a good part of our stay, I found myself griping to myself or Mere about things not being “fair.” It would bug me that one volunteer got invited to dinner with a nearby family and we didn't, or I'd feel some type of way when someone outside of the core of volunteers sat down to dinner with us when I felt like we barely had enough food to get by for the week. Or I'd be upset when our food for the week came Tuesday morning instead of Monday evening, and I had to go without a banana for breakfast. I realized that I was being petty, but it was really, really hard for me not to fixate on that kind of thing. And yet, when I went down to the stream to meditate, which I did often, it was so obvious that the universe was being supremely fair with me, and that in a greater, more holistic sense, all my needs were more than provided for, and I'm incredibly blessed. What business did I have whining, really?

I learned a lot about myself through the whole ordeal. The full story will have to be left for a later telling, but suffice it to say that I was able to let it go, at least a little bit, through a New Year's ritual that the whole community did together—I so appreciated the rituals they made it a point to do—where we sent something we were letting go from the past year down the stream. What I wanted to let go was my “small" sense of justice, where I get worked up about not getting treated exactly equally for every little thing, in favor of a bigger picture version of justice. To see myself as ONE with my environment and those around me, instead of as separate from it. This is a lifelong battle—especially as a white person, I think—but I think I moved a little closer during my time at Tierra de Bosques, which I will forever be grateful for. 

Hell in Lima

    Mere and I recently finished our first meaningful experience here in Peru, working on a farm/eco-village near a small town called Oxapampa. I say meaningful because we actually spent our first two weeks in Lima, which was far from meaningful—except in the spiritual sense of learning how to embrace suffering. Even locals were surprised to find out we spent that long there. It actually wouldn't have been too bad—noisy, crowded, a little dirty, maybe—if it weren't for all the devastating occurrences that befell us. So I'll leave the eco-village to a later post, and focus on Lima here. Here's the catalog of negative experiences, in ascending order:

1. Mere got sick. Stomach bug

2. A week after recovering, she got sick again. 

3. Then I got sick. 

4. Mere's laptop was stolen out of a LOCKED locker in a 10-person dorm in our hostel on our second day.

5. Five days later, Mere was walking down a busy street with phone in hand. A motorcyclist ran a red light, drove right by her, and swiped it straight out of her hand. She ran after him, but to no avail. At this point we're down a laptop AND a phone.

6. Just when we were starting to accept our ordeal, remembering that it could easily be worse—we even started reading the Book of Job for consolation and wisdom, no joke—Mere was alerted by her bank that there had been a large wire transfer from her account. We were devastated to find out that ALL of her money had been emptied. Everything she had saved for our trip—gone just like that. Apparently, the guy who robbed her had gotten into her bank app, and the bank wasn't competent enough to do any additional verification before parting with it. We also found out that he was on her facebook account, impersonating her and soliciting money from her Mom. God knows what else he did before we were able to cut it off.

    So instead of a relaxing start to our journey, it was full of stress, and we had to extend our stay in Lima, not to enjoy ourselves, but to spend the next few days between the police station and calling the bank, trying to get a coherent answer about how to get the money back.  Whew, what a stressful experience. We left Lima uncertain about what would happen with the money—we had to await a forgery form in the mail to our home back in the states, then send someone out to get it and fax it to the bank—but confident it would be returned eventually. A month later as I write this, we still don't have it, and aren't as confident. But we still hope. And in the midst of it all, here are some ways in which the whole ordeal has benefited us. In ascending order:

1. I was long due for a good cry. My cheeks are still salty.

2. We still did get to do some fun things, like eat ceviche, which is delicious, and other good food, and see the famous Puente de los Suspiros. 

Our first night in Lima. This was my first time having Ceviche.

Standing on the Puente de los Suspiros (Bridge of Sighs) in Barranco

3. Being forced to make do with less is always a character-building experience. We have had to confront the possibility of losing that money permanently, and envision what that would mean for us. Luckily, we didn't lose anything from my account, which is hopefully enough to get us through our travels, but it's still a huge loss, and having to accept it, at least temporarily, has been strengthening.

4. We encountered lots of really nice and friendly people along the way. Immediately after she was robbed, she was surrounded and comforted by random locals, and taken to a safe location. The hostel gave us a nice discount after the laptop robbery. Even the cop tried to be helpful. There were also lots of nice guests in the hostel, like this young man.

This man, whose name I will leave undisclosed, is from Florida, but don't hold it against him. He helped us through the hard times with lots of moral support, and even taught us about cryptocurrency and block chain along the way. In fact, it was his complaining that I haven't written that spurred me to finally publish this post. And because of him I might turn this blog into an NFT. Kidding. But at least I understand what that means now, kind of.

5. Mere and I made it through together, still have each other, and still love each other. Despite it all, our relationship is actually in as good a place as ever.

    As I've mentioned elsewhere, I am a big believer in the cycles of all things, and the one way I could comfort myself was with the reminder that the series of fiascos in Lima eventually had to end, and that brighter days were ahead. If I believe in hell, it's as a temporary state here on Earth. I'm not sure if we were being punished for something, or the universe was trying to teach us something, but it felt like a period of hell to us. And yet again, we were acutely aware of how much worse things could have been, and slightly embarrassed at our privilege to even be so upset about losing luxuries that the majority of Peruvians don't have, while we still have enough to continue living abroad. It helps to see things from that perspective, but it still hurts, because we lost something we had expected to have, and no matter how privileged someone is, loss always hurts. 

    The tides finally started to turn for us outside of Lima. We took a 12 hour bus through the Andes to the small town of Oxapampa. We were completely surprised to find that it had originally been a little Austro-German settlement; I admit, I was a wee-bit delighted, having German roots myself. German names were everywhere, like a bar called “Vater Otto” (Father Otto), as well as other references to German culture. There's even a monument dedicated to “the colonists” in the middle of the town square. Apparently, the Austrians and Germans were recruited by the Peruvian government to settle there, and according to local lore, the they and the indigenous Yanesha people of the area got along grandly, although of course I have trouble believing that. The town was founded in 1891, so you don't hear the language spoken anywhere really, although lots of signs are written in German for the sake of being cute for tourists. Because of the altitude, and maybe the Austro-German culture as well, it was turned into a prime spot for cattle ranching, and somehow hamburgers became the delicacy of choice there. Of course that's not good for the planet, and Mere and I are supposed to be vegetarian, but we definitely had to try them—and they were fantastic. 

Yes, it was big. Mere and I are mostly vegetarian at home, but we've been making quite a few exceptions here in Peru. Not only is it really hard to eat vegetarian for every meal, but part of traveling is experiencing the culture of a place, which of course includes the food. That's our justification.

Manakins in Lederhosen

Signs praising the German colonists at a breakfast place

    It's also beautiful there. We spent a few nights in the town itself in an airbnb that we would later keep returning to on the weekends because the host was so nice and welcoming, and we made friends with a couple who were long-term guests there. Finally, it was time to make our fashionably late appearance at Tierra de Bosques, where we'd be building houses, digging ditches, farming, cooking outside, and living in a tent for the next five weeks. I'm sure some would say that sounds like their own version of hell, but it was exactly the escape we needed.

Time and scarcity culture in America

I originally wrote this in April 2021 but never published it. I'm doing so now because it goes hand in hand with a post I made recently about control in American society. I've left it mostly intact other than editing for clarity, because it still reflects my ideas about the problems with American work culture.

In my first month teaching at Cincinnati Public Schools, one of the students in my Economics class suddenly demanded, "Why's it always feel like we're in a rush in here?!" 

The question caught me off guard, and at the time I brushed it off as something that would only come out of the mouth of a naïve teenager. Of course we were rushing; there was always so much to cover, and so little time! I was doing exactly what I had been taught in my teacher education programs: to demand excellence, especially in urban classrooms where kids were so far "behind" their richer and whiter peers.

But I never forgot that moment, and in my now six years teaching at CPS I've come to respect the wisdom from which it came, as well as its implications. What my student was critiquing was not just the factory model of education playing out in my classroom; our entire culture is suffused with this perceived need to be in a rush.

In a couple weeks, I will have about 20 students take an AP exam. If we're lucky--and with this crazy year, we will need some luck--a few will pass, and get college credit for the course. The majority will probably not. But here's the thing: every single one of those students is capable of learning the material, and if we were working on a different time frame, they would be able to pass the exam. They just won't be able to by May 3rd. Or, alternatively, if they were only responsible for knowing 50-80% of the material by that date, many more would pass as well. I'm sure that is true for the majority of students across the nation. 

I understand that colleges want to ensure that students learn a certain amount of material before giving college credit for an AP class, but who makes up that amount and the time frame in which they have to learn it? Isn't it kind of arbitrary? Could you picture a world in which the requirements for a college class are such that every student will meet it by the deadline*? Or where the deadline is extended so every student has time to meet it? But I'm afraid our school system is invested more in competition and ranking than ensuring that students learn.

It's not just about school; our entire society is full of people who are perpetually in a rush, because we run on the paradigm of scarcity.  It is deeply embedded in the economic system, philosophy, and therefore culture of this country. Maybe it's fitting that it was in an Economics class that I was asked the question above. When I first studied economics, I remember taking issue with the very first assumption in the textbook, namely that there is only a scarce amount of resources in the world, and not enough to meet everyone's needs and wants. Hmm, says who? And whose wants? This paradigm is not a universal truth, but only exists in a culture where too much is never enough, which is unfortunately how we've been trained to view the world. But all across the globe there are cultures that don't view things that way, but see the world as providing for our needs in abundance. Examples of peoples with such cultures abounded on this very land before being pushed out, "reeducated," and/or decimated by Europeans. 

Scarcity culture is rooted in our capitalist economic system, which can only survive if businesses and therefore people are endlessly increasing productivity, and at all costs. Think about how much our productive capabilities have increased over the past couple centuries. The fact that I can spend 2 minutes sending a message across the country that would have taken two weeks or two months some time ago; that I can send money to a person or business with the click of a button; that I can make my own elaborate slideshows with pictures and videos and surveys and what have you instead of relying on a textbook in class; these are just tiny examples of how much more we can get done in our days than in the past.

But has that made our lives easier? No, because the whole system is structured on competition, meaning a company can never just chill, but always has to "improve" in order to keep up with others. The demand for increased productivity gets passed down to us, the workers, endlessly, even though the profits don't. Think about this: workers fought a long, hard battle for a 40-hour work week OVER ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. And yet here we are in 2021, despite the immense advancements in technology that have exponentially increased our productivity over that time span, operating off the assumption that a 40-hour week is normal. In fact, many of us work much more than that, and many don't even make a living salary off of it. All because of the scarcity myth embedded in our economic system.

But why did capitalism take hold here of all places? Why were we so susceptible to it? I think part of it has to do with the trauma of those of us with ancestry in Europe. Europe is not a very hospitable place to live compared with more tropical places. Long, cold winters and the possibility of a bad harvest, mixed with feudal structures that allowed for hoarding that led to famines among the poor. Public executions, torture, witch trials, and deadly wars were all commonplace. All that instilled into many Europeans a sense of impending doom. Fleeing famine, war, and persecution, white folks' ancestors came to the U.S. to escape, but didn't necessarily heal the trauma from their homeland, and we still suffer from some of those traumatic retentions today. (Resmaa Menakem outlines this so well in his book My Grandmother's Hands; I highly recommend checking it out.)

Do you ever have that nagging feeling that something is wrong? That you have to DO something, and act fast, or else everything's going to fall apart? It's hard to say, but at least some of that is passed down generationally, and has its roots in the living situations of our ancestors. Of course, white people are not the only ones to suffer from this, partly because, as Menakem and others have pointed out, white people arriving in North America proceeded to blow their unhealed trauma onto other bodies, primarily of color, especially Black and indigenous people. 

I also believe that the mainstream Christianity we are accustomed to in the U.S., which has been disastrously distorted over the past 2000 years, contributes to this scarcity culture. Too often the capitalist-tinged Christianity of today teaches a dualistic, black-and-white version of good vs. evil. This contributes to our sense of perpetual fear about whether or not we're doing what's "right," because a wrong choice could lead us to poverty and social disgrace. I guess we Christians have forgotten that the poor and socially outcast were the folks with whom Jesus chose to live in solidarity, and that he consistently preached a gospel of abundance and not worrying about material possessions.

All this adds up to decisions being made that encourage us to always be "improving" and "increasing" something. So when it comes time to decide how much material to put in a college course, instead of doing an amount that everyone could do comfortably, they do the opposite: make it so challenging that only a very few can master the material with an A. Of course this creates nice little rankings that fit perfectly with the hierarchical system necessitated by capitalism.

If you start paying attention, maybe you'll find you're like me: constantly rushing, even if there's no real need to. It was only last year that I noticed that I'm consistently at a near-sprint walking down the hallways at my school. When I'm washing dishes, my shoulders are constricted and I'm trying to do it as quickly as possible. On the road, if another driver causes me a two second delay (literally), they get a verbal berating (even though they may never hear it). And why? No other real reason than a false sense that there's not enough time. I wonder if this translates to our views on aging as a negative and our perverse fear of death, again something foreign to most other cultures throughout human history.

So we're always in a rush, always feeling like we don't have enough time, and we see it as completely normal. But it doesn't have to be this way. Imagine just going through life content with whatever we accomplish that day? This takes more than just a shift in personal attitudes; as mentioned, our capitalist system fuels scarcity thinking and our need to rush. We need a collective shift in systems and culture; and the last thing I'm trying to do is make people feel guilty for something that all of us fall victim to at least to some degree. But if we acknowledge that things could be different, and that there's no need for us to rush so much in the 21st century, that there's enough to go around for everyone, then maybe we'll start embodying and making moves towards a world that is more relaxed, and therefore more equitable.

Here's another post about my experience with a similar concept in Guatemala.

*Just an aside, what the hell kind of a word is "deadline," anyway, and what does it imply? I just looked it up; apparently it's a civil war term used to describe a line that prisoners of war were not to cross or else be shot by guards. Hmm, talk about urgency; what an interesting word to choose for the concept of a due date.)

**I can't claim to have come up with any of my ideas purely on my own. They are always a big synthesis of my life experiences and things I've read. Here's some, though surely not all, of the people/writings that probably influenced a lot of this:  Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, Resmaa Menakem's My Grandmother's Hands, Adrienne Marie Brown's Emergent Strategy and other writings, conversations and classes with Kelly Germaine, Angel Kyodo Williams' Radical Dharma.

What “believing in God” means to me

I believe in God.

There, I said it.

In many communities in the U.S., this is the expected and respectable stance to take. But in the urban, progressive environment in which I was molded—including in universities and some leftist circles I've been a part of—expressing a belief in God is often almost a kind of taboo. The person who expresses it is likely to be immediately summed up and judged as irrational, unintellectual, or unintelligent. The topic of God or spirituality rarely if ever comes up except as the butt of jokes (which I admit are fun to make.)

This is a sad state of affairs, because it means a significant chunk of humanity these days is cut off from a part of the human experience that has shaped us from time immemorial. 

There was a time when I, too, would have said I don’t believe in God. The older I get, though, the more nuanced my understanding of God becomes, and with that also my confidence that it exists.

I don't actually believe that it's possible for any human not to believe in some kind of God. I don't mean to sound provocative or dismissive; I just think it's a matter of conflicting definitions of what "God" means. If someone says to me they don't believe in God, I'm tempted to ask them which God they don't believe in. Unlike Santa Claus, God means something at least slightly different for literally everyone who uses the term. If we define God as a bearded white guy with a staff deciding from a cloud in the sky what happens in the world, blessing some while condemning others to an eternity in hell... then yea I don't believe in that guy either. But man, how far astray the modern human has wandered to reduce something so complex and indescribable to something so concrete and boring!

I've been starting to think that the problem is that modern humans, at least in the Western, post-industrial world, have lost touch with the importance of symbols in human culture. Symbols have always been used to represent complicated things, whether concepts or processes or memories. The symbol is not the thing itself, only a reflection, but that doesn't mean it isn't important. 

In sports, receiving a trophy or medal for an accomplishment has long been a cultural norm. Is there some inherent value in the trophy itself? Certainly not the gold-painted plastic ones I got for youth baseball and soccer. But they still meant something to me. I could pick one up and hold it and remember and feel a connection with that time of life and the journey that the trophy SYMBOLIZED. A nation's flag is not important because of the cloth or colors themselves, but because of everything it symbolizes to a people (and it can symbolize different things to different people). A photograph on the wall, a painting, an old rocking chair--pretty much everything in our physical world has some kind of symbolic value beyond just its image or function.

So with that in mind, depictions of God as a Father in heaven is a SYMBOL for something much greater, and frankly, it's silly to mistake the symbol for the thing itself. Now, I do believe that that outdated symbol of God as bearded white man needs some updating, or at least that it shouldn't be the EXCLUSIVE symbol of God. But my point here is that we need to understand the symbol as a symbol. Just like the bearded guy on the throne, the word "God" itself, like all words, is only a symbol, a reflection, of something infinitely deeper and broader.

So what is God for me? 

God is everything, starting with the infinite patterns, rhythms, and natural laws of the universe that determine the course of things. Laws of motion, gravity, quantum physics, chemistry. Somehow God, those infinite rhythms and patterns, produced something as amazing as a universe with infinite galaxies, and a solar system with an Earth that revolves around a sun in just such a way that it somehow birthed an ocean, and later microorganisms, and then even fish that swam around, and birds, and kept evolving to produce giant furry creatures like giraffes, and monkeys, and eventually the insanely complex organisms that are human beings. I'm only recounting the tiniest fraction of it all, but how unbelievably awesome! THAT, to me, the force or energy that made all that happen, and that continues to bind everything together to work together in some kind of imperfect harmony, is God. Evolution is of course an essential driving force behind that pattern, so it's absurd to me to think of evolution and God as two opposing theories. 

Believe it or not, the fundamentalist Christianity that would deny evolution is relatively new. It's only been a century or so that Christians have claimed that we need to interpret the Bible literally, for example that God created everything in six 24-hour periods. Before then, everyone understood (and many still do) that the Bible is chock full of allegories that symbolize deeper truths. That's why Jesus spoke in parables; there's literally no way to interpret them literally, unless you think he never meant to do more than just talk about stuff like birds and seeds all the time. But as a reaction to a very understandable fear of the drastic, upheaving, uprooting changes to traditional life that came with capitalism and industrialism and urbanization and "modernity" in general, at some point many Christians desperately clung to the Bible as something that could give them a literal, unerring, unchanging, fundamental "truth," and wouldn't allow the slightest questioning of it or consider other ways of understanding God beyond it. It's easier, in a way, to cling to that certainty than to sit with the paradoxes and nuances of life and of God. In the process, they often lose touch with the most important values religion teaches us in favor of tightly controlling behavior and personal matters like people's sexual orientation.

No wonder that anyone with a more "rational" perspective on the world decided to reject that version of God. But the problem is that many atheists and agnostics, from all the way at the other end of the spectrum, have adopted that exact same definition of God. They rejected it instead of worshipping it, but it's the same misguided confusion of the symbol for the thing itself, and it's not at all how God has been understood throughout the vast majority of human history.

An atheist may say that the "God" I described above is just science, not God, and I would respond that we are only arguing over semantics, over what the proper symbol of the pattern and rhythm is. 

Call it science if you want, but I choose to call it God. 

Referring to it as God, and honoring it, praising it, somehow endows our psyche with more hope, faith, and love, because it gives us a chance to align ourselves with it and be part of it. It gives us something to follow, encourages us to PARTICIPATE in the infinitely loving processes of the universe, instead of solely following our narrow-minded egos and our own selfish desires. It’s something to give gratitude for, an emotion that is shown to be connected with well-being and happiness. 

Will it ever be possible to PROVE that the forces I'm describing are "loving" and benevolent, as opposed to completely random? Nope. I know that I FEEL something undeniably loving when I look at a beautiful landscape, when I hear cardinals chirping on a cool morning, when a roar of laughter erupts while sharing stories around a living room. Even in the disgruntled fog of a mid-year staff meeting full of dozens of stressed-out teachers, if I look for it, I can feel it in the solidarity flowing between us. Stop reading this right now and take a slow, deep breath, and you may feel it too. But no one will ever be able to prove it.

Nor, however, will anyone ever be able to prove the opposite. Contrary to popular belief in secular circles, it’s no more logical to claim with certainty that NO god exists than it is to claim that some god definitely does. Neither can ever be proven scientifically, because the question is beyond the realm of science. So in the face of the mystery, I will choose the path that leads to more love and well-being, which also in turn leads people to treat each other better.

On our sabbatical, partly because we spent so much time in the natural world, partly from some of the stuff I've been reading,* I've been thinking about God in these terms a lot. The main symbol that's been occurring to me has been a circle. I've long known, intellectually, that the human experience (and the entire universe) contains ups and downs, expansions and contractions; I imagine my days, my years, my entire life cycling around in a circle. 

But those down times sometimes feel so hopeless, so utterly painful, because there's something in me that doesn't have "faith" in the pattern, that doesn't want to trust that good times always follow bad ones, just like the sun always rises no matter how dark the night, and warm spring air will eventually come and melt away the snow, no matter how bleak and cold winter gets. The task of faith is truly believing, not just in my head but also in my heart and soul, that in the end, everything will be okay. This means not getting overly irritated when we miss our bus, or have to pay more than I expected for a meal, or even worse. The "dark" times are a necessary part of the process, the decay before the renewal, of all existence.

Richard Rohr talks a lot about the story of Jesus' death and resurrection as a SYMBOL for this universal pattern. Bad things happen, often unfairly, like when Jesus was crucified. But the pattern of renewal dictates that death is ALWAYS followed by resurrection, as when an acorn falls to its "death" only to be reborn into an oak tree. Colloquial sayings like "every cloud has a silver lining" and "it was a blessing in disguise" show that an understanding of this pattern, of what I call God, is deeply embedded in our collective consciousness. We all have stories of an experience that was extremely hard for us; but if we're open and faithful about it, years later we're able to see that as bad as it was, something good eventually sprang from it. I'm reminded of Tupac talking about the rose that grows from concrete. He said that if you were to see a rose growing from concrete, you wouldn't criticize it for having wilting petals, you'd be amazed at it, admire and praise it for being able to grow in the first place! He was making a slightly different point about it than I am, but it fits here too as one of infinite examples of God's work; even in unfavorable conditions, God does miraculous things with the beings of the Earth, from flowers to human beings. 

When we lose touch with a consistent acknowledgment and appreciation of God, of the patterns I'm describing, we start to forget this universal pattern, and I believe that that's a huge part of the problem we in the modern, materially-wealthy world find ourselves in. In my last reflection I wrote about how people living in Guatemala generally seem to let things unfold on their own more than we do in the U.S., and I think the issue of God is related. Instead of trusting the patterns, trusting in God that everything will be okay, we do everything we can to control things and fit them into our narrow, egoic interests: we want to make sure we live in the best neighborhood with the best schools, so that our kids can get a perfect education, so that they don't end up at the bottom. What a deep-running fear at what will happen to our children if they don't end up in a “respectable” profession! I can't fault parents for it; the reality is we live in a (Godless?) society based on greed and self-interest, where if you DON'T play this game you could end up poor and marginalized in a system that doesn't care much about the poor and marginalized. 

But we should remember that playing that game is based off of a human-created idea of "success;" and that usually, your average middle-class person's conception of the "dreaded" camp of the marginalized is full of stereotypes based on the idea that certain ways of being are less valuable than others. Here's another reason religion or knowledge of God is important: it teaches us to buck mainstream ideas like that, and that we are ALL equally valued children of God, regardless of status, wealth, outward appearance, etc. We have no business judging different ways of being human any more than we should judge the rose that grew from concrete or the dog who lost a leg. (Of course I'm not saying parents shouldn't encourage their kids to become educated; they should. But the intention should be the broadening of their minds and the learning of useful skills; it shouldn't be for some human-centered idea of success that will shelter them permanently from the inevitable life challenges they'll have to encounter.)

So for me, believing in God and following God's will is about participating in the patterns of the universe.

Once you start thinking of religious ideas and texts symbolically in this way, they suddenly hit different. "God makes all things new" used to confuse me, but symbolically, it makes perfect sense: there will be a renewal after death. Even words as cringy as sin and punishment have a meaning behind them.Part of what makes humans unique--and many creation stories contain some version of this--is that they can choose whether or not to follow along with the patterns or not, in other words they can choose between good and evil.  Sometimes, we selfishly follow our own will instead participating in the patterns. Symbolically, this is referred to as "sin" and results in some kind of punishment, because you will eventually be flung back violently (violent backlash) if you keep trying to bend the patterns of the universe to your own will. If I keep treating people around me badly, it will eventually come back to bite me, as people will stop wanting to be around me and I will eventually be isolated, which is perhaps the worst form of punishment (symbolically: hell) for the social creatures that we are. And collectively, we are about to be punished with the “fury of God” (read: natural disasters brought on by climate change) for the sin of excessive industrialization. The interplay of sin and punishment, understood symbolically, is itself all a part of the pattern. What goes around comes around. Karma.  

The mistake NOT to make here is to think that anytime something bad happens to someone, they deserved it. No, absolutely not. There is plenty of evil in the world, due to humans' choosing evil, and part of the purpose of religion is to help people choose be on the side of correcting those injustices. But what's amazing about the universe we live in is that, again, even when objectively evil things happen, God makes something good out of them, if we only stay present enough to recognize the storm cloud’s silver lining. 

Here's an example. In Guatemala, at one point we felt a little taken advantage of by the American running the place we stayed at. The gas at the place ran out, and he told us we could replace it and that he would reimburse us. We did so. Before he reimbursed us, we asked to stay an extra 4 days, which was about half the cost of the gas. We were hoping we'd still get that half reimbursed, but instead, he made it sound like trading the extra four days for the gas was an even deal. It felt petty to complain, as it amounted to a measly amount, and we had gotten a good deal on the room in the first place. Still, I was frustrated, mostly because it just didn't seem fair, and so I spent way too long fixating on it. The only thing that helped me not to was to constantly tell myself, basically, to have faith! This wasn't going to ruin our trip, and we'd be okay in the end.

Finally, just as I was letting myself accept it, I miraculously found some money in the pocket of a pair of pants I was wearing that had been left behind long ago by a former guest. As I excitedly pulled the wad of dollar bills out and started counting, I was amazed to find almost the EXACT exact amount we felt we'd lost. It was as if God was saying, "Simple-minded ones! I told you to trust!" Do I believe God intervened directly? Not really. But I do believe that it was yet another sign that the universe has a plan, that God will provide. And no lie, it's kinda cool and mysterious that it was basically the exact amount we lost.

So God provided then, and continued to over and over again—all the more when I had faith and kept my eyes open, ready to accept the pattern and participate in it. Which is what Jesus was alluding to when he talked about faith healing people and moving mountains. 

This example has privilege written all over it, I know. I couldn't even begin to try to make it analogous to the situation of so many people in the U.S. who struggle regularly to make enough money to pay rent in a relentlessly unjust and profit-driven society. So maybe my positive outlook here may have its blind spots, I'm willing to admit.

But it's worth noting that it's not usually the poor and oppressed who think they can go without God; it's those who have enough material wealth and privilege that they think they can control everything on their own—and in their arrogance usually make more and more problems for everyone else (climate change again being a good example). Some of the most profound and God-inspired statements I've ever heard came at church, when people experiencing homelessness, whether they were members or just passing through taking shelter, would take the mic after the sermon to respond and offer their testimony. Regardless of what their life looked like to an outside observer, many were still able to recognize God in the pattern of things, and be grateful for whatever they had been given. They were able to embody, much more than me, the faith that I'm trying to promote here.

I hope that this will be helpful to anyone who struggles with mainstream Christianity or religion in general, but senses intuitively that there's something about spirituality that is worth exploring and embracing.

*I can't claim to have come up with any of this on my own. My ideas are always a big synthesis of my life experiences and things I've read. But here's some of what I've been reading lately and probably influenced a lot of this: Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God, Adrienne Marie Brown's Emergent Strategy, Octavia Butler's Parable series, Richard Rohr's daily meditations,  Popol Vuh (the Mayan creation story) Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, Beatrice Chestnut's The Complete Enneagram.. Many more I'm sure that I'm forgetting.

Control it or let it unfold? Sabbatical reflections

My fiancé and I recently got back to Cincinnati after about 80 days in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, the first of two legs of travel for our sabbatical year. Here's a brief outline of what we did: 

We spent a couple weeks backpacking from city to city and staying in hostels through southern Mexico, then eventually decided we wanted to slow down and spend more time in the places we stayed so that we could get to know people and absorb a little more of the culture. So we ended up spending close to two months in Guatemala. First we stopped in Xela, the second biggest city in Guatemala, to take Spanish classes while living with a host family for a couple weeks. Then we went up to Petén, a rural area in the north covered in rain forest, and spent a few weeks volunteering on farms involved in reforestation projects. Along the way, we passed through a couple more culturally significant cities in Guatemala--Lake Atitlan, Livingston, Antigua, Guatemala City--before heading over to El Salvador for our last eight days, which we split between a hostel in Santa Ana and a couch surfing host in San Salvador.

I'll spare you all the details, but suffice it to say the trip was exciting, challenging, relaxing, stressful, thought-provoking, realigning, meaningful, among so many other things. 

For me, the most beautiful and beneficial aspect about it was just being able to get some space from the environment, lifestyle, and patterns of thinking I'd settled into over the past six years living in Cincinnati. We're fortunate to be able to have this kind of experience. It should be something that every human on the planet is entitled to every few years, and I hope anyone reading this can make it happen someday if they haven't already.

We learned so much while we were away: about the Spanish language, about Central American history and politics, about Mayan culture and traditions, about farming, plants native to the Guatemalan rain forest, tropical fruits, about ourselves and our relationship--the list goes on and on. 

I've noticed that often with traveling, a big part of the learning actually happens when you come back, and the person you've grown into returns to the place you left with a new point of view from which to experience, evaluate and make sense of what you've been swimming in your whole life. 

The most striking thing I've noticed being home this time around has been the perfectionist way with which Americans from the U.S., or at least middle-class and wealthy Americans, view the world. The deeply felt need to tightly control one's surroundings, to do things "right." This contrasted drastically with the laid back, let-things-unfold-as-they-unfold approach to life we encountered on our trip.

One example: shortly after we got back to the U.S., we saw a woman approach a bus that was stopped at a red light, hoping to get on. But that particular bus doesn't have a stop at that particular intersection, so the driver opened the door and kindly informed her that she couldn't get on, all in about the same time it would have taken her to board, pay her fare, and sit down. Of course there was no practical reason not to let her on; it simply violated protocol, the "right" way to do things. Now, the exact same thing has happened to me before, even with the same bus route. But after our trip, it struck me as so odd, even ridiculous. In Guatemala a bus will typically stop for you anywhere along the route, even if it stopped literally ten seconds earlier. Less rigid, less focused on efficiency and the "rules" about the "right" place to get on the bus, which opens up space for more compassion for the person who wasn't quite able to make it to the stop in time. And this was the case even though, ironically, if you miss a bus down there, there will almost certainly be another one coming shortly. We took busses dozens of times, and maybe three or four times waited longer than five minutes. The woman who missed her bus in Cincinnati probably had to wait another 15 or 20 for the next one. 

Another way this cultural difference manifests is in the relationship between humans and animals. Dogs roam the streets everywhere in Guatemala. They don't bother anyone, but regardless, in the U.S., most people would never be okay with unattended dogs walking around their manicured, pristine suburbs. In Guatemala they seem to be tolerated at the very least; people even put food out for them and let them hang out on their doorstep. When we got out to the rural, the coexistence was even more pronounced: pigs and chickens are also part of the menagerie. They walked around freely, grazing along the sides of roads. We figured they must be owned by someone, and when we asked about it we were told they were. Apparently everyone seems to just kind of know whose animals are whose, and they let them roam free to find food wherever they can. Instead of humans needing to be in complete control, animals and humans are coexisting, with nature at the helm. Plus, it makes for many more sightings and interactions with puppies, and kittens, too.

Even this squirrel wanted to coexist...especially when he found I had food.

We also noticed that people were so much more resourceful down there. In the U.S., when you need some material object, what do you do? Go out and buy it. Or nowadays, pick up your phone for a couple minutes and click a button. In rural Guatemala, instead of always buying a manufactured item created perfectly for the exact use you will put it to, people engineered what they needed with whatever was around. Simple benches from a slab of wood and tree stumps, outdoor stoves from leftover cinderblocks and rebar, flowerpots from washed-out water or coke bottles, wild plants used as teas to cure soar throats or as bandages to heal machete wounds, the list goes on. All perfectly functional, and less wasteful. 

Maybe the most pronounced example was the work culture. In the U.S., we literally have a phrase "work-life balance," which shows that we typically treat work as if it is disconnected from life. As if you have a life, and then you go to your work which is not part of it. On the farm in Guatemala, work was much more integrated with life. The first thing we'd do sometimes when we showed up to the farm would be drink a coffee, while enjoying the scenery and chatting with the other folks around. Then maybe we'd discuss what we'd be doing that day, and get started chopping down branches to feed the cows, or planting cacao or coffee or breadnut, or transplanting trees. After an hour or so doing that, we'd head back to relax and chat while someone prepared lunch. Someone may pull down a coconut, chop it open, and pass it around for sips of coconut water. After lunch we'd find another task to do, and the cycle would continue. It felt like a rhythm, a balance between producing and just living, being, with relationships at the center as opposed to productivity-- relationships with nature, with food, and with other humans. We also loved how mothers could take their kids to work with them, and that there always seemed to be kids around wherever we went. It made child-rearing seem much more natural, less stressful and complicated, than back home.

I realize that I'm generalizing quite a bit here. I met plenty of people whose mentality toward work was further along the spectrum toward that of the U.S. I also don’t mean to romanticize life in Central America or less developed countries in general, though I suspect I am some. I'm aware that there are positive and negative aspects to any cultural norm, and I could go back and point them out in each of the ones I described above. For example, the American director of the organization we were volunteering with lamented about how the farms could be producing so much more and making themselves more financially stable if only they took a more diligent attitude toward the work. There is probably truth to this--and I have to admit, I sometimes found myself feeling bored and wishing there were more for me to do--but the owners of the farms, weighing his arguments, seemed to opt for the more relaxed, rhythmic, balanced, and relationally-rich work culture they were used to. They kind of smiled and shrugged when describing his seemingly unquenchable zeal for "improvement." 

Whatever positives to American work-culture there most definitely are, we have to bear in mind a difficult truth: the urge to control things in our environment to the extreme that we do, to be perfectly efficient, to "advance" technologically, is a legacy of white supremacy and capitalism and, in my opinion, a fundamental driver of climate change and the destruction of the planet. Guatemalans may have a low per capita GDP than Americans*, but they are infinitely less responsible for the climate crisis. In fact, reclaiming indigenous practices similar to the ones practiced there, where Mayan culture is thankfully still very prevalent, is going to have to play a big role in whatever resurrection we can hope for as/after the climate catastrophe runs its course.

Not to mention, I don't think it would be at all fair to say that Americans are better off than Guatemalans. Materially, yes, and I certainly believe in creating a world where Guatemalans have the same basic access to the important care and services that we do. But in terms of overall well-being and happiness? I wasn't there long enough to truly know, but my instinct, based on the many interactions and conversations we had with people from diverse parts and backgrounds of the country, would be to say that Guatemalans have us beat. I suspect it has to with the fact that they spend so much more time in community, just being around other people, than Americans. We noticed that they were essentially always with other people, whether their immediate families or the several friends who would randomly stop by to chat for a few minutes every day. Middle-class Americans seem to spend so much time alone, in (comparatively) giant houses, with all sorts of stuff, but very little human interaction. No wonder that so many Americans are terribly lonely. Paradoxically, it's mostly by choice. Once people have money, they often spend it to make themselves more comfortable, but that often means more isolated. I've always believed that capitalism and the inequality it produces are not, in the end, healthy and wholesome for those who reap the material benefits. Which is why the privileged need to be just as invested in forging an equitable society as the marginalized. But I digress...

Many Americans, myself included, have had the perfectionistic need to control and manage deeply engrained in their psyches for generations. I'm struggling with it right now, as I keep revising this post so that it perfectly expresses what I want it to before I publish it. My goal in writing this isn't to convince people to try to change that all at once, but maybe to help them at least become conscious of it, and to be reminded that there are people who are getting by with a much more "let-things-unfold" kind of attitude toward life. 

______________________________________________________________________

*The reason for poverty in Guatemala goes much, much deeper than anything I've described here. The country has had a long history of being exploited by foreign companies (United Fruit) and governments (the U.S. funded the Guatemalan government during their civil war, which left hundreds of thousands dead, persecuted, and displaced). I'm sure there's plenty more that I'm not even aware of. My point is just that even if it were feasible to "advance" economically through a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps type of increase in production, if they follow our model, it will only exasperate the global crisis we're in. 

The Rhythms of Battle

 Kalrin knew it was almost his turn to step out onto the battlefield. 

It would be his tribe’s last chance to return home, to avoid the utter shame of defeat. It wasn’t that time was running out. On the battlefield, time was not measured. Every event, every movement, every dance, operated on its own time. The battle could not possibly be concluded by the arbitrary tick tock of a clock. It was done when it was done, when men were either neutralized, or brought home. It did not matter how much time was wasted. Time was a construct of the outside world, with its machines and its clocks. There were no clocks or mention of clocks on the field. 

But while time itself was not a concern, Kalrin knew that opportunities were running out. In this outing alone two men had already been neutralized. In all likelihood, they would not return to the battle. Of all the warriors, he had been selected to be next. He wasn’t chosen by his tribe. The rules of the battle, decided on by the ancestors many generations ago, dictated that the warriors must be lined up in order before the battle can begin. Now, in the last outing of the final battle, fate had it that he was next in line.

 

He donned his helmet and shin guards, grabbed his staff, and stepped out of the cave. As was custom, he did a practice dance and twirled his staff around. The roars, hisses, and cheers of the villagers in the distance did not escape him, but did not concern him either. His focus was entirely on what was before him, aided by the juice of the cocotba leaves flowing through his gums and into the rest of his body.

He knew what he was up against. Just moments earlier, he had watched from the cave as, far in the distance, the wolf den opened, and out came an enemy warrior that Kalrin knew well, walking slowly to the middle of the field, stopping atop a small hill covered in a perfect, dark brown circle. He was answering the call after the one who had come before him, the one chosen to start, had withstood many stages of intense battle, had neutralized dozens of men, but had finally proven himself too tired to go on.

Kalrin approached the field and stopped about 20 yards away from where he knew his opponent would be standing. He did not look up at him quite yet. First, he danced. Breathing deeply, he held his staff before his face and peered at it intently before swinging it around. He then stepped forward, planted his right boot firmly into the ground, pedaling the dirt with his left. He bent his knees and then finally brought his eyes up to his opponent and pointed the staff at him. 

Even though Kalrin had dueled with him before, his heart constricted with a jolt of fear as he looked into the bearded face of the mage before him. Verira, he was called, and known throughout the land as the most deadly of all wizards in the empire. Like a giant, he towered over the small hill upon which he stood, staffless, squarely facing Kalrin with one gauntlet held up in front of his face, eyes barely visible from beneath the brim of his hat, staring him down. Undeterred by his intimidating stance, Kalrin held firm in his own position and stared back. He kept his staff aimed at Verira for a moment, then pulled it back over his shoulder, gently waving it back and forth and awaiting the mage’s dance. 

In an almost indiscernible gesture, the mage shook his head twice as the rest of his body remained squarely facing Kalrin. Then suddenly, he kicked his leg up, stomped on the ground, and hurled a fireball directly at Kalrin. As he threw it, warriors from both tribes all across the field crouched into a position of expectation. 

Kalrin sucked in his belly and lifted his arms to narrowly escape being torched. The warriors in the field exhaled, straightened their legs and relaxed. Kalrin waited, and hearing nothing from the black-robed shaman behind him, stepped back to dance once again.

There were some who, because they did not understand, scoffed at the tedious observance of the dance; who called it superstitious, unproductive, a waste of time. The warriors themselves, of course, never questioned the rituals. To an outside observer, much of the battle itself would appear to be ornamental, overly elaborate or even showy, but every warrior of every tribe understood that all of the ceremony of battle, including the dance, was integrally linked to the battle itself. It was a way to summon the energies of the Gods into the very center of one’s being; to be fully present, conscious, undistracted. The dance was one of many of the cycles and rhythms of the battle. To put an end to it would be to succumb.

There were those who no longer even honored the battle itself, and had given up on it. Too slow, they complained. A bore. His elders had always explained that such people simply do not understand the patterns. “They have been led astray and deluded, believing that there is no value in being, but only in doing; believing that the mind must always be filled, diverted, entertained. The victims of the empire and its depravity are many.”

The final battle always came in autumn, before the last leaves fell. He was reminded of this when he felt a biting gust of cold wind against his face.  Still, he danced, and as he did so, he looked into the distance. He saw warriors from his tribe in the field, clad in red. Three of his brothers. One to the left, one to the right, and one straight ahead, each temporarily safe in the middle of a protected haven of dirt, but surrounded by the enemy on all sides, wearing the same black hats and striped gray robes as their leader Virera.

“I just have to bring them home,” Kalrin muttered to himself. “I can’t leave them stranded out there.” In this final outing of the battle, he wasn’t even worried about whether he would make it home himself.

Again, he stepped back in, dug in his heels, pedaled, bent his knees, pointed his staff directly at Virera, and waited. Again, the warriors in the distance held their breath and crouched in expectation. Again, Virera kicked his leg high, stomped on the ground, and hurled a fireball that Kalrin had to back away from in order to dodge. Again, the silence of the shaman. Kalrin relaxed as he knew he had now gained a slight advantage.

Again the dance. Another ball of flame. This one missed below his knees. Virera reared his head back and cursed the Gods loudly before spitting and preparing his next spell.

Kalrin felt a strange mix of relief and tremendous pressure. One more miss and he would bring one of his brothers home. But one wasn’t enough. And accepting a deal for one would mean he would give up his chance to bring them all home in one fell swoop. He would have to pass up on his own chance and leave his faith with the next warrior in line.

No one knew the exact reasons behind the rhythms and rules of the battlefield. Why a mage could cast only a certain amount of spells before letting a warrior walk and facing the next, or why the battle was waged in nine stages, as opposed to ten. But the ancestors had determined these things, and everyone knew there must be good reason for them. No one questioned the rhythms and rules any more than they questioned the four seasons, or the waxing and waning of the moon. 

Kalrin looked to an elder to the left of the field for a sign, knowing what he would receive. 

Again he danced, and stepped forward. Again Virera’s fireball. As the elder had instructed, he refrained from moving his staff. It was custom to make a mage prove himself after throwing three wayward balls, so he watched this one pass directly in front of him. From behind him he heard the shaman yell “Aiiiiiieee!” and felt his chest constrict.  

Two more chances. He danced, peering at his staff and summoning his concentration once more. He looked out beyond the field and saw the villagers looking on. So many gazes filled with both hope and apprehension. They clung to their bread and sausage to calm their stomachs, guzzled erbe to calm their nerves. This final battle was being held in his tribe’s home town of Ycnic, and he recognized his compatriot villagers by their red garb. They were the ones he was here for. 

Scattered between them in smaller numbers were those clad in gray and black stripes, who had presumably made the journey here all the way from the enemy’s city of Yern Wok.

For far too long the people of Ycnic and similar villages had suffered at the hands of the empire, whose capital was seated in the hellish, mercantile, mechanistic Yern Wok. Because of the city’s affluence and opulence, they were able to hire their warriors like mercenaries. This luxury was not available to Ycnic and other villages like it, none of which had the riches to recruit the most famous warriors in the empire, but instead had to raise them up directly from their surrounding farms. Kalrin himself was such a farm-bred warrior from the outskirts of Ycnic. 

Yes, this battle was about much more than him and the warriors of the tribe. This was about the people of Ycnic, the people of all villages standing up to the most dominant, unforgiving, oppressive tribe of them all, and the greed and avarice that it had come to symbolize. It was about justice for the common man and his kin.

And for that reason, battles had always been a family affair. Villagers came in companies from far and wide, to take respite in the lush green field and witness the dance of the battle. Whether their tribe won or lost, all honored and revered the battle first. Just a few stages earlier, at an opportune break in the action, Kalrin had watched as villagers for both tribes stood up and sang together, of one voice, of one mind, of one accord, a song whose words and tune they had all learned from the elders when they were children; a song that had been passed down from the ancestors generation after generation, even if most did not know its origins. All sang with heartrending nostalgia of being taken out to the battlefield, of never coming home. Kalrin had always admired the brief but profound sense of peace and oneness that the song evoked in the crowd. It was sung ceremoniously before the end of every single battle, without fail.

Yes, the battle was much more than just a battle, and the rituals much more than superstition or entertainment.

And here, tonight, Kalrin found himself in the exact situation he had dreamed of ever since he was a child in Ycnic. The final battle of the season. The final outing of the battle. The final chance to bring his brothers home and claim victory.

These thoughts and others all flashed through his mind within seconds as he danced, but he maintained an awesome sense of calm, steadiness, and awareness. He pointed the staff at Virera, who stared at him from beneath the brim of his hat for an extra couple of moments that felt like a lifetime. Once again he kicked his leg up, stomped on the ground, and hurled a fireball. 

In a split-second, Kalrin decided that this was the one, and keeping his eye on it, swung the staff with all his might. At the last second, and seemingly defying the odds of physics, the glowing white orb suddenly sank beneath his staff. 

Kalrin cursed for having let himself be deceived. Virera’s magic was strong; he should have guessed that such a one was coming.

Last chance. The cheers, hisses, and whistles from the crowd droned in his ears. It defied logic, but somehow, despite the heat and pressure of the moment, Kalrin felt a buzzing in his head, a warmth in his chest and abdomen, and a profound sense of peace in his soul. He took a few extra steps in his dance as he stepped back into the box and faced Virera. As he eyed the bearded mage shaking his head with his eyes barely showing, something happened. He suddenly understood the spell that was to come. He could not have possibly explained it, but he knew. He gripped and ungripped his staff, but something told him not to point it. He simply waited for Virera to kick his leg, stomp, and sling what could end up being the last fireball of the season. In the distance, the warriors all crouched and held their breath.

Kalrin lifted his leg and planted it forward as he swung the staff with all his might. Crack!! For a moment the whole colosseum appeared to stand still. Kalrin watched as the ball sailed high above Virera, who anxiously snapped his neck back to watch it. Filled with an incredible surge of excitement, Kalrin began to sprint out onto the field. This was it. This was their chance. He saw his red-clad fellow warriors running, too, jumping almost, necks craned toward the ball that was still soaring through the air as Kalrin reached the first haven. 

Could it be? The stuff from the myths of old?

As the ball reached its crest and began falling, the warrior in the center of the field was sprinting backward toward the wall that divided him and the rest of the warriors from the villagers. Desperately, but with laser focus, he tracked the ball, knowing that the unexpected had just occurred, that the battle may have just turned completely, and that it was up to him and only him to stop the ball from clearing that wall into the crowd of villagers, where it would never be found. The rules had always dictated that any ball that goes over the wall counts as a homecoming for the warrior who hit it and all of his tribe’s warriors on the field. He streaked back, felt himself approaching the wall, took two steps up the wall and stretched his gauntlet up as far as was humanly possible. But the ball sailed just over his reach.

As Kalrin began to register what was happening, he did not even try to contain his joy and excitement. If there were ever a time where it was permissible for a warrior to show emotion, this was it. His arms shot up as he rounded the first haven and touched the bag, catching a glimpse of Virera, head down, walking off the field and back to his cave. The red villagers of Ycnic were beside themselves in jubilation. It was all over, and no one could prevent that, but the rituals still dictated that he had to circle the entire field, touching every base, before returning home. As he rounded the third base and headed for home, he saw pure and utter ecstasy in the faces of the three brothers he had safely sent back home, as well as everyone else from the tribe who had stormed out from the cave and the wolf den to greet him.

He would go down in history and fame, but he was not thinking about that now. He was not thinking at all. His heart, body, and soul were all unflinchingly headed toward the embrace that awaited him as soon as he made it home.

The villagers in the surrounding cottages and taverns of the village of Ycnic, hardened by all the seasons of drought and scarcity, wept tears of joy as they heard a familiar voice booming through the loudspeakers: And this one belongs to the Reds!

Welcoming the scary new world

We're kidding ourselves if we think 2020 was just a fluke of a shitty year. One month into 2021 and we're not anywhere close to being out of the mess we're in. A worldwide pandemic that is exacerbating the already existing racial injustice and economic inequality. Climate change ravaging the planet, displacing more people every year. Homelessness and food insecurity on the rise. I don't need to go into the details for you; those who have ears have already heard.

It's no longer 2020; it's the 2020s. Things are going to get worse before they get better. And there is no going back to normal.

This is scary, and we are all already struggling, in some way, with the loss that this has brought about. This is real, and hard, devastating, and there's no way I could ever try to minimize it. 

But every loss also comes with opportunity. Every period of chaos and disorder is eventually followed by a period of reordering. If we can get our priorities straight, what emerges from this will be substantially better than what we had before. 

"Normal" was never good, certainly not the best we can do, for the vast majority of people. Those at the bottom know that inherently; sometimes the folks more in the middle have just enough to believe they're making out just fine. But even people like me working in relatively well-paying, middle-class jobs would benefit from the wide-scale reordering of society that needs to occur. Consider: even before the pandemic, I still had zero control over my working environment; I still had to work way over my contractual hours to feel remotely competent (always a struggle as a teacher with 150 students on the caseload); I still felt disrespected and exploited by the powers that be on a regular basis; I still had my hands tied because losing my job would mean immediately losing benefits, and shortly afterward the ability to pay my mortgage and student loans. Yes, I lived in relative comfort and privilege--but still didn't have the freedom to fully cater to my and my community's well-being and pursue my potential as a human being. Sound familiar to anyone? Most of us put our heads down and trudge through it silently, knowing that we have it better than many, and fearful of a culture that slams anyone with the audacity to envision a life free of exploitation as being lazy and entitled.

Now is the time for radical change in the way we do society. We're already seeing massive shake-ups in our institutions, and I think this is only the beginning. School is being revolutionized in ways we can't even yet imagine. Protests the likes of which we've never seen before erupted last summer, and best believe they will return. Social media, as problematic as it is and will continue to be as long as it is owned by for-profit companies manipulating our decisions and selling our data (watch The Social Dilemma on netflix if you haven't already), has radically democratized media and the way we share information. I was just watching a local radio show the other day on facebook and impressed at how an ordinary person with talent can get a message across throughout the city, without the need for massive amounts of capital to get something started. The GameStop episode is another hilarious example of the old-guard losing its power due to some collective action on the part of everyday people. More examples abound.

My point is to say that we have to start reimagining our world. We can't be deluded with naïve plans to go back to a sense of normalcy that was only truly wholesome for a tiny minority, if that. New ideas, new possibilities. Young folks can't allow themselves to be held hostage to outdated hierarchies and expectations; it's up to us to bust those up and pursue something better.

I'm excited.