Dear friends ~ “This isn't the world I want to live in." The thought echoes in my mind as I close the news app, the messaging app, the email app. My lungs wrestle down a gasp of humid Appalachia air in response to the endless feed of Apocalypse I just conjured with thumb swipes across a screen.
No, not Apocalypse. They are, in fact, creation stories. What else to call it when a group of people assesses the world and says, “We want it to look different than this," and then imagines a new paradigm into existence? From idea...to fruition. Creation.
I'm reminded of a scene in the musical Hadestown. A crowd of revelers, relieved that Persephone has emerged from the underground after a far-too long winter, begs a modernized version of Orpheus for a toast. He is a poet, after all — his very words potent enough to change the hearts of humans and gods. Everything goes silent. Then shy Orpheus gazes into the audience, inviting the entire theater into his benediction: “To the world we dream about... and the one we live in now."
The world we live in now crumbles and rebuilds endlessly. Each new day is a question: What kind of world do we want? And each motion, conversation, or choice we make answers that question tactilely. If the human imagination invented scarcity, extraction, and the silencing of voices, what's to stop us from imagining a paradigm where none of those things have sway?
Last summer, during July's heatwave and drought, a voice began to tell me a story about how God dreamed rest, companionship, and nature's balance into being. That creation story came to me as a gift (one I'm sharing with you here) with an empowering message: it could be different than this. May we all have the courage to imagine new possibilities. ~ Joy
EARTH teach me stillness
As the grasses are stilled with light.
EARTH teach me suffering
As old stones suffer with memory.
EARTH teach me humility
As blossoms are humble with beginning.
EARTH teach me caring
As the mother who secures her young.
EARTH teach me courage
As the tree which stands all alone.
EARTH teach me limitation
As the ant who crawls on the ground.
EARTH teach me freedom
As the eagle who soars in the sky.
EARTH teach me resignation
As the leaves which die in the fall.
EARTH teach me regeneration
As the seed which rises in spring.
EARTH teach me to forget myself
As melted snow forgets its life.
EARTH teach me to remember kindness
As dry fields weep with rain.