Yeah, yeah, just the sort of question to expect from your ordinary depressive who, 60 years ago, started being stunned by our inhumanity to each other at all levels. And YES, there have been some amazing efforts by many to bring forth a world of justice, equity, peace, wisdom, and sustainability BUT...
I mean, if taking incarnation here was something you did after reading a job recruitment ad that said in big print: Openings for more humans. We need folks to take the audacious journey of being a human, finding ways of enjoying life, making a living, and working alongside (and at a distance) with all sorts of people. Why not come and do your part to help everything work out for everybody. Earth needs you now.* --- You'd want to know what the small print (after the asterisk) said. E.g., if it indicated how many found themselves on "Burn Out" paths, or worse, having leapt at the opportunity to come. Or it confessed that the slots for attractive extroverted folks with trust funds who were on the inside track to enlightenment or sainthood were only available on a lottery basis... etc.
So what has been (over the last 20 years) quietly unfolding in my experience even as I perceive a world full of terrible events, soulless systems, unhappy personal driveness?
What moving in me keeps quietly and simply saying "Yes" to being here. Day by day. Moment to moment. Something like this:
Some 17 years ago, after a meeting for worship, an elderly Quaker couple shared a bit about the several years they spent with the Bruderhof in the '80s. -- Bruderhof communities do most things in work crews such as Maintenance, Childcare, Farming, etc. and the man highlighted a time when he was really not at ease with how things were going in his work crew.
It sounded like he struggled even to the point of considering leaving the community... but within a day or two, one of the elders came to him and said, as I recall:
"Friend, I see things are not right between us. But the reason we are here is to delight in each other... So now our job is to find a way to restore our mutual delight."
Full Stop...
What if we are here to delight in each other? What if that's the design?
Yes, I will have more to say about how the word "delight" for me points to something available through every day, and provides moments of sharing, and recognition of our shared humanity - for me, for us. But that's later, for now:
What if we are here to delight in each other? What if that's the design?
What if all the rest of my life, our life, can be built from that foundation. Moment to moment. Day by day.
Full Stop...
Breathe...
Lean on something, look out a window, be confused, breathe...
Peter B
_________
To be added later....
Tendentious footnotes:
How this touches the 3 Principles of Innate Health...
How this touches the neuropsychology of human experience...