Capable of miracles

Even a short stay in the kingdom of Monsea puts you at the risk of being in the range of King Leck’s lies—and you don’t have to hear his voice for the lies to take hold in your mind. Contact with someone exposed to him, or even someone exposed to someone else who had contact with him, could affect your sanity—your ability to discern, question, and resist. The lies spread insidiously and virally, and soon, we are all in a state of trance, unable to see things for what they are. We ignore the small animals mysteriously injured and unable to heal. We ignore the indigenous communities, farmers, fishermen, workers, and homeless displaced, forced to migrate, impoverished, criminalized in the name of development. We ignore the deaths and beatings, the abuse and the institutional disrespect. We ignore communities living in fear and mistrust. We ignore the polluted waters and the disappearing species. We ignore the floods and the landslides. We ignore the signs, and we stop hearing and seeing everything that does not fit into the narrative that Leck wants us to hold.

It is easy to want to believe in the goodness and rightness of Leck’s story. For who really wants to hurt others? Who really wants their lives to be built on a foundation of lies?

We want to believe in love and goodness and honesty and fairness and equality—that there is compassion and soft landings and courage and joy and vitality and tenderness in the world. For this is who we are. Deep down inside, this is what matters to us. 

Perhaps this is why, in spite of the trance, it could be that we have slipped back into remembrance, across the always fuzzy borders of stories and consciousness—perhaps someone we love (the earth, ancestors, goddess) has been hurt or is in danger and that has jolted us back to wakefulness—to being able to see beyond Leck’s stories, and the pain in our heart is tremendous. How could we have allowed ourselves to be duped—to be taken over by the lies, illusion, trance—so utterly? What happened to everything that we have held dear about ourselves: our values of love, justice, truth, fairness, mutual respect, empathy, and grace? What happened to who we believe ourselves to be deep down inside—good people, good citizens, courageous humans? 

And what can we do now? What can we do to make sure that we are not pulled back and made instruments of a socio-economic-imaginal-moral order so completely unmitigated and vicious that it sees humans (and, indeed, all of nature) merely as chess pieces to be moved around and—in the name of ‘progress’ and ‘development’—kicked off the board? What can we do to ensure that those we love and care about (all of humanity, all of the earth, all of the cosmos) stay safe, cherished, thriving?

It is clear that those of us who can must continue to remember and speak the new story, birth it into existence, foster its interconnections. We must keep singing the sacred songs and trust that other voices will join us, that someone will hear us across the mountain and be moved or comforted, or lit up or ripped ablaze.

This conviction must be held in the face of all odds. 

It must be held in the face of all doubt, all uncertainty, all fear, because possibilities open up when we are able to stare the impossible in its face. As Marianne Williamson says, “miracles are summoned by conviction. Conviction can be seen as an attitudinal muscle that gives us strength to see beyond appearances and invoke the possibilities that lie there.”

Let us invoke the possibilities.

And one day, the newold story of love—as too the wings of our collective conviction—will become so sturdy, so strong, that together we will be able to lift the hunter’s trap-net with our courage, our love, and fly.