What Are You Doing To Get Ready?

I took a class from Thorn Coyle this Fall and it SUCKED. She sat on her ass and did no teaching at all. She let a couple of folks who love the sound of their own voice (with little justification, trust me) talk, and talk, and talk. I mean, if I take two evenings out of my life to take a class from Thorn Coyle, who presumably spent all the time that I spent in law school learning from Victor and Cora Anderson and thinking about Pearl Pentacle concepts while I was learning to write briefs, I'd like to hear what Thorn has to say, at least before she starts in with the Socratic method crap that I hated wasting my time and money on in law school. I talked to a friend of mine who's taken Thorn's intensive Faerie training and she said, "Well, Thorn's bright, but she's an uneven teacher." No duh.

And, yet, there are times when Thorn hits it all the way out of the ballpark. I think that her post from today deserves to be repeated every day, all year long, throughout 2007:

I went to the market, to realize my soul. What I need, I just don't have... - the Clash

What is your capacity during crisis? What is your capacity during sustained crisis? Do you rally, do you push forward, do you organize, do you grow numb, does depression grip you, do you escape into the brightness of fantasy?

I'm asking because I've been trying to think of ways in which we need to prepare. In the midst of the glories of life and all the things I am truly grateful for, there is a persistent current of impending doom. It could be that I listened to too much Shriekback, Crass, UB40, and Sisters of Mercy as a young lass, or it could be that all my psychic friends keep having ominous visions. My Traditional Jewish Christmas of Chinese food and a movie didn't help, either, because the movie was "Children of Men." No, I'm not Jewish, just culturally omnivorous, and the pan-fried string beans were very tasty, thank you.

See, in case you haven't noticed, the US is creeping further and further toward fascism and inching ever (possibly - I'm no economist) closer to complete economic collapse. The current trade deficit of 4.5 trillion dollars, coupled with the rising appeal of the Euro as a new trade standard, coupled with the fact that the US is dependent on cheap goods made abroad (by workers who probably aren't too happy about their conditions) coupled with the fact that foreign countries who have been happy to buy US debt are getting tired of it... Coupled with the visions of gloom by my personal Psychic Friends Network and from most economists... Coupled with a soupcon of global warming (so long, Ayles Ice Shelf)...

I just want to make sure we are prepared. Hopefully the doom won't come to pass and we all will be able to only focus on the things that make us feel happy, wealthy, hopeful, and in love. But if times harsher than these are in order, at least we will be strong. And heck, how bad is being strong in any case? Strong people make better lovers.

And yes, in the larger scheme of things - say five billion years - none of this may matter. But I am part of a non-transcendent religion, and I like living in this material plane very much and don't want to see things further messed up than they already are. And the polar bears likely agree. Now, I'm preaching in this forum to a lot of "alternative culture" people who are already doing most everything they can to live closer to some anarchist ideal, but the words still need saying sometimes.

So: How are you in a crisis? What are you doing to get stronger? Are you doing more yoga? Lifting more weights? Are you looking at your propensity to explode or to hide? Are you figuring out how to bolster your alternative communities into more viable networks of support? Are you learning to govern yourself? Learning to garden? Buying less? Re-using more? Are you learning not to always place the blame on other people? Are you telling your friends how much you appreciate them? Are you crying when you need to and laughing when you wish? Stopping to smell the flowers? Are you spreading beauty as far and wide as possible? Pick two from this random list, or add two of your own. But do them. Two of them. At least.

Doom only spells doom if we let it. We should throw parties in the coming year and go dancing. We should also sit longer spells in meditation and at our altars. We should make it into a wild space at least once, and support those who are defending the last of our wild spaces. We should feed strangers. We should get as physically and mentally healthy as we can.

Have what you need and need what you have. A cold wind may blow, but we can keep each other warm.

Kisses - Thorn

I am part of a non-transcendent religion, and I like living in this material plane very much and don't want to see things further messed up than they already are. And the polar bears likely agree.

I tried, badly, to express this point a month or so ago in comments at Eschaton. I don't care that the Earth, in some different form and likely with less life, may still be here billions of years from now. I care that the salmon are dying today due to damns, and that the nature spirits (fairies) who live in trees are dying at an alarming rate, and that humans have entire industries devoted to sucking up energy to produce things designed specifically to be used once and then thrown away. I care about the real worms who live right now in my back yard and the black squirrels and grey squirrel who are right now engaged in a fight for territory in the oak forest where I live. I care about the arisaema that I planted last spring in my woodland garden. I care about the real water in the real Potomac River that looks pink some mornings and brassy green some mornings and misty grey on other mornings. I care about the climate that my grandson will live in 50 years from now, when he's just the age that I am now.

What are you doing to get stronger?

Thorn's question is one that all of us must ask ourselves. Now, at the end of one year and the beginning of another is as good a time as any. We can see, right now, that we're heading for choppy water. What are you doing to get ready? Turn off the tv; its only purpose is to drug you too long for you to veer off the road to extinction. Turn it off and do what you need to do to get stronger.