Our world is changing forever. At
least, the length of time that it will be different from anything
we've ever known is so much longer than civil history that we might
as well call it forever.
That is enough reason by itself to
warrant walking many miles; why not do a ritual that testifies to the
colossal transformation that is engulfing us? Climate change is
perhaps as near to seeing the overt power of creation, across all its
scales, as we will ever witness. Who would not walk a thousand miles
to see the face of god?
Yet, it is becoming clear that many of
you are confused why we are walking at all. We are frequently
fielding comments that question what walking has to do with raising
awareness of anything, and how we will manage it and keep our home
life intact. Others assume that no one else will care if we walk,
that it is a waste of our time, that we must be doing it because
there is a fatal flaw with our living situation as it is.
Of course, there is a fatal flaw with
our living situation – that is, with almost everyone's way
of life. Where the trouble starts is in our minds; people are
challenged to know how to abandon our crippled lives and step out on
the road, as challenged as if we instructed you to start living in
five dimensions instead of three.
We have a Waiting for Godot society
here on much of Earth, where the daily habits of our lives, our
chores and responsibilities and entertainments, loom like outsize
fetishes because we've been priced out of the larger rhythms,
participating in the true freedom of our lives is beyond our
pay-grade to understand; and, if courage won't take our hand and show
us the way to save ourselves, then lives stage-managed by corporate
design teams and focus groups will have to do.
This
passive society dies on the altar of change, just the same. For a
while, authority figures get to ply the “Silent Treatment,”
choosing non-reponse as the most expedient way to clear the board of
protest, resistance, debate. Big Business, working with government,
has stripped away the inconvenience of having to give mind to the conscientious law-breakers who demand attention. But, they are
multiplying their wealth under the shadow of the biggest
inconvenience of all, forgetting that they too are naked to the
larger scale of change.
Unfortunately,
when we confront the aggression of our lifestyle with non-violent
protest, we are reinforcing the Waiting for Godot society,
because a key principle that underlies non-violent action is “Good
things come to those who wait.” With
patience, we believe that we can reflect the dignity and justice of
our position.
Last
night, I had a dream which wove all these threads together. Like the
TV commercial of a couple decades ago, I saw climate activists
inverting a ketchup bottle, and waiting for the contents to slide
out. But when I look closer at what's in the bottle, I see it is not
ketchup after all, but glaciers the size of Manhattan that are
collapsing, spoiling into nothing. When it comes to climate change,
very bad things come to those who wait.
Given
the pressing advance of climate change, and given that our world is
changing forever, this is not
the time to resist greed with non-violent action. We haven't the
time, the profiteers of the Waiting for Godot world
haven't the listening, the physics of the world is not sentimental.
A
better model for bringing the needed remedy to our crisis is Aikido.
Aikido is a Japanese martial art whose guiding principle is the use
of force to bring one's adversary into parallel viewpoint with your
own. In other words, an Aikido student does not attack an opponent to
cut them down; every action, every move is employed to redirect the
opponent's energy into bring them into common ground with yourself.
There are thousands of actions that involve violence to the machine
of suicide that is driving our society which can be carried out with
the Aikido principle of love and respect for our opponent.
Our
walking campaign can be understood as an aikido action better than as
an action of non-violent resistance – it will make more sense that
way. We are doing violence to our own participation in the Waiting
for Godot world, we are
dismantling our own fetishized habits and assumptions. We are doing this publicly and on the road. We will go as far as we have to, until our
own silent treatment and disregard of the planet is devastated, and
we can hear the voice of creation again. It will tell us the next
step to take.
