If you follow the Occupy Movement on Facebook at all you may have discovered, as I have, that postings about the earlier, massive encampments, marches and police actions nearly always degenerated into proclamations of love. Hundreds of comments dripped down from the main posting, like charms on a bracelet, and next to each of those tiny profile portraits that simple word - love.
I'll admit, I lost patience with it after a while. Love? LOVE? L.O.V.E.? Um? What? Did you say love? This is an action! This is a movement, for goodness sake! This is a revolution! And all you people have to say is love?!?
On Saturday, I went to a symposium titled "Awakening the Dreamer: Changing the Dream," here in Amesbury, MA. The program is designed by The Pachamama Alliance, which I hadn't realized in advance, though I had heard of Pachamama and have read co-founder Lynn Twist's book The Soul of Money. It was there that I learned that these great outcries of love are indeed entirely appropriate and reach to the core of what motivates those of us who are in mourning for our planet.
While I appreciate that Occupy is not necessarily an environmental movement, I believe that the movement's aim to address issues of social justice are intrinsically connected to concerns about the future of the planet. It turns out I'm not alone in that belief. The purpose of the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium, which, in their own words, is "galvanizing people around the world to wake up to the trance they are living in," is to bring about a human presence on Earth that is environmentally sustainable, socially just, and spiritually fulfilling. That's a tall order.
A few nights earlier, I had had a slightly heated online discussion with some old college friends about the notion of "waking up." I have taken on, wholeheartedly, the idea that "Americans need to wake up" and had posted something to that affect. I learned from my friends (and later from my husband) that the words "wake up" are perceived of as patronizing and insulting in the same way that the word 'love" has somehow become hollow and childish. I suppose because both tap at and reach into our innermost vulnerabilities and, for the most part, we've got that all cordoned off behind warning signs and strips of yellow tape. So, if you really want to freak someone out, you can start talking to them about love and how they need to wake up. And if you want to push them entirely over the edge, you can press them on the topic of spirituality.
So, how is it that I left that symposium entirely convinced that love is not only the answer but also the question when addressing our most pressing problems? At the symposium, they gave us lots of disturbing facts and figures about poverty and resource depletion and species extinction. Facts that are well worth knowing and maybe I'll go into them someday. But if you're like me, your televisions and email programs and computer screens are awash in terribly sad images of all those things and, like me, you have probably developed an immunity to them. So, let me try to explain it like this.
Last night, I was sitting with my daughter and that 7-year-old son I mentioned earlier and his friend. We were admiring pictures of the teacup pig. If you haven't seen one you should Google it. They really are quite cute. All three children, their eyes bright with adoration and excitement, were jumping up and down and giggling and laughing at the little teacup pigs. Then my son, his whole body pleading and yearning, turned to me and declared, "Oh Mom, if I could have another pet, I would really love to have him!" And he pointed to a little pig, a diminutive Wilbur with soft white hair and a pink nose and a sort of smile. What if, in that moment, I had to say to him, "I'm sorry, he is really cute, but those pigs are extinct, um, well, I mean, they're all dead."
If you're feeling a little pang right now, it's okay, because that pain you might be feeling, that's love. And when we live from that place -- connected to the people we love, on the Earth that we love -- we know that we don't want to lose it.
You can find out more about The Pachamama Alliance and Awakening the Dreamer at www.pachamama.org or www.awakeningthedreamer.org.
That's some fine writing, Janine. I'm looking forward to more. Thanks for doing this!
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