Today caps another week of global extreme heat. Warnings, news, and interpretations of the sustained heat now saturate the internet. As in the early weeks of the Pandemic, people across the globe are struggling to process new danger and come to grips with changing realities. Although the issue of climate change is far from new, a growing awareness of the seriousness of extended extreme heat cracks the shell of denial. For many, rising temperatures are met with rising fear. While fear is a natural reaction to threat and in it's own way protective, it is essential to move beyond fear to discover what is required of us to not just survive, but thrive. This heat wave will pass; the impact will linger. Life, as we have collectively experienced it, is shifting.
In the early phases of the pandemic, there was confusion and fear, rapidly followed by all sorts of theories and conflicting strategies. Group identifications spawned conspiracies, as well as anger and denial, looking for someone (including opposing forces) to blame. While pandemics had existed historically, the Covid-19 virus was an extraordinary threat--unknown, deadly, and confounding. Today, we have powerful vaccines, effective medication and treatment protocols. Unquestionably, the solutions that emerged involved global effort and massive scientific exchange, along with the heroic efforts of key essential workers that sustained social order and care during lock-downs of the world's great cities. Those scientific discoveries, made in response to this initially baffling virus, have now initiated new healing possibilities and treatments in other diseases as well.
My point here is that while we (once again) face a vast range of ideas, opinions, and predictions, there is much about the dramatically changing weather that is unknown. Yes, compared to the arrival of Covid-19, there is already a degree of accumulated scientific climate research and data, and yes, there are technologies that are being developed, and policies that are being drafted. But it is wise, and I think essential, to realize that as we struggle to adapt, we are actually struggling with the unknown and emerging new norms, yet to be established. Together, globally, we are reaching to bring forth the new.
Spirituality itself at its deepest core is a plunge into the unknown. It is this willingness to enter the unknown that takes us beyond the dead past of a prescribed path to a living discovery that is Now. Life's patterns shift and we with them. That is what living is. (Susan Nettleton).
For poetry and the unknown process:
https://poetry-chaikhana.com/.../PoemWaitsat/index.html