A Time of Healing and Transformation

Is it too late?

This is an updated and extended version of a July 2019 post to The Green Pen. In view of the events of the past six years, one has to wonder if it indeed might be too late for such a national healing. If so, what’s next? Where is the hope?

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The United States of America is bereft. Bereft of our humanity. Bereft of a sense of community. Bereft of a motivating meaning and purpose. Bereft of our very soul.

Moles of Malaise

In a post to The Green Pen in February 2018 following a mass school shooting, I noted that such incidents of violence (and there have been many more of them since, and not just in schools) are but symptoms, along with drug and other addictions, teen suicides, domestic violence, and such, of a more profound malady, an unhappiness in a society founded on the “pursuit of happiness.” And yet our responses have been limited to politically compromised and whitewashed policy tweaks narrowly focused on only one or another of those symptoms – and, of course, to sending thoughts and prayers to grieving victims and families.

For example, what does it say about us, about our culture, to have had a president who, as a palliative for our national trauma, grief, and disorientation following 9/11, could only advise us to go shopping?

It’s like a game of whack-a-mole. Unless we get at where all those moles are popping up from, we will be whacking them down here and there and everywhere for all time.

And we can’t just point our collective finger and blame mental illness, for signs of mental illness can often be considered moles, as well.

So, what is feeding them? What’s keeping them alive and energizing them to multiply?

The moles feed on fodder buried deep within our cultural norms and values, and it will only be through some serious national soul-searching and self-reflection that we will be able to root them out. Cultures are supposed to be the mediums for growing things, for nurturing life. Ours clearly is falling short.

Here is one prescription for getting started on a process of national healing:

First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans…

Sound familiar? President Jimmy Carter uttered these words in an address to the nation 46 years ago, on July 15, 1979. In his famous (or, to some, infamous) “malaise” speech (in which he never actually used the word “malaise”), President Carter went on to say:

…But after listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America…

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities…too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose…

Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation's life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide…

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves.”

These words sound equally apt, perhaps even more so, in today’s national climate, almost half a century later. My wife, daughter, and I watched the speech together on television, as a family. My then-10-year-old daughter Unmi totally got it and was so moved and inspired by his words that she wrote the president a letter, attempting to cheer him up after the press and the pundits raked him over the coals for such a downer of a speech. Still in denial now, and despite the punditry, we could certainly use a good talking to like that today.

It is time to heal. Way past time.

President Carter’s words prescribe a way forward to healing and the choice facing us again (or still) today. Yes, the first step in a national process of healing – literally, “making whole again” – is to “face the truth.” Not for purposes of shame or blame or guilt tripping, or even for the currently popular political passion for accountability, for such would just be perpetuating more of the same “us vs. them” dynamic and thus be inimical to “making whole.” Rather, the aim would be an open, frank, and honest acknowledgement of who we are as a nation, where we’ve come from, and how we’ve gotten to where we are today, with all the grace we’ve enjoyed and the grief we’ve suffered along the way. In a restorative justice sense, such a healing process would be characterized by community caring, listening, taking responsibility, and, where necessary, making appropriate restitution.

Facing the truth of our history – both the grace and the grief – is essential for healing the wounds that have come with it so that we may then follow what President Carter called for: a “path of common purpose and the restoration of American values…that…leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves.”

A Time of Evolutionary Change

We are in a time of profound change at all levels, from the personal to the national to the global. Not just incremental change or tremors, tweaks, and twiddling at the margins but rather epochal, systemic transformations in human consciousness and, as a result, metamorphosis of cultural, social, economic, and political values and structures. It’s as if we are in a chrysalis – and indeed living in interesting times!

The challenge before us is to stay centered in the eye of whatever storm swirls around us, focused on the larger perspective of the evolutionary transformation we are undergoing, and proactively doing our part, in community, to nurture the consciousness of wholeness that is aborning.

Buckminster Fuller famously said: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Thus, we must look beyond merely resisting or protesting or even calling for and supporting this or that policy, presidential decree, judicial nominee, or congressional action. Yes, those actions are important and even essential in the immediate micro situation. In the much more profound macro situation, though, it’s even more important and will have much longer lasting and far-reaching consequences to be projecting, building, and demonstrating the new, more just and life-affirming behaviors and systems that will replace those that are dissolving. As an example, The Next System Project is doing just that, coming up with holistic, systemic, ideas for how we might evolve our human-created systems to be more in alignment with Earth, with Life.

What are the structures that are dissolving in this country? They include attributes of our nation that many if not most Americans have always thought of as bedrocks of what defines the United States of America but are now crumbling – things such as White majority and dominance; Christian majority and dominance; male dominance; the dominance of money, materialism, capitalism, and the nation-state; and the dominance of humanity over other life and Earth as a whole. Actually, also dissolving is the acceptance and use of dominance itself as a form of relationship. For example, “power over” is morphing into “power with” as a preferred way of relating in families, workplaces, communities, and government.

Of course, exercising power-with requires that we trust in one another and in processes that unfold organically and nonlinearly. And that’s very scary to many people. Hence the necessity, throughout the breakdown/breakthrough healing process, of practicing compassion, understanding, non-judgement, and love. A difficult, possibly unimaginable task when looking through the micro lens, but perhaps it makes more sense and is more doable from the macro, evolutionary point of view.

Thus, from that perspective, answering the question posed at the start of the post, we can say that it is not too late. Every ending is a new beginning. There is the hope.