In this third phase of relational work, in gifted one-to-ones, we can see more than “the world” of human history, even more than all living organisms —though that would be by itself a huge turn away from our current stance. I’m claiming that we can see in each other our ordered and shimmering creative Universe, our Cosmos, working in and through us as we give and receive each others’ stories, in every local community where we are called to work.
We may discover, in metaphorical terms, the presence of a tender dimension, in the deepest reach of cosmic energy-matter, in every living and inert Creation-event throughout our Universe. That dimension is compassion. Order and newness emerge in every energy event, in every moment-and-place, every here-now. Everything that is, unfolds from this slight but extraordinarily-powerful surplus of creativity over destruction, compassion over indifference. This dimension of tenderness, in the depths of every energy-matter event in the immense flow of cosmic evolution, is always present, and is always gift. But because of our species’ particular structural limits, especially in the I-It quality of our own culture, humans fear this gift; we resist and mistrust it. We fear its healing, because to accept this gift, we must let go of our illusions and addictions. Recovery requires deep change; we love, and cling to the Egypt of our familiar suffering.
Yet in part because we will have communities with organizational cultures of relational power, in the coming tsunami of chaos, we will experience, perhaps, enough basic trust, love, and hope to receive this gift, the originating, ongoing, and re-grounding mystery of creativity, healing and recovery. The gift is focused, healing energy-matter, the source and nurture of power-among and power-within. As well, because we will have done our relational work and helped construct a new generation of leadership development, perhaps we will discern the power of mutual recognition among Person, Local Community, Earth and Cosmos, an ancient but new creation story emerging in our time, a creation story which enhances those of our wisdom traditions. And then we may see, celebrate and embody the immense ocean of creative energy in which Cosmos, Earth, our Local Communities, and each of us breathe, swim, sing and work,
where we do creation justice with our local place and our gorgeous Earth, where our teachers are the living organisms and systems of our local place, of Earth, and their emergence through our cosmic process, where our children lead us by example, in their leaping joy, I-Thouing with all of Creation, and where our elders tell these evolving creation stories and remind our leaders that it’s still true that seven generations are one. |
Glimpsing BiocommonsYou may be saying at this point: Okay, Dick, nice poetry, but what’s it look like on the ground?
Here’s a brief sketch, a glimpse.
It’s not some rigid and hard-ass utopia, nor is it la-la land. It’s a process, an organizing process emerging from IAF’s core practice of relational meetings; but absorbing and integrating the resources we’ve been discussing here: —the three story-systems of our political economy, Earth, and Cosmos; —the I-Thou dimension of experience available to us in all three of those story-systems; —our new glasses, which help us awaken into an evolving 21st century world-view, and which re-sets us within immense new pools of energy and imagination. Through that lens, I claim that it’s possible to see any locale, from our backyard, block or neighborhood, out to city, county or metro area, as an expression of the creative process running through Earth and Cosmos. Universe is in my hand, in this breath, in this tiny spot of soil-covered-with- asphalt where I’m standing, this place of creek water covered with concrete. We can see our immediate watershed, slowed but still struggling to flow under all our paving and building; our airshed, composed of our immediate air, thoroughly polluted but still working, covering our local area; our food-and-soilshed (think of your farmers’ markets). These are nature’s gifts, all local, in every place, now. That may get us to seeing our social inventions differently, as well: What about labor and capital, politics and cuture? But you may find that “shed” only gets you so far. What word instead?
So I’ve put two words together: —bio, standing for life, for Earth’s biosphere, and the immense cosmic process that gave birth to Earth and its living organisms and systems; and —commons, a traditional American word standing for relationality and for equity, as in stake and equality; in late medieval Europe, it carried both social and natural meanings. And then I replaced shed with commons. It’s imperfect for sure, even awkward at points, but what if we imagined local flows of re-organized capital and labor, each as a commons? Or a set of smaller commons— of education, health, transportation? What if we brought both sides of our brains to this process, of grounding each sector of our local economy, politics and culture in the process of Cosmic-Earth creativity, re-integrating society and nature? What if we saw our local communities of faith, labor and education through this lens? What if a new generation of local communities helped to seed and catalyze a new generation of collaborating enterprises: B corporations and employee-owned firms; credit unions investing in those local firms; collaboratively-owned land and affordable housing, perhaps as community land trusts? New forms of both rural and urban agriculture, perhaps based in permaculture practice? What about schools in which Earth’s local living organisms and systems are the curriculum and primary, experience-based pedagogy? Or human health practices based on natural systems? |
Is it possible to see local economy, culture and politics based, no longer on separation from nature, but on our true radical relationality with all of Creation? No longer built with indifference to inequality and imbalance, to unnecessary social and natural destruction; but turning instead to the I-Thou wholeness and grounding available to us when we pay attention?
Is it possible to disengage from the vision-less morass of our current political economy, and to re-engage locally, in the Great Work that Larry Rasmussen has so beautifully called Creationjustice?
There are many names, emerging locally in all parts of the world, for the enormous variety and number of experiments, where people are struggling to create alternative practices, markets and enterprises that build on our true radical relationality. I’ve offered one name here, out of my own experience, to encourage this growing conversation.
In my own imagination, Biocommons is both process and lens, through which we engage and see our local social and natural reality, as an integrated expression of the great creative work of the Cosmic-Earth process.
What matters is not the name, but the act of putting on a new pair of glasses, and opening ourselves through our local communities’ relational work to the I-Thou dimension of all three great story-systems of our time.
Is it possible to disengage from the vision-less morass of our current political economy, and to re-engage locally, in the Great Work that Larry Rasmussen has so beautifully called Creationjustice?
There are many names, emerging locally in all parts of the world, for the enormous variety and number of experiments, where people are struggling to create alternative practices, markets and enterprises that build on our true radical relationality. I’ve offered one name here, out of my own experience, to encourage this growing conversation.
In my own imagination, Biocommons is both process and lens, through which we engage and see our local social and natural reality, as an integrated expression of the great creative work of the Cosmic-Earth process.
What matters is not the name, but the act of putting on a new pair of glasses, and opening ourselves through our local communities’ relational work to the I-Thou dimension of all three great story-systems of our time.