Reflections for Moving Through
The scaffolding to many of my conversations lately has been made of overlapping timelines:
The past 13 months of The Existential Reveal: bearing witness to the worst and the best of Humanity unfold in real time through everyday, live-streamed genocides;
The past 3 years of Leaving My Career: forging a life as an independent Philosopher with the People and wondering how far faith and community will carry and provide;
The past 4 and a half years When the World Stopped for a Pandemic and the Movement for Black Lives: grappling with how COVID still circulates among and within us while billions more dollars fund Cop Cities;
The past 8 years of Stable Chaos through Presidential Politics: grieving the past, present, and future struggles that have only gotten worse as we lose even the collective illusion of democracy and global accountability.
The past 15 years when I Took the Advice and I Kept Following My Heart: somehow still becoming who I am thanks to the wisdom, support, experience, and guidance of mentors, teachers, and friends.
All of this, and I, too, am sitting with the wonder, “what happens next?” and, “when might any of these timelines actually come to an end?”
I don’t know.
When the world is on fire, people of conscience desperately want to know what they can do. I’ve felt profoundly grateful that my path has, so far, been mostly the same — grounded in reflective practices and critical perspectives that generate helpful theories. I still believe that we can transform the conditions of our reality when we better understand ourselves, each other, and our place in the world.
The process of learning is transformative. It can and should change you. I do know that if I didn’t have decades of my own philosophical background shaping me, I would feel significantly more dismayed and disoriented. And if I didn’t have the past few years of deep and intentional space to recommit to my values and practices, I would feel the echoes throughout my body of a crumbling spirit.
But over the past couple weeks, particularly after the most recent election results came in, I’ve been sitting with gratitude for the sensibility others (from many spaces, places, and times across history) have helped me develop, which reminds me that this is not the beginning, nor is it the end.
Thanks to a request from a school to create a virtual reflective space for teachers every day of last week, I had the impetus to put some of what I’ve learned over these years onto pages. This is the stuff that supports me - knowing that humanity is capable of doing what we need to take care of each other, we are not alone, we are part of a collective that has access to so much wisdom, and that the purpose of our choices and actions can be as clear as our commitment to life, liberation, and freedom.
The five pages that became a short series, “Reflections for Moving Through: messages and reminders for staying grounded as the world changes (and you do, too),” are a simple starting place. It’s not exhaustive and it’s not enough, but it’s a loving-little-something that I hope can hold and support you. You can download it for free at my “shop” on buymeacoffee.com/coriwong.