The Human Disease
In Thor's mailbox this morning, a sad reminder:
On this day in 1890 federal troops killed 300 Lakota men, women, and children in the massacre at Wounded Knee.
And in the evening of 1940 during World War II, German forces began firebombing the city of London. Over a third of the city was destroyed on the 114th air raid in what became known as “the Blitz” which began in September of 1940 and did not end until May of 1941. Britain never surrendered, a fact which led to Hitler’s turn toward Russia. Those two events, despite the human slaughter, ended Hitler’s and Germany’s venture into mental illness.
The mental illness that brought these events into our historical experience has been responsible for a list of narratives too long to fit in a university library. Thankfully, a “new” story of the universe and the human role in it has been emerging for some time now.
Connectedness is fundamental to our reality. No matter which sphere of life we observe, from the physical to the spiritual, we are connected to others. . . . Many of the social and ecological problems that confront us today stem from our delusion that we are separate from, better, or more significant than, other members of creation. – Richard Rohr
Thomas Berry has said that our generation is one that is in-between stories. We are caught between the story that religion tells and the story that science tells. . . . During the last several decades, a new story has indeed emerged, a new cosmology that brings matters of science and matters of faith into a space where they no longer need collide, but can complement each other and render a fuller picture of what is true. [If it’s true, it’s true everywhere and all the time.] Ironically, in modern times it is science that has told us the story of how all life is connected in a fundamental way—a story that the world’s mystics have been telling for centuries. – Judy Cannato
All around us things are shifting, systems are collapsing, and institutions are failing. This should not surprise us. Around the world, elders across cultures and peoples were predicting this time would come. . .[We are being pushed] into a divine reckoning about what it means to be in right relationship with one another and all sentient beings. . . The good news is that this time is made for misfits. – Judy Cannato
Cannato's “misfits” include all us marginalized creators, bearing witness to the infinite interconnectedness of all sentients. Our very marginalization has created the possibility of these new visions.