I am making contact with you now from the future, buzzing into meet you in your present, from the future. But that’s not really how it sounds out here. It’s not Star Wars, Star Trek, high tech. I’m just touching on how you currently imagine the future. In reality we have a softer way, as we long ago moved way beyond the seeming need for machines to intervene, to go-between. Way out here in the future 77 years from your now, where it’s what you might call year 2100 AD, we've finally accepted our other senses, and honed them.
Thank you for joining me from the “past” to celebrate my 127th birthday with me! Some of the young folks here in the “future” are asking what it was like before. You know because you’re still in it, so please bear with me while I fill them in…
I’m so delighted you’ve asked me about my journey to reach this age and this time. It is a wild story in deed!
Relative to you in 2023, those of us here in 2100 have evolved into super creatures - not from implants and AI downloads, uploads what have you, but from direct transmission. From going seemingly backwards, way back to Clan of the Cave Bear styles where we read one another, we listen with such attuned antennae that fewer words are needed. But to bring this story to you in a way you could understand, I’ve had to translate from the energetics that we operate on now, through gestures, and then more grossly into words and media. For, you still require affirmation of your own budding, nascent 6th, 7th, and beyond senses. The technology you have now is but training wheels to get you here. Once you get across the river you’ll no longer need the boat.
The world we so enjoy now is one where no one can possibly lie, because everyone can read everyone. No words are needed. No external images are needed. Communication is direct energy exchange. Far more skill-full than our rough ways way back when. No offense :) I lived then too, so I know the dark difficult complications you’re living through.
From this place of peace and prosperity, can you believe that we grew up in a world where we killed other living beings? We regularly took the lives of others. We called it roadkill if we killed them with our vehicles. We called it pork, beef, paté if we killed pigs, cows, ducks for food. We called them predators if they were more clawed, toothed, and fierce than we were, and killed them for that. We called them wrong if they were human. Can you believe we nearly killed them all off, and ourselves in the mix, because we couldn't see how vital it was that we all live together?
As a child 120 earth years ago, I grew up with a riotous chorus of frogs, crickets, and locusts as backdrop to my firefly collecting. Whole fields of fireflys lit up the night skies that bats swooped through. In daylight, bees buzzed busily up and down the day lilies. By the time I had made 50 rounds around the sun, where you are now in 2023, we had wiped out about 45% of the insect populations, by attempting to grow foods with fertilizers and pesticides that laced the pollinators and other flying ones with poison.
When I was little, plastic was too. Yogurt still came in waxed cardboard cups and trash bins had no liners. In my 50th round around the sun, where you are now in 2023, a new disease was named in birds - plasticosis, death by plastics - and 80% of humans tested had microplastics in their blood. Can you believe, in our race for comfort, in our greed for ease, that we nearly killed ourselves? We did in fact kill 107 species in those first 50 years of my long life - more than 2 entire species died for each year I survived. Never to be seen again.
Can you believe we thought safety was suffocation? We thought covering everything in plastic would keep us safe from germs and make food safe for consumption. Consumption, something we did so much of that we consumed the very thing that was meant to keep us safe--the plastic itself.
It may be hard for those of you who are young here in the future to imagine, since you didn’t live through what I lived through. But the world wasn't all ways as alive as it is today in 2100AD, now that I'm in my 127th rotation around the sun. Our air is so pure that we all breathe easily. Yet when I was younger I was allergic to so many things that man had made, I literally could not breathe and had to retrain myself. We take it for granted now - this clear, fragrant air so full of vibrant, buzzing, pollinating life!
Ah, so you want to know how we changed? How we salvaged the remains of what we had desecrated? How we resurrected life from under the plastic shields? Well, finally, we grew up a little and remembered to show up kicking at the door of our host planet because our hands were too full of offerings of gratitude to be able to knock. We got back to the earth and went deeper into relation with her by moving up above her a bit, giving her room to breathe without the impact of pestilential people.
We tackled ground pollution with networks of mushrooms! We tackled water pollution with fine nets that sieved out all the islands of plastic refuse but left the fish and other creatures free to be, once more, at home in their own sea. We moved our food up vertically so the land could regrow its wild self, so the animals could rewild themselves without our wide swathes of poison-laden mono-cropping. We tackled air pollution by moving our vehicles into the air and powering them without extracting further from the belly of our planet. Even the farts from our airpods gave back to the atmosphere.
We applied our prodigious and profligate minds to life over death. Simple really. And so easy to see from this vantage point on the other side. But way back then, in the darkness where you are now, in the final hour when too many were choosing to add direness to the dilemma, what inspired us was sometimes light, sometimes goodness, and sometimes innovation. Although initially occasional, the seeds of seeing differently took hold anyway. And, like the imaginal cells of the soupified caterpillar, they valliantly vibrated until the surrounding, initially-resistant cells couldn't help but join in. Eventually the butterfly was formed. But it still hadn't emerged or flown. We still didn't know what we were or what we might be.
The most amazing unexpected part of building a bridge to this new world was that within the darkness, literally within the 95% dark matter and dark space of existence that our 5 trusty physical senses could not reach, lay all the abilities and answers we needed. We nearly didn’t trust enough to uncover what was needed and what was all ways there. We nearly remained in the dark ages.
I'm proud to say I come from a people who, many centuries ago, in a battle that seemed to be all but lost, arrived late to the cause. They became convinced of the cause late in the day but because they were fresh, they saved the day. They made a new world possible for their people. “Late, but in earnest”, became their motto. I was raised and bred with role models that showed me it's never too late. They married into the “Fierce when Roused” clan and together lived the motto to “Never, never, never, never give up.” Other, even more ancient, ancestors of mine survived the genocidal tactics that tried to extinguish them in the name of progress. These relations all ways whispered in my ears and twisted my hair, to make me know that Life trumps all. They are still standing. In fact, we are still dancing, singing, and sharing the celebration that skillful interdependence is the only sane interspecies politics.
What we had to do to build a bridge to this new world was believe in a science of kinship, a business of relations, a paradigm of impossible-to-escape interconnectivity, a plan of unity. Part of our pollution was noise. We couldn't hear the wisest beings who speak in wingéd patterns or the cleverest ones who swim in purest waters because we had polluted the waters with deafening defense-system sonar. We had to stop protecting imaginary, self-created borders and boundaries in order to preserve what was left so we could prevail at all. As you there in 2023 know, our latest religion at that time, was/is Science. What you don’t know yet is that Science saved us. By learning the languages of the water, air, earth and fire, the brilliant intelligence of the critters with two, four, eight and no legs, and the perceptions of the plant beings, we dared to love them. Logic led to love.
I'd like to say we were wise and saw it all coming and shifted gears quickly and cleverly, but no. You know. We were slow. We almost let it all go. Our arrogance nearly won the day. We had to be lain low in order to learn the languages of the earthworm, the platypus, the mycellium, and so many more.
You know it wasn't all ways this easy, and it's key that we remember that here in the “future”. But it wasn't all ways so hard, as it is for you now in 2023, either. I want you to know what got me through and over that threshold…
By being brave enough to grieve those lost in the wars of capitalism.
By facing up to the crimes we committed and our deep denial of the death toll we wrought with our greed
And yet also by not losing sight of what’s possible, I learned once again to love and to
Trust the Longer Journey.
Others did too. We owned up to having put so many living beings in the bin and in so doing we gave a more proper burial to the Tasmanian Thylacine, the Japanese Otter, the Green Blossom, the Little Earth Hutia, the Mexican Grizzly Bear, the Phantom Shiner, the Mason River Myrtle, the Saudi Gazelle, the Oahu Treesnail, the Pinta Island Tortoise, the South Island Kōkako, and the Western Black Rhinoceros. To name, honor and grieve just a few of our fallen comrades.
Listen,
Shame was our saving grace.
Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved the rest of us
We once were lost, but now we’re found
Were blind but now we see the beauty.
'Twas shame that taught our souls to revere
And grieving our fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour we first believed.
Through many dangers, toils, and snares
We have already come
This grace that brought us safe thus far
And grace will lead us home.
When we've been here ten thousand years
Bright, shining as the sun
We've no less days to sing our planet’s praise
Than when we first begun.
Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretched world like ours
We once were lost, but now we’re found
Were blind but now we see the beauty.
Take heart dear ones.
Please note: I offer great gratitude to Leah Lamb and her School for Sacred Storytelling for the Vision Story course that this was drafted to deliver.
I have yet to embody it in improvisational spoken form as my first language is writing. In order to know my own mind and integrate the world, I write. And because of my early childhood hearing loss I hear visually. I read the spoken words of others like subtitles to the live action of my life. So speaking is my second language.
Dog is my first! Or critter and child generally. The unspoken yet clear communications of pure energy exchange come most readily to me and all else is a translation to or from the energy expression. Thank you for reading and listening.
In each moment we’re visioning-into-being the world we desire.
Lovely! I especially like that you wove shame into this vision of the future, a bold move that gives shame a place with more positive motions. And your singing and reworking of amazing grace fits roundly at the end.