The Revolution

Look at all of us out here, trying to be good people.

We clean up after ourselves.

Pay our taxes.

Shovel the snow and keep the lawn mowed.

Pay our high interest rate credit card bills and mortgages.

Wear our seatbelts.

Uber when we drank too much.

Help our friends move.

Take our vitamins.

Teach our kids to be respectful.

Meanwhile, those who are benefitting the most from all of us upholding this social contract are literally destroying the world with their greed and narrow-sightedness.

We are trying to be good people to make the world work. To keep us safe and give everyone a chance to thrive.

The currency of our cooperation is not guranteeing our safety. In fact, we are careening toward converging crises and the people we look to for help and security don't have the answers or the decency to humble themselves and confront the responsibility they have been given.

Our social contract is broken.

That is the real devastation and despair we feel. That is the real gut level truth that fuels our anti-this and anti-that mindsets.

We know that the bill of goods we have been sold isn't worth its salt and we are looking for someone to blame.

We've held up our end of the bargain and we are still struggling. Our kids are still dying of addictions and violence. Our waters are still polluted. We are still stretching ends to meet.

What gives?

Our anger is justified. The promise of playing the game and getting rewarded is no longer holding it all together.

We are at a crossroads. The odds that we will annihilate ourselves grow higher every day.

How do we turn the tide?

I am trained as a Registered Nurse. We know that the human body cannot heal without a healing environment, and that environment requires its basic needs to be met.

Nourishing food. Clean water. Fresh air. Friendship. Beauty. Leisure. Meaning. Movement.

We know what makes healthy people and healthy ecosystems. And we are not prioritizing those things. We are only measuring our successes based on the growth of financial profit.

This is a sickness, and this mental sickness is destroying our environment, our health, and our children's chance at a future.

The only way we make it through this is by remembering that we are animals first, and these animal bodies have requirements to thrive and those requirements absolutely MUST be our priorities and our measurements for success. Nothing else makes sense. Literally. It doesn't make any sense if you actually want to survive.

Instead of paying our taxes and our interest and just trusting that those in power will make the right choices (they don't), we have to demand that the priorities of this world shift to ones that are in alignment with Life.

How healthy is our soil? How clean are the waterways? How vital and happy are our citizens? How safe are our communities? These measurements should be more important than profits. More important than who is in power. We must remember how to fiercely love our people and our planet and stand together to defend what we love. If we can't do that, our children do not have a viable future.

Joe Biden is part of the machine of destruction. Voting for him will hurt my heart. Four more years of Donald Trump, however, will likely put us past the point of no return.

I will vote for Biden, and I will also do everything that I know how to do to shift our priorities back to the indigenous understanding that we are inseparable from each other and the ecosystems we live within.

You and I were born for these times. We are here to do big work. We are here to steer the Titanic of civilization away from the brink of disaster. And that can only happen through our hearts and through love.

The social contract is broken, and we can write a new one. It's actually quite simple and it has existed since the beginning of time.

If we live in gratitude for nature, and care for it, nature will care for us. That's it. We take care of the earth well, and we restore Eden. People are lifted out of poverty. Beauty is everywhere. Biodiversity offers a robust community of animals and plants to share the earth with. People have a sense of hope and purpose. Our health improves. Our mindset improves. We don't feel despair that drives us to addiction and violence. We have re-entered the web of life in our rightful place, as stewards and partners with the natural world.

It isn't hard, it just requires our focus and collective will. We are capable or turning this huge vessel away from disaster, if only we can agree on a way forward and move together in that way.

This is the deepest prayer of my heart. I can feel all of my ancestors rising up to fuel this dream, this hope. I can feel the land and the waters reaching toward us to seek relationship and to reconcile the rift between us.

We never stopped being a part of the web of life, we just gave away our power and trusted in other humans to tend the web in a way that benefits everyone. That hasn't happened, and now it is up to all of us to make this change.

I truly believe we are capable of this. We must be. Our children depend on us.