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| Machynlleth in lockdown |
Five years ago, I had a kind of five-year plan, a dream of
what I wanted to seed as an artist committed to ‘the art of living’. Since that
time, I’ve been working steadily and emergently towards a sense of what I might
want to be offering in 2020. For me, 2020 was to be the year for a new vision,
for bold action and for ‘stepping into my work in the world’. My work as an
artist, my work with Emergence. It was all meant finally to be falling into
place…
We were looking forward with excitement and some trepidation
to a busy and intense March, working with the Scottish and Welsh Governments as
part of Margaret Wheatley’s team to offer ‘Warriors for the Human Spirit’, a residential
retreat programme for self-appointed ‘change agents’ and leaders working in the
public sector. One week was planned for Perth, Scotland and one week for Nant Gwrytheyrn in North Wales. Hot on the heels after finishing these, the final
day of March was to be spent with those working in the Welsh environmental
sector and Natural Resources Wales helping to develop a ‘community of practice’
to support ‘across the sector collaboration’.
On 1st March, St David’s Day, we travelled to
Perth in Scotland ready to meet the team and begin our contribution in support
of Meg’s training programme. Phil spoke about the BBC Television documentary he
wrote: ‘8 Days: To the Moon & Back’, looking at NASA’s Apollo program through
the lens of ‘Warriorship for the Human Spirit’. I brought into the room two
decades’ experience of theatre activities and shared the story of alchemical
transformation in the Birth of Taliesin within the context of the Celtic tradition
and the indigenous wisdom of Britain. We were looking at leadership on this
retreat through a completely different lens. The invitation to our participants
was to join with one another to help create ‘islands of sanity’ within
uncertain and potentially overwhelming times.
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| Helen Williams, Simoon Fransen, Meg Wheatley with Phil & Fern in Perth, Scotland |
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| Fern - centre left in the purple dress - teaches on the Warriors for the Human Spirit program in Perth |
As our week together progressed, Covid-19 increasingly entered our awareness. One of the team was from the Netherlands, one of the earliest epicentres of the virus. She was concerned about her family, one of whom had developed Corona-like symptoms. Attendees on our retreat were increasingly having intense work and family conversations in between learning how to ‘let go of outcome’, and ‘take nothing personally’. Each individual was being encouraged to ‘take their seat’ as a warrior for the human spirit, doing ‘what they can, with what they have, where they are’. For some, this was within the Scottish health service, for some, education, conservation, others planning and policing. It was a bold vision to be working with this group on this material. It felt radical and timely.
By Friday morning, participants were readying to leave and
return to a world entirely different from the one they left when they arrived in
Perth just five days earlier. Within the next two weeks throughout the UK we saw
food queues and panic buying, social distancing measures put in place,
infection rates increasing, the death toll beginning to mount up, an NHS
stretched to the limit, schools closed, calls for a universal living wage, and
a complete lockdown in place.
The Warriors for the Human Spirit training didn’t even get
off the starting block in Wales. Meg returned to the US and the program was
postponed until some uncertain date in the now vague and distant future. Our
workshop with the Natural Resources Wales folk did happen online along with
pretty much every other conference, meeting and Pilates class. The word ‘Zoom’ suddenly
began to take its place as one of the most frequently uttered since the
superhero comics of the 1970’s.
April 1st came and went with a gamut of surreal ‘Fools
Day’ Covid-19 offerings, online videos and celebrations. Activity for half the
population ramped up with a transfer to online working, living, shopping and
socialising. Activity for the other half dropped away in a matter of days to a
trickle and then an absence. Emergence’s grand vision for 2020 fell away in the
process…
My own Craniosacral Therapy Practice at my clinic in
Machynlleth, mid Wales halted a month ago. No social proximity meant no
practice, let alone hands on contact with the client’s body which holds the
power and potential to transform and heal of Craniosacral work. No television
writing work for Phil. Nothing currently being commissioned. Suddenly there is
no point in advertising nature-based rites of passage, although there is much
talk on social media about this pandemic, being a kind of ‘global rite of
passage’. The momentum of activity, making stuff happen, visions, potential –
everything comes to a dead stop…
As I write this, we’re in an April heatwave with empty
roads. Easter has come and gone. Good Friday - the dying, Easter Sunday - the
Resurrection. Easter Monday and beyond, school holidays are all happening without
happening...
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| View from Cader Idris on the last day before lockdown |
Phil: A key practice at the heart of the Warriors for the Human Spirit training is to become intimately familiar with one’s own mind. To become an observer and chronicler of one’s own thoughts and patterns so that one might be able to loosen the mind’s grip on the ‘self’ and simply be, not reacting but present. The idea being that this might enable one to better serve others and the times we live in by being a calm ‘island of sanity’ for others…
When the coronavirus hit and the lockdowns began, both Fern
and I responded in a very similar way. Our initial reaction was that we should
do something, anything… We talked of offering Way of Council sessions online,
we talked of online retreats, spaces to meet, supportive practices to bring people
together… and then, individually and together, we pulled back from that energy
and we… stopped…
This is not to denigrate or devalue the amazing work that so
many are doing right now to support and help each other across the literal
distances between us. This is simply to share what happened to us and how we
are reacting.
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| Wile E Coyote realising he's made a huge mistake... |
That forward momentum, that energy to ‘do’, to ‘help’, to
continue, to make ‘normal’ at all costs, was so strong and compelling that,
like Wile E Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons, we very nearly ran straight off a
cliff without realising that there is, in fact, no ground beneath our feet… But
for some reason we pulled back at the last second and found ourselves standing
on the edge of that cliff, our toes dangling into the cavernous space of the new
reality, wondering what we should do…
Personally, I found myself collapsing inwards, falling into
a very familiar pattern of dark and dangerous thoughts. My work had gone, my
purpose had gone, my value as a human being had gone. I’m not a frontline
worker in the NHS or the caring professions. I’m a storyteller, a maker of
meaning. And, in this new reality, I find myself utterly reluctant to make any
meaning at all. It feels too early… too raw… too disrespectful… to somehow leap
to what this all means and where we might be going. Not yet, at least. If this
truly is a rite of passage for mankind then, like all such rituals, it requires
an enormous letting go of old ways and a stepping into a space of deep
uncertainty without any clue where it all might lead. I can’t speak for anyone
else but I know that is the space I’m currently living in.
So, after our grand plans ground to a halt and we screeched
to a halt on the edge of the cliff, we found ourselves asking – what now? If we
truly are in this liminal, threshold space, then how do we best live our days?
How do we best serve? In short – what do we do?
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| The veg beds take shape... |
Fern: The weather has been kind. We have a garden. We live
surrounded by fields and hills on the outskirts of Machynlleth. The local
community has been amazing. We now have a WhatsApp group in our local village.
In our little community at home, we have spent time digging, pulling out the
weeds, raking out the stones, preparing the ground. Like many lucky enough to
have access to outdoor space, we have been planting and tending. We have dug a
big vegetable bed, we have created a fruit bed, we have even made a rock garden
with all the stones we have heaved out of the earth in the process of tilling
the soil. There feels something good about this. Pulling out the weeds, hands
in the earth, planting seeds, watering them; pulling out the weeds, hands in
the earth, planting seeds, watering them…There is much birdlife in the garden. The primroses are in full bloom. The leaves of the foxgloves are getting fatter ready for anchoring the great pink wands of May.
I am reading a 14th Century Gnostic
text called ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ written anonymously during the time of The Black Death and the Hundred Years War. I was drawn to the title and felt it
prescient for the times. In it the author writes about what he calls the ‘Actives’
and the ‘Contemplatives’... |
| Primroses in bloom |
“Actives, Actives! Be as busy as you can…But don’t interfere
with my contemplatives. You don’t know what is happening to them. Leave them to
their ‘sitting’ and ‘resting’…”
The author seems to be implying that something important is
going on beneath the surface with those who do not or who are not necessarily
able to be outwardly active. If you can carry on your work and livelihood
online, fine. If you are called to the front-line to serve, I thank you. If you
are minding and looking after the needs of those in your care, this is
important work. And if you are called to, or are able to do ‘nothing’, then
this too is important work which needs doing on behalf of all of us during
these times. Watch, witness, plan nothing, be with uncertainty, welcome the
Cloud of Unknowing.
I have been meditating on what it means to have a productive
day in these times. We are advised by many psychologists to put structures in
place to support mental health and well-being. I also feel it is important to
honour the broken shards of a life which had or held meaning. If we are in a
rite of passage, this is the Severance not the Incorporation. If we are in a
Descent Myth, we are in the dark.
I do not know what will happen with my ‘2020 Vision’. I
anticipated that this would be a successful and productive year for Emergence of
being in service at these transitional times. I imagined that ‘Space for Change’
would be sold-out with a small group of participants having a ‘transformative
experience’; our ‘Summer Vision Fast’ would be likewise full to capacity; the ‘Autumn
Equinox Retreat’ on Bardsey Island would be filling up nicely. None of this is
happening. I am instead, simply with my ‘Cloud of Unknowing’. I tell myself:
‘Do what you can, with what you have, where you are’ even if this just means slowing
down, contemplating and digging up the roots with your hands…
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| Spring lambs in mid-Wales |
Phil: And so we go on, learning to become ever more
comfortable with uncertainty. Trusting that, as each day unfolds, we will do
what we can, we will be available to what is needed of us, and we will be
present to each other. Before all this happened, I had mused to Fern about how a
populous living ever more of its life online needs to learn how to be together
again. After weeks, or potentially months, of forced social distancing, that
need will be even more acute. And if, as seems likely, Covid-19 will be a part
of all our lives going forwards and that repeated outbreaks will call for
repeated lockdowns, then our ability to do what humans are defined by – being
together – will become a rare and precious skill and ever more vital and necessary.
At this moment, we don’t know what we will be offering in
the future. We don’t know what it will look like. And we don’t yet know who it
will be for. It feels vitally important to us to wait and to listen for what is
needed before offering what we think might serve. If this truly is a rite of
passage, then we are being forced to pass through the ‘threshold’, in which
every molecule of our beings is dismantled and put back together in a new,
unfamiliar way. We will need to learn to do many things afresh. We will need to
learn to do many things we’ve never done before and never imagined we would.
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| The uncertain road to the future... |
Truly embracing the uncertainty of this time, for us, means
letting go of everything we dreamed of doing and being, and opening ourselves
to whatever might come next. It’s painful. It’s sad. And yet… isn’t it life?
Isn’t this what life is? Change? Constant and unceasing change?
So. We’re still here. We’re still committed to our ‘2020
Vision’. And we’re still open to offering spaces for people to come together. We
know that one day we will be together again. We look forward to seeing you
there.
Keep safe. Be well. Stay connected.
Fern & Phil
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| A new day dawns |
