The Pandemic as Global Initiation

The Pandemic as Global Initiation

“Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. Suffering can be likened to a baptism - the passing over the threshold of pain and grief and anguish to claim a new state of being.” - George Elliot

It is dawning on me that the covid pandemic is a kind of worldwide initiation test, if we make it so, by allowing it to be. An initiation is a bridge to greater responsibility. It is a rite of passage into a higher level. 

It is a test, usually an ordeal, and not everyone passes it. Initiations tend to be scary and dangerous. It is like the trial by fire, in which all that is not valuable (the true gold) is burned away, leaving us purified. 

It is usually some sort of odyssey in which our usual ways of doing things must change. So, it interrupts patterns so new ones can replace them.

Sometimes the proverbial hero’s journey ends in failure. The hero is lost. The hero loses the fight. The would-be hero is traumatized and fatally scarred.

Initiations are inherently perilous. So they are only worth the undertaking if we come out better. If we emerge wiser and more useful.

But it is essential to embark on the test voluntarily, or else it is not an initiation, but merely a catastrophe.

If this is a global initiation, and not a mere random ordeal, then what are we being initiated into? For starters, an awareness of how interconnected we have become, how much we affect each other, and yes, how much we need each other. And hopefully, we are learning new ways to help each other. Paradoxically, as we stand apart, we are growing closer.

Are we learning? Or just denying? Responding, or just reacting? Adapting, or just postponing? This break from business as usual will gradually fade, and the interruption or the opportunity will pass. Things will have changed, and will never go back to how they were. But will they be better?

Disruption

Disruption

People used to proudly call themselves disrupters. They said, “If it ain’t broke, break it”. Disruption is a word that has been lightly and causally tossed around in the past few years, by overconfident overprivileged young males, mostly. At least, until real actual disruption happened with the Great Pandemic of 2020. Had enough disruption?

Not nearly enough, I fear. Has this time out from business as usual really made us aware of the enormity of the challenges we face, like it or not, for the better or worse? Have we learned the lessons offered by this crisis-opportunity? I fear not...

Has this wake up call served to give us a chance  to reassess our ways, or only sensitized us to our addiction to things as they are, hardening and strengthening our attachments?  When the economics are tough they say we can’t afford to change our destructive ways. But when the economics are roaring hot, we are told we can’t afford to slow things down either. So when, exactly, will we stop the way we are going so as to not end up where we are headed?! 

Who is saying this? All of us who don’t want to do anything in a different way, because, fear. Fears of losing what we have, fears of not being able to do whatever we are in the habit of doing, in just exactly the way we are doing it now. This is further codified into law, by the monetary power and influence of big corporations.  

History is full of headlong rushes to destruction, despite the cries and warnings at the time. The Earth is full of degraded landscapes, now wastelands, where forests once stood, where streams once gushed with sparkling pure water, birds flew in flocks so big the sky was dark with them, rivers so full of fish that you could walk across them on the fish, meadows so thick with flowers that as John Muir once wrote about his walk across California, you stepped on a hundred wildflowers every step of the way, all the way.

Already I can hear the resumption of the roar. Where I live you can actually hear the roar of the city below in the valley bowl, and the uptick of airline flight overhead.

This disruption we are perpetuating on the planet sure needs some disruption. And soon.

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

– Albert Einstein