There is a generative narrative of our time, and it is as real as the destructive story that is better publicized. In this generative story of us, we can see ourselves and others rising to the best of our humanity. It is possible to envision a future that we want our children to inhabit — all of our children — and to innovate the forms for that and build a life there.
Question to Live
How would I start to tell the generative story of the world I know? |
Integration Step
Notice and take seriously the good in whom and what you give your attention to across the week: what is life-giving, fruitful, creative, replenishing, healing, sustaining. Journal about what that works in you. |
Heart of the Matter
We are familiar with a story of our time of catastrophe and dysfunction, and that is real. But it is not the whole story of us. There is an ordinary and abundant reality in our world of people walking with forms that are broken, with a world that is in pain, with institutions that don’t make sense anymore — and finding ways to be of service, to have an edifying effect on the people around them, to be healers in so many forms, and to model and advance what it looks like when we rise to our higher humanity. We are capable of beauty and joy and dignity and incredible creativity and community and care. And, even with the magnitude of what is before us, we are equipped in a way previous generations of humans have not been with knowledge that can be a form of agency: to become more conscious, to become more aware, to act like the ecosystem the world needs us to be — sharing what we are seeing, finding ways to share what we are learning, joining our vulnerabilities, and joining our flourishing. Calling out this reality, naming that there is a generative story of our time, is in fact a way to begin. Every time you take in the good, you are taking seriously the lifeblood, the raw materials of the generative story of our time. You are stepping onto that landscape more fully with your imagination and with your presence. And in so doing, you are making it more visible and more real in our world of so much pain and so much promise. |