Highlights
I am connected to life. I am part of this life and I feel the reality, the incremental impact of what is happening here, the vulnerability of that, the truth of my interbeing. We’re welcoming and we’re attuning. We’re listening then for what comes up.
Our tendency is to tune out, to turn away but the invitation here is to tune in and really, we’re all in a middle seat here. We see the impact, we see that we’re contributing to climate crisis and we wonder from where will change come. It hurts to feel that separation but what is possible when we hang out with it and feel our connectedness.
I want to invite us to consider that all of those are some form of disconnect, even shame and despair, even anger, a way of avoiding the raw, shaky, uncertain experience of what’s happening. This is painful. There are ramifications of sitting on that flight, not just for the world but for this heart. That it is painful is also of course evidence of our belonging, of our interdependence. Our bodies and hearts and minds are bound to this world and it would not hurt if it were not so.
And then there’s the material and the social impact. The material impact, this incremental contribution to climate breakdown, as small as it is, it’s incremental contribution. And then there’s the social contribution, normalizing that choice, going with the flow, not challenging and actually incrementally strengthening the expectations, signaling it’s okay to fly through our embodied action. It’s kind of like not wearing a mask if we know that masks are necessary to protect life but here we are engaging in it. And so of course we feel ambivalent about it, of course there’s that internal dilemma.
I just want to offer a few alternatives, which is that we look at the possibility of having a reciprocal relationship, that there can be this recognition, respect for the other who is impacted, even the seeking of consent in a spiritual way, the aspiration to repair, to restore, perhaps to dedicate this flight to say may it serve, may it serve the living earth community and all that I love. I know there’s a sacrifice here as I acknowledge the life that is being taken. And in a spiritual sensibility, we can recognize the sacredness, to honor the sacrifice.
