Embracing the mess

As we enter a darker time in the Northern Hemisphere, what is our relationship with our tangled world?

This week is the North American holiday of Thanksgiving.

It is one of those rituals that is tangled up with beauty and violence, transgression and celebration. We know now, that this day marks both genocide and harvest. In recent years, it’s been rebranded a bit as a day of gratitude. Even so, something about that feels a bit hollow to me.

What does it mean to simply be in the mess of it all?

It seems increasingly clear that we are being asked to evolve our ways of being—from binaries to integration; from mechanistic to quantum; from certainty to tangles of ambiguity.

This didn’t start now, it didn’t start in 2016 or 2001. This unraveling and ‘tangling’ has been with us, of course. It’s just now, the light is coming through. We are seeing more, sensing more, witnessing more. We can’t go back. We are legitimately living entangled lives.

We are tangled up. How can we live in grace?

Our tendency is to make sense and coherence in our world. We are sensemaking beings. Our minds, our culture, our social fabric, our experiences with family, land and nature, all inform how we construct a coherent world to move through. We are now in a moment where so much is being illuminated, there is just so much to process—much of which has been with us, and is now brought to light—it is easy to feel, well, tangled up.

What if our task now, is to practice living well with the mess? What if we are being asked to stretch our capacities for dwelling inside of ambiguity and uncertainty, in new ways?

California Oak has long been a source of strength and inspiration for me. The Ohlone would dance around the Oaks for a good harvest. What is your version of the Oak during this time?

I wonder if a practice for us during these times, is being with the mess, the tangle, and letting it be okay. If we can be in the equanimity of witnessing injustice and beauty, of generosity and short-sightedness, of what it means to be growing as a human species in the direction of life.

This is not the same as turning away, sugar-coating or retreating. This is not about whether we focus on the “inner” or the “outer.”

This is about something far more nuanced, refined and higher frequency that that. It is about refuting binaries, and their false promise of safety and security, and choosing instead the complexity of both, and.

We can practice this daily. You can bring this quality of attention directly to your own experience. Because, as I mentioned in my TEDTalk, there is no way around it: As within, so without. The more we berate and judge ourselves, we do this outwards. The more we cultivate loving kindness for our own messes, the more we can extend this to our web of life, our true community of all beings. We can cultivate our containers where we have internal and external relational safety to go places where it feels scary, threatening or too much.

Make no mistake, my friends. We need containers, we need each other, and we need to draw on our web of life.

Let’s start today with the practice of facing the mess with dignity and grace.

The Guest House

The Sea Ranch Chapel embodies a space to welcome it all in.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

Be well, friends, and take good care of yourselves and each other.

x Renée

A few resources you may enjoy

This 3 minute animated video, produced by The Alliance for Climate Education (ACE), is based on my work of “Climate Psych Labs” with ACE high school fellows around the United States several years ago. It’s super helpful and grounded in Motivational Interviewing practices. This was part of a broader research project on equipping young people to have talks with their parents/adults about climate change.

This piece in CNBC is as relevant now, as ever, on the need to refute the ‘doom and gloom’ vs optimism tired binary.

Find me on BlueSky! @drreneelertzman.bsky.social