Midwife the Future

I met up with an old friend for a visit yesterday. I quipped that old friend meant that we are now both old. Where does the time go? We shared a meal, got caught up on all the news, and dipped into deeper conversation about spirituality, meaning, and what kind of grandmothers/elders we endeavour to be. Oh, but there is something so tender and dear about old women musing together.

For years I used to facilitate an intensive retreat I called “Old Women Dreaming.” It was my observation that old women dreamed differently than their younger sisters. Old Woman have collective dreams. They dream for the future.

It is said that when one is planting trees for shade they will never enjoy, they are beginning to understand the meaning of life. (Rabindranath Tagore, an Indian poet who died in 1941). 

I am an old woman. Many travels in the inner world and the outer world have led me to this 100-acre wood and the deep calling to be a steward of this land.  

On Earth Day this year I put the specs of our land into ChatGPT4. For those who don’t know, this is AI, artificial intelligence. With some back and forth and my honing the prompts, I was able to use the tool to layout a sustainability plan for this land for the next 100 years. Where to cull the few acres of mono forest, how to have enough mixed wood growth, which pond grasses support life and limit invasive plants, how to renovate the sandy soil, where to plant an orchard, how to leave this land better than we found it.

There is so much talk these days about Climate Change and Climate Crisis. I prefer the former to the latter. Yes, the earth is changing. But, I do not ascribe to the ideology that we are in crisis. Fear and terror have never been a catalyst for lasting change.  

Do we need to realign our economic and social attitudes toward sustainability? Absolutely! But I am not so arrogant as to believe that humans can control the climate, save the Earth, or virtue signal our way to atonement.  We need personal, local and community action. Read action, not activism.  

We are gnats on the surface of Mother Earth.  She will shake our species off herself in a heartbeat. I know my place in the greater story, perhaps the greatest story. We are nature. And just as the hairs on my arms cannot dictate the inner working of my organs, they can stand on end, tingle and tell me when I am in the presence of Truth.  

It is the developmental task of the elder to retreat to the margins. Our place is no longer at the centre of things. Some of us find this alarming and hold tight to what once was. We are called to surrender or else we diminish our fundamental purpose. This is not about becoming invisible. This is about yielding to that liminal space between an old world dying and a new world yearning to be born. It is no surprise that the crone is the guardian of the crossroads, holding that sacred space between birth and death.  

So old women, and old men, retreat. Start with yourself and welcome quiet, peace and gratitude. Let your peripheral vision soften when the centre clamours. Turn and tune your pondering inward to the edge. Incubate the dreams and visions that will guide the generations that follow. Midwife a future.