Challenge and Opportunity

I tremble like a flower in a storm.
The strong winds push me
this way and that-
but around my roots
the solid ground sustains me
And tomorrow, when the new sun rises,
my petals will lift
like tattered flags,
and welcome the open sky.
– Sharon Gilbert – My Poet Laureate (since 1972)

Nothing like a pandemic to surface, deepen, and widens he subcutaneous fissures in
the political, economic, and social institutions of early 21st century life on Earth.
Like Alice, I’ve often felt like I too have fallen down a rabbit hole into another
reality with strange characters, like the Queen of Hearts who offs the heads of those who question
her judgments, and Humpty Dumpty who, when presented with rational explanations countering his
views of reality, pronounces that “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean.”

2020 was the year that the color grey disappeared into competing seas of black or white, where
science became arbitrary, and the tension between the individual and the collective polarized life on
every level. This is an inherent tension that arises from our amalgam of human and divine identities, and is characterized by the need for both individual initiative and expression, and the need to connect
in community whether as a couple or a country.

Our Trillium Teachers Circle regularly discusses the balancing of our individual and collective orientations, and has created self-referral mechanisms to monitor our tensions with this dynamic.

This integration process is an evolutionary impulse within every being and organization, and is never a
smooth ride. Today’s challenges are the opportunities to inspire and celebrate individual
achievement while invoking, holding, nurturing, embodying, and manifesting a connecting love that
is both personal and universal.