It’s Better to be the One Who Cared

August 2022

Dear Friends,

I am an avid mushroom enthusiast. Living in the Rocky Mountains, I have had the good fortune of celebrating all things mycology, especially when fresh boletes or chanterelle mushrooms make their way onto my dinner plate!

Just last week, my daughter and I watched Fantastic Fungi, a film by Louie Schwartzberg highlighting the deeply interconnected purpose of mycelium. One can tell a lot about the health of the forest through the presence (or absence) of mushrooms. The last several years in the Colorado Rockies have been hot and dry, and mushrooms are sparse. What was once my practice of regeneration now has become a place of consternation -- it’s painful to see our forests dying, our lakes and rivers diminished. Certainly, the impacts of climate change are becoming impossible to deny (and no need to argue the cause!).

We have an epic Hero’s Journey ahead on both human and ecological fronts. We are experiencing a lot of erratic behaviors and aberrant social cognitions and are watching the natural world change before our eyes. Aspen Institute’s CEO Dan Porterfield said it best at a recent talk with John Powell, founder of Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute when he said, “We need to have, and can have, a revolution of our consciousness. And such a revolution can lead to many other advances. I hear spirituality in your identity.” To which John replied, “Stepping back, we don’t have to create belonging, it is here. We need to acknowledge it and ask to organize our stories, politics, institutions, and culture to celebrate belonging. We don’t have to create connection; we are powerfully interconnected. That is embedded in spirituality. We are connected. Let’s stop fighting it. This movement of Belonging and my work is powerfully grounded in spirituality.”

He spoke to how rapidly the world is changing, resulting in collective anxiety and fear – pandemic, climate change, geopolitics, conflict, displacement – just to name a few. We often seek a way to trade our fear by placing blame on a group of people, and in doing so we create a hard Other, a separateness, an enemy. John emphasized the way to deal with fear is not to deny it, but to take fear and transform it into an aspiration we can all get excited about, and see ourselves being a part of.

“Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation, and this means we must develop a world perspective. We must either learn to live together as brothers (and sisters) or we are all going to perish together as fools.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The only myth that’s going to be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that is talking about the planet. Not ‘this city’, not ‘these people’, but the planet and everybody on it. The society it’s going to be the society of the planet, and until that gets going, you don’t have anything to talk about. The earth from space -- you don’t see any divisions of nations or states. This might be the symbol for the new mythology to come. That is the country we are going to be celebrating, and those are the people we are one with.” – Joseph Campbell

In this process, this Hero’s Journey, we are only left with our intentions. Do we stand for fear or love, do we stand for all of us or only some of us, do we play for team finite or team infinite? It’s vulnerable to live in hope, in love, in recognizing our spiritual nature – that we are all part of a unitive reality – and everyone and every being matters. This vision builds our humanity and honors the inherent dignity of all. The more we step into it, find our will forces to set that clear intention and roll up our sleeves, in the end, regardless of outcome, we will have reached for our full human capacity. There’s nothing more meaningful and purposeful than that. And, the brain science of practiced spirituality that Dr. Lisa Miller spoke about last week at the Murdock Mind, Body, Spirit Series at The Aspen Institute, confirms that truth.

Mushrooms are the perfect metaphor for love. Mushrooms are the fruit, the blossom, of embedded interconnected networks that are vital to the overall wellbeing and function of life. Love is the fruit, the blossom, of our human networks of interconnection – of spirituality. Love is what grows from our authentic capacity to connect; to transcend our sense of self and care for/value another – be it another person, group, plant, animal, earth, cosmos. To know we are a part of the whole, and the beauty of that knowing is awe, inspiration, humility, and grows our heart! It’s easy to sense what is happening in our spiritual health by the fruit of love that shows up in our lives and the world. Love is the currency of the Universe.

Joseph Campbell graciously bestowed us the Hero’s Path when he said, “We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. Where we had thought to find abomination, we shall find a God. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we thought to travel outwards, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be one with all the world.” Let’s let Love light the way.

Love, Anne

LWL Executive Director