Dear Reader,

Many of the essays we read today begin by enumerating the crises we are facing. Long-time Kosmos readers are already well-informed about the polycrisis. Some are experiencing loss directly – loss of loved ones, homes, health and livelihoods – some ‘indirectly’, through a growing awareness of planetary suffering and the loss of civility and trust. All these impacts are felt in the collective body, as uncertainty, fear and grief. The polycrisis has been called a profound global initiation, that can lead to new insight and transformation.

In order for a human future to be possible, we will need to accept difficult lessons, commit to new ways of being, and work diligently to restore the conditions for Life to flourish. The archetype of the Visionary, grounded in love and wisdom is called for now. A wise visionary understands the challenges and knows that some dreams can’t be accomplished in a single lifetime. Yet, the visionary spirit is co-creative, intelligent and optimistic. Resilience is rooted in vision.

We invite you to give voice to the visionary spirit deep within you. How are you creating sense from this evolutionary moment? How are you beginning to transition and transform?

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Deadline: November 15, 2020 

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Read selections by Cynthia Anderson, Lawrence Cohen, John Laue, and Rebecca Smolen. Curated by Kosmos Poetry Editor, Carolyn Martin.

Cynthia Anderson

Becoming Sequoia

To live for thousands of years, 
you can’t be perturbed 
by every insect or squirrel 
or change in the weather. 
When wildfire scorches
your skin, you heal and keep 
going. Your intention protects 
you like an amulet – you push 
upward according to plan, 
knuckled base nestled 
against earth like a fist. You 
follow the ways of a shaman, 
transmuting air, rock, soil, 
water. Your stamina could 
build a world from ice. 
You have no quarrel with 
the sun, or with anyone –
radiating light from trunk 
to crown, stretching taller 
until one day, gravity takes 
you down. Then, you commend 
your body to the ground 
among seeds already sown
and sprouting, no effort 
wasted, birds and stars 
sounding your name.
 

Cynthia Anderson lives in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she has published nine poetry collections, most recently Now Voyager with illustrations by Susan Abbott. She is co-editor of the anthology A Bird Black As the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens and guest editor of Cholla Needles 46. Visit her at www.cynthiaandersonpoet.com

John Laue

At the Zen Garden
– Huntington Museum Grounds
Pasadena, California

Strangely comforting
these single circles
on the still pond’s surface.
They occur like phantoms,
grow, and then are gone.
There’s no apparent cause:
no rocks or raindrops
break the surface tension,
no bubbles from the bottom,
neither koi nor water skaters,
only sky-lit circles
that arise from calm,  
subside to calm again. 
We leave the place
with no more answers
than we had before,
but more aware of mysteries, 
more inclined to let things be.
 

John Laue, teacher/counselor, is a former editor of Transfer, San Francisco Review, and Monterey Poetry Review. He has won awards for his writing beginning with the Ina Coolbrith Poetry Prize at The University of California, Berkeley. With five published poetry books, the last A Confluence of Voices Revisited (Futurecycle Press), and a book of prose advice for people with psychiatric diagnoses, he presently coordinates the reading series of The Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium.

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By Robert Cobbold

“This is the greatest discovery of the scientific enterprise: You take hydrogen gas, and you leave it alone, and it turns into rosebushes, giraffes, and humans.”

The famous line from cosmologist Brian Swimme is striking because it transcends the frameworks and categories which we place over the continuum of life and reveals that, when all is said and done, the universe is not a noun, but a verb: a single miraculous process of becoming.

People find it hard to conceptualise cosmological, biological, and cultural evolution as one process. But when we take the tightly compartmentalised domains of scientific knowledge, bundle them together, roll them out like pastry, and take a big step back, a few patterns and trajectories, which are consistent throughout all those successive levels of evolution—from the Big Bang to the present moment—immediately become visible.

For one—the universe started in absolute simplicity and has evolved toward complexity. From hydrogen, atoms formed the heavier elements; from atoms emerged molecules; from simple prokaryote cells came more complex eukaryote cells; from eukaryote cells came multicellular organisms.

Another—as evolution has progressed, the scales of cooperative organisation have got larger. When life first emerged on this planet, it was at the scale of a millionth of a metre. But single-celled organisms cooperated to form multicellular organisms, and multicellular organisms cooperated to form groups of multicellular organisms such as shoals of fish, beehives, and packs of dogs. The trajectory was recapitulated in human evolution—bands cooperated to form tribes, tribes to form chieftainships, chieftainships to form city states, and city states to form modern nation states. In global economic trade, although not yet in politics, cooperation now spans the entire planet.

But it’s the third trajectory which is most interesting for those who study change: evolutionary change is not linear, but telescopic. Evolution is, itself, evolving, acquiring new creative capacities, and accelerating. Put more simply, evolution is getting better at evolving.

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Image by ejaugsburg on Pixabay

Via Dr. Kylie Harris, on Medium

Spiritual emergence/emergency — SE(Y) — refers to a continuum of experiences representing an unfolding, or awakening, of consciousness. These experiences represent an opportunity for growth and transformation but are often chaotic and overwhelming, and potentially (mis)diagnosed as mental illness.

The SE(Y) community consists of individuals who have experienced varying degrees of mental health challenges in relation to a process of awakening, along with their advocates and supporters. This community includes academics, writers, mental health professionals, activists, artists, and members of the general population. Grassroots programs have evolved into a social movement that is struggling to keep up with the demands of the public. This community is inclusive and welcomes anyone who wishes to join us.

The world’s leading climate scientists now state that there is scientific support for declaring a state of planetary emergency. In this open letter, we propose that a planetary crisis represents a global spiritual emergency, and is a catalyst for a global awakening. As humanity faces the existential threat of the climate emergency, the SE(Y) community is uniting in a collaborative effort, as individuals who understand the process of awakening through crisis. We are offering our assistance in guiding humanity into a new paradigm, in order to co-create and help birth a New Story.

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