Find The Outside 2:11: Hope: How To Protect The Optimism We Need For Massive Response And Massive Heart
For episode eleven of season two, Tim and Tuesday reflect on how hope can — and must — co-exist with an acknowledgement of where we are, even in crisis or struggle. If we are to respond massively to an emerging future, and grapple with our current reality, what steps can we take to preserve optimism?
Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.
2.10 —— SHOW NOTES
- Tim: There’s a Thomas Merton quote about finding rightness in the work itself, to surrender the hope of results. And I came across this quote from William the Silent: “It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere.” There is one story that I’ve come across in our work - how important hope has been to persevere.
- Tues: The quote that comes to me is a Toni Morrison quote: “You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” I believe my ancestors, on both sides, had deep hope as they left their shores - that there was something different, something better.
- Tim: I feel like we are in the midst of a level of crisis that is now beginning to truly impact the middle and middle-upper classes in a way it hasn’t before in such a pervasive scale, scope and reach. I think that’s a piece of the class response that I want to identify and have some compassion for and not pretend it’s not a product of privilege. It makes me think of the quote from Rumi: “Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk, and this is the edge of the roof.”
- Tues: I wonder about my own lens and perspective; I feel there is no lack of material for hope for me. My vantage point is of people who are actively working and trying.
- Tim: This kind of analysis that becoming acquainted with despair, but still maintaining hope, is an issue of how insulated your life has been.
- Tues: Whose going to make it and who is not? Disaster capitalists are moving into Puerto Rico right now and beginning to set themselves up for when it all goes down and the question is what will happen to the Puerto Ricans who are there?
- Tim: What does it mean to not prioritize engaging with the emergence of consciousness among the privileged classes and the fragility that comes with that? This kind of awakening to the level of despair, because you are experiencing it… I am intrigued by that. How this get’s integrated into how we think about significant change happening. I also don’t want it to be the thing that slows us down.
- Tues: It’s not do we engage it or don’t we - it’s how and when and why. Everyone gets to decide what their own energy level is.
- Tim: When we go into those stories that are so intimately connected to us, we find both the “You are drunk, and this is the edge of the roof” and we find the hope, the gift, the power to stand in the face of it and take the next step.
Poem: Build the Arks (King Kong Song) by Tim Merry
I just read about the coming of the ice age
Earth’s rage
The mighty mother, the sage,
Turning another page
Of evolution
A natural solution
The vibration
Of creation
Melting ice caps into the gulf stream flows
The European heating system blows
Beyond repair
My mother, father, sister, brother live there
Stop, bear witness, take a long good stare
Digest our reality and start to care
The planet is movin’ on
We all be livin’ in the final swan song
The future’s comin’ on strong
Like King Kong
We all be the hapless maiden
Looking in his big brown eyes
Beginning to realise
It’s all beyond our control
Bigger than we’ll ever be
See?
Fuck the swan song,
This is the King Kong song
We ain’t got no choice but to go along.
No more prizes for predicting the rain
The pain
New starts
Time to build the arks
What’s my contribution
At this crazy time?
Am I gonna whine
Complain
About the pain?
The fact we all seem to be going insane?
No!
Trust in surprise
Integrity has no compromise
Release all ties
Open the eyes.
Our survival seems hit and miss
Like the world is taking the piss
A final good night kiss
All this material wealth
The illusion of bliss
It’s a big mis –stake
Time to rake
The fallen leaves
Autumn choices
Winter bereaves
Not everyone will make it
We can’t fake it
There’s no hiding
From this colliding
With the end of an era
It’s never been clearer
Some will get left behind
Linger in our minds
Their remains to find
In millions of years
As we learn again our evolution
From homo-confusion
Homo-luminum
No more prizes for predicting the rain
The pain
New starts
Time to build the arks
Gather now at our community centres
With friends and mentors
And Elders
We all be the welders
Of fragmentation
On the edges of the new creation
The builders of the New Space Station
Right here in the arms of the mother
Where the heroes gather undercover
Sensing the future with sonar sound
The builders of boats abound
Readying for the coming storms
Trainers of the warriors who break the norms
Yield to the field
Drop the shield
What are the skills we need to survive?
To be one of ones alive
Who looks back
Thinking
“holy shit how did we survive that?”
What does it take to make the warrior caste
To see our king kong future comin’ on fast
Then look back and know it as the past?
This ain’t about seekin’ thrills
We need to know the survival skills
Get into training
I’m not exaggerating
I wish I was
This is real,
now
here
It’s time to get clear.
There’s no more prizes for predicting the rain
The pain
New starts
It’s time to build the arks
Song: Faith’s Hymn by Beautiful Chorus
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Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.
Duration: 47:20
Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good Studios
Theme music: Gary Blakemore
Episode cover image: source
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