[originally written & shared on january 18, 2021]
500k americans will have lost their lives to covid within a month.
the threat of violence looms in the absence of a peaceful transfer of power.
we acknowledge mlk day today without actual equity to celebrate.
vaccinations. innaugurations, the celebration of activists should be bringing a sense of hope. instead, the dis-ease of this moment prevails.
when i pulled a card for class tonight, i asked:
what do we do with our pain?
what do we do with our sorrow?
what do we do with our loss?
what do we do with this despair?
what do we do with the grief?
in the #5ofcups, we see someone in a state of all of the above. three cups have been lost. the #3ofcups represents interdependence. harmony between mind, body, and soul. between self, society, and spirit. the 3 of cups shows us ease.
in the 5 of cups, ease is lost. we see dis-ease.
we are asked to bring our attention to the 2 cups the figure is turned away from. 2 cups - enough to rebuild.
these 2 cups will become the foundation for what is to be built on the ruins of this moment (a moment that is the culmination of many century-long moments preceeding it). but we don’t see them right now, because they look entirely & dramatically unrecognizable compared to any foundation we’ve ever built our consensus reality on before.
some wisdom i often glean from the 5 of cups is: from instability arises change.
we can all vouch for the extent to which instability has been present as of late. if we are at all tuned into history, politics, astrology, the collective energy, then we also know that we are in for copious amounts of more instability to come.
we may not individually have direct access to shape the change that comes of this collective instability, but we do individually have the power to nurture and revere the process of transmutation happening within us and more locally around us. we can allow for our relationships to our selves, others, work, and our roles, to be radically transformed.
large scale dis-eases like covid, racism, denial, conspiracies, capitalism - these things do not arise from nowhere. they begin in individuals. in local communities.
as does healing.