Edition #66: Weaving Webs and Turning Over Stones
Creating The Webbd Wheel: Starting Where We Are
When we find ourselves at an ending we are also at a beginning. I believe this is true even when the ending is death. Whether it’s our own body unwinding, settling, emptying into silence and rest or that of a loved one, time and the cosmos do not stop in that moment of final relief. There is an after.
Whether agonized and protracted as birth, or subtle as the slow release of a last breath, moving from ending to beginning is a sacred transition during which we are oddly free. The past is gone. The future has not arrived. It was this sense of freedom, of timelessness, of having nowhere to go and nothing to do, I imagined in writing about the Underworld. I imagine a threshold place where we are nothing but ourselves.
“Nothing but ourselves” implies lack, smallness, inadequacy. Yet perhaps we are never greater than in the moments when we are nothing but ourselves. Perhaps we are closest to the Divine in those times. Perhaps we are The Fool in the Tarot deck, setting out with no plan, no expectation, but carrying within us seeds of all the potential and wisdom we’ll ever need.
I sense a deep magic in the gathering of bones or seeds, the regenerative material for new life, for new beginnings. Life begets death and death begets life. The cycle never fails.
When we go through an ending, whether it be catastrophic physical change, a devastating loss, or a deep trauma, at some point we realize glimmers of new energy, some dim light, some stirring sense of possibility or curiosity amidst our difficult experience. Without realizing it, we are beginning again, sending out tiny tendrils of new roots and new growth, inching forward into a different life.
The paradox is we can’t leap into a new life before we experience where we are, on that threshold. We must start from where we are. The ending and beginning are woven into each other; every thread must be crossed in its turn.
In post #66 of The Hanged Man, Maria, in a terrible handful of moments, is forced into an unthinkable ending, followed by a beginning. She is alone, in a strange place, with nothing but her memories, her anguish, her choices, and a few physical remnants of her murdered sons. All she has for a new beginning is her intuition, a dream, and the bones and eyes of her children. With these things she travels through the rock, a stony womb, into something new. With humility, she starts where she is.
Weaving Webs
If new life is to take hold, it must have a healthy environment. Nothing grows in complete isolation. Water, light, and nutrients need to be available. The tender beginning is folded into a complex web of other lives.
As we face beginnings, we not only come to terms with who we are as part of our previous ending, we find ourselves depending on the health and wholeness of our community. If our community is unhealthy or toxic, we will not thrive. Our beginning is blighted or stunted.
Our communities affect us, and we in turn affect our communities. If we are unhealthy, inauthentic, or unable to connect and interact in effective ways with others, our presence may weaken the web of community we find ourselves in. Our greatest gift to the world is simply ourselves, who we really are, including wisdom and experience we’ve gained from our personal endings. And beginnings.
Substack has made a remarkable choice to invite users to invest in the platform. The minimum monetary requirement is $100. This puts the opportunity within reach of most of us who read and write here. Substack’s stated commitment to facilitating healthy relationships between writers and their audience continues to be reflected in their business model. Their intention is transparent. They do not promise big returns. They do not, in fact, promise any returns. But they clearly believe in the possibility of better ways for writers to write and readers to read with the help of technology. The old traditional publishing paradigm is increasingly difficult to use or get adequately paid for.
I am extremely careful with money, having little of the resource, but the minute I read the invitation to contribute in this way to the community on Substack, I wanted to do it. In the last few days several writers I follow have also come forward with their support, among them
.I believe we’re at our best as creators and innovators, and Substack provides a platform without censorship for readers and writers to interact. Writers remain in control of their content and how to share their work. Readers enjoy an intimate relationship with writers and writers interact freely with one another, providing inspiration, guidance, support, and discussion. We are not slaves to algorithms and arbitrary silencing. Civility is the rule rather than the exception. The political correctness police have not yet knocked on my digital door. I feel free to be who I am and write what I write.
Substack feels like a new web of community, perhaps the first of its kind, and I’m proud to be contributing to its potential. It’s an investment worth making on principle alone. I’m investing in myself, in readers and writers, and in the belief in a future in which artists are able to contribute and be compensated fairly, fearlessly and simply with the assistance of technology.
Turning Over Stones
Questions:
If you write or read on Substack, how do you feel about the invitation to invest in the platform?
When on the threshold between beginning and ending, is your attention focused more on the ending or the beginning? Do you experience that threshold as an uncomfortable place?
Our production and innovation have outstripped our ability to appropriately and safely use technology as an effective tool to make our lives better and positively address some of our most urgent needs in terms of education, medical care, democracy, social justice, and climate change. How do you think we could address the gap going forward? How might we interact with technology in a more healthy way?
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