Hope, beauty, love, justice, integrity…these are our tethers, and our wings
Over the weekend I watched the film adaptation of Bryan Stevenson’s book, Just Mercy.
The ongoing racism, white supremacy, violence and caste based injustice scooped out holes in my heart.
Stevenson states, The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.
Indeed.
This quote makes so many of our leaders absent much measure of character. Worse when many of them stand on righteous values of Christianity or other religions.
In Jeremy Lent’s recent speech at The Whidbey Institute annual gala, October 2020, he speaks of the pain of the Earth crying.
“But that pain of the Earth crying . . . it’s too much for any one of us to hold by ourselves. And that’s where we need to turn to another equally important dimension of our interbeing: our shared community of caring. When we truly open our hearts to each other, there is no burden too heavy for us to carry together, there is no pain too deep for us to hold in each other’s arms.”
He goes on.
“It’s not just a matter of fixing a few things. Our civilization needs to be transformed at the deepest levels. We need to move from our current wealth-based society that’s been built on exploitation, on seeing people and the natural world as mere resources, to one that, like Tyson (Yunkaporta, author of Sand Talk and previous guest on our Syntropic Alumni Call) said, is based on natural law—an ecological civilization. What’s required is a metamorphosis of virtually every aspect of the human experience, including our values, our goals, and our daily norms.”
This is our work at Syntropic World. Applying natural laws to enterprise design, human co-ordination, values systems, governance…Built by community. Our eyes fixed clearly towards the more beautiful and just world we know is possible.
This is not a weekend workshop, a small time movement. It might be decades of work. A very long game.
We have begun. And we will not be diminished by hopelessness.
Hope, beauty, love, justice, integrity…these are our tethers, and our wings.
I think hopelessness is the enemy of justice. I think injustice prevails where hopelessness persists. And so, hope is our requirement, it’s our superpower. Bryan Stevenson.
Jeremy Lent is our next guest on the Syntropic Alumni + Open call. Register here.
Photo taken October 28th 2020
