Embracing The Unexpected

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

It’s been a week of firsts, some of them downright startling. Take the Pope’s resignation, for instance. Anybody see that coming? Sure, we all noted the wobble in the church, Ratzinger’s recent passive-aggressive behavior, the burgeoning list of young sexual abuse victims that seemed never-ending.

While not a first, stepping away from Papal vows for the first time in almost 700 years — certainly, in recent memory — is a first-class deal-breaker. His predecessor, John Paul II, put an exclamation point on service-til-the-bitter-end as he spent his last years listing to one side or the other due to complications of advanced Parkinson’s. John Paul’s only intimate use of an alter boy was to help to prop him up; unfortunately, he left the rest of those responsibilities to his consigliore and ultimate successor, Cardinal John Ratzinger. The faithful appear thunderstruck.

Eric’s brilliant handling of the astrology of that event helped pick much of the meat off this bone, but the shock of it prompts you to take a moment and rethink what you think you know about everything (which is an excellent idea at any time). I suspect folks in Russia had one of those shocking moments as well, when a ten-ton meteor the size of a kitchen table raced across the sky, lighting up the landscape and providing them a sonic boom and eventual explosion over the Ural mountains that shattered glass, collapsed walls and injured over a thousand people. Talk about a heart-clutcher!

The meteor event was not a first — think Tunguska or ask a dinosaur — but the incident was rare, unexpected and apparently coincidental to the arrival of Asteroid 2012 DA 14.  DA 14 came closer to the Earth than any since record-keeping began, and that is, indeed, a first.

Coming in at about half the size of a football field, DA 14 passed perilously close to earth while going eight times as fast as a speeding bullet. Only a little more than 17,000 awe-inspiring miles from the planet, it was not expected to cause any difficulties — and did not — although that’s too close for anyone’s comfort.

Similar in size to Tanguska, DA 14 had the potential to level an area of approximately 800 square miles, releasing as much energy as 185 Hiroshima explosions. This particular asteroid is also a first in that these events are most often unanticipated, but DA14 was spotted by amateur astronomers almost a year ago and has been carefully tracked by NASA in our (underfunded) Near Earth program since. A bit nerve-wracking you say? A little crazy-making?

There were other firsts that gave pause. The GOP’s moldy-oldies — principally Oklahoma’s Jim Inhofe and Arizona’s John McCain — joined yappy little Lindsey Graham in demonizing Chuck Hagel’s nomination for Secretary of Defense, resulting in a first ever filibuster for a Pentagon appointment; and in a time of war, no less. Here’s my takeaway: when somebody tells you repeatedly that it isn’t personal, trust that it is. No further detail is available in this case — just the smell of personal ire.

The collective GOP defend their decision to deny Hagel a vote by declaring it a simple ‘hold’ for a few weeks, while they consider their distaste for a traitor to their party, an enemy to Israel and a “friend to Hamas,” according to Fox News. After they flex their muscle — and whomp up further hysteria about Benghazi with their base — it is suggested that the Pubs will pass Hagel through. (And so much for the recent cloture reform, doncha know.)

You’d think maverick McCain might give a little more respect to a REAL maverick who broke lock-step with his party by criticizing Bush’s surge and suggesting that we open negotiations with Iran, but don’t hold your breath. Although Dems certainly have their share of hypocrites, they don’t revel in it as the Pubs seem to. It’s reported that Obama knew that his selection, floated back in November, would be less than smooth, but the perk of having three experienced old congressional hands — Biden, Kerry and Hagel — at the ready for his final political season was too appealing.

A bit off topic, and hardly a first, Obama’s muscular State of the Union speech, heavily progressive up to and including pre-K education and a rise in minimum wage, was considered for a full 48-hours before House Majority Leader Boehner gave his “not a chance in hell” statement. He opined that if Obama could get some of his projects through the Senate, the House MIGHT take a look at them. Sadly, unless we can pull our foot out of the contrived piles of austerity-shit that dot our political landscape, chances are slim.

And speaking of Congress, if you didn’t see Elizabeth Warren pointedly but politely put financial regulators on the spot, you must. It was her first Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing, with access to representatives from the FDIC, SEC, OCC, CFPB, CFTC, Fed and Treasury. She didn’t waste a minute of it. Apparently it was also the first time any of these agency heads were asked when they had last brought a ‘big bank’ to trial for wrongdoing, as not one of them could provide her an answer. The regulators are accustomed to assessing monetary penalties for rule-breaking, not pressing criminal charges (citing the expense involved.) This exchange prompted Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi to tweet, “This woman is going to be president someday.” From his mouth to God/dess’s ear.

Other firsts? For the first time in its 120-year history, the highly respected, million-member environmental organization, the Sierra Club, has approved the participation of their executive director, Michael Brune, in an act of civil disobedience. Brune was arrested with other activists — RFK Jr., Julian Bond, Bill McKibben, Daryl Hannah and NASA climate scientist James Hansen — after tying themselves to a White House gate, protesting the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. Last year, after a smaller but similar protest, Obama put off approval, but over these last months, Canada, once a bastion of progressivism, has spent multi-millions lobbying for the 17,000 mile tar-sands pipeline, as unpopular there as here.

Tomorrow, on President’s Day, February 17th, organizers are expecting tens of thousands of protesters to converge on the White House, calling on the president to reject the pipeline. Touted as “the largest climate rally in U.S. history,” you can find event information at the Nation of Change website, along with facts about the toxic crude, which would be transported across agro-America for export only. The organizers have put together a clever use of tweets and Facebook posts called Thunderclap for those who can’t attend: you can participate here. If we can’t join them to make this the biggest protest in recent months, then let’s make it the loudest!

James Hanson wrote last year in the New York Times, “If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.” Since then, the projections have become even more dire. What, do you suppose, is more dire than ‘game over’? That’s explicit enough, isn’t it? I’m sure you would not be surprised to learn that the Kochs are heavily invested in this project.

Yes, a week of firsts — some unexpected like the meteor and the Pope, some long expected like the asteroid. Some were hoped for, like an energized Elizabeth Warren and an activist Sierra Club. Some are mindlessly self-destructive, like the latest Republican hijinks. But surprises, even those that disturb us, are like little shocks from a defibrillator, bringing us out of our stupor. We need to be shocked out of our lowered expectations, our learned response to fear and confusion, our shoulder-shrugging and escapism.

The channelers tell us that we dodged a bullet — not the asteroid that came within fifteen minutes of smacking the planet, nor a limping resurgence of the darker forces that have lost so much power and control in the last few years. They tell us that we are still here, the planet still spinning, the predictions of global cataclysm bypassed by the ascent of an awakening populace and a coming spiritual renaissance. Perhaps it’s true, the thick membrane of old paradigm energy dotted with holes now like Swiss cheese, allowing in new possibility. Perhaps we should put up Post-It notes, to remind ourselves from moment to moment: we made it through Shift, we started again. Yet we’re still timid and docile, cowed by old authority even as we are lifted into new paradigm energies, with opportunities that go unnoticed because our power to manifest them remains untried.

It’s time to try them. To create some firsts of our own, personally, collectively, politically. To step into our power by coming to terms with all the lies we’ve swallowed, all the misperceptions we’ve allowed, all the self-awareness we’ve denied. This is our opportunity to finish up the old way of civilization with a whisper, to enter into a new expression with a whoop! We’ve been working at finishing up without knowing it for close to a century, and this is our point of power.

For generations, we talked of relationship without understanding that we draw to us a reflection of our own dysfunction. With Pluto’s discovery, we found we could wrestle that angel, face that mirror, frightening as it was. For decades, we have been involved in what we called self-actualization, discovering and eliminating baggage and emotional-debris, long-cherished and used for comfortable self-definition. The hard work of self-healing is rewarded by the magnetizing to us of the also-healed. The evolution of our thought process brings us closer to collaboration and cooperation, to gentleness and generosity, creating a new palate of colors to paint our global interactions. Our effort to heal ourselves is like carving away the bits of marble that hide the statue; we are finding ourselves,  revealing ourselves.

And now we’ve graduated. We’ve dodged a bullet, we’re still here, and we’re coming into power as spiritually mature individuals. We are recreating our world and we must step into the new abilities that are as close as a breath, a surrender, a prayer. We will find them if we trust that they are there.

I’ll leave you with a bit from Marianne Williamson’s latest article, Wisdom Politics:

What we need is a new kind of thinking, and out of that will emerge a new politics – a wisdom politics – that reconnects the brain to the heart, and in so doing creates the possibility for breakthroughs that don’t otherwise exist. When we’re willing to make love and not economics our new bottom line, then everything will shift — from how we treat our children, to how we treat our earth, to how we treat each other. Our priorities will change, then our behavior will change, and then our world will change. Things will be possible that seem impossible now. We will transcend the powers of undemocratic forces in the same way that generations before us have transcended them: not with money or traditional political power, but with a better idea…a more democratic idea…a more enlightened idea.

There really isn’t anything new under the sun. We’ve been trying to break through our current stranglehold so long we’ve forgotten that it is ever thus: great change begins within each of us, ripples out to influence the whole even as we influence the little pocket of energy surrounding us. Kindness rules. Truth will out. Love wins.

Let me say that again, Valentine — love wins, and we are in this great experiment to prove it so in a, finally, healed and loving world.