Be An Agent of Creation

Wilbur and I were having one of our intense conversations last night. We were sitting on the porch, which is in the middle of a major rebuild, and we can finally actually sit on it! Yay!

Anyway, we were on the porch having some wine. As we frequently do, we were discussing the sorry state of our world—pondering what we’re doing to help, what else we can do, and then reminding ourselves that somehow we also have to have a life. Etc., etc., etc.

Our conversations always cycle through the positive. They get dark and negative, and then they circle back toward something hopeful. It’s just the rhythm of the time we live in. We can never leave them in the negative, though. It’s not in our nature. We have to end somewhere positive if we’re going to keep on keeping on.

Wilbur mentioned a podcast featuring Michael Meade, who was talking about a way forward. One of the ideas that struck her—and then struck me—was his criticism of the familiar notion of becoming an “agent of change.”

Change what? Back into what it was?

We’re going to rebuild our country once this collective insanity is over. We’re going to rebuild our fractured and beat-up democracy. We’re going to have to rebuild…everything.

It feels overwhelming, doesn’t it?

The idea that somehow we have to rebuild 250 years of this country. Because within a year and a half, it seems like—it feels like—so much of what we thought we were has disappeared.

Overwhelming.

But Meade suggests something different: maybe we need to discard the whole idea of simply rebuilding. Instead, we need to create ourselves forward. Rather than being agents of change, perhaps we need to become agents of creation.

Create a new country. Create a real democracy. Create something better than what we had before.

This makes so much sense to me because where we are now didn’t suddenly happen. It has been happening for as long as I can remember. It started ages ago. So many unresolved issues. So much papering over of problems. So much deferred. So much inequity.

And I love this idea of being an Agent of Creation.

What Meade is saying is much more complex than this, of course. There are many layers to unfold. He uses the idea of “soul” in its broadest sense, and I need to sit with that for a while. But one of his core ideas, as I understand it, is that we need to change ourselves before any larger change can really happen.

I agree with that.

Maybe rebuilding isn’t enough.

Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to put everything back the way it was.

Maybe we need to create what comes next.

And this is what we artists do.

We create a future for ourselves and for the communities we are part of.

We’ve been doing it for years.

And we’re going to do it again.

Here is the podcast link:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/living-myth/id1192810215?i=1000780113228