Episode 3.07: Monuments
THE PODCAST: January 5, 2021
ON TAKING THE CIRCUITOUS ROUTE TO DISCOVERY
Tim & Tuesday kick off the new year reflecting on the turning points of 2020 while reaching into history and ancestry to lend some meaning and insight on this moment we’re in and where we go from here.
Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.
3.07 — SHOW NOTES
Tim: Tues and I dive into reflections of this turning point of the winter solstice, this turning point in the year, this turning point in our relationship to COVID-19 and the pandemic and really reaching into history and the past and ancestry to lend some meaning and insight into this moment we’re in and where we go from here; really coming from our two very different perspectives and lineages that we pull from to make sense of the modern world. We also touch in on what are the monuments that we’re gotten from the past and what are the monuments we are creating today for the future and what does that mean? How would we like to do that? And this idea that we can meander a bit. We don’t have to take that straight road to what’s next.
Tues: We’re recording today’s episode on the day after Winter Solstice. As such, I’ve been thinking about the idea of us as a reflection of what is happening to the Earth right now. We just passed the longest night and now we’re in the return of the light today. I’ve been thinking a lot of the idea of death to have something new reborn; moving from darkness into light … just that transition point, that moment. I thought that would be interesting for us to talk about right now - what’s dark and light, what dying and being reborn, what’s up for us in terms of as a reflection of the very Earth we are on right now.
Tim: Why’s that speaking to us right now?
Tues: If we think about The Outside work, I think it feels like a direct connection from this ‘rest and reflection’ in the Fall which has felt like a movement towards slowing towards slowing down and stillness. I can feel this moment of pause before we turn our gaze again to the outward world and start back up in January. As I get older, I feel it more. My body is feeling the dark and slowness and really wanting to be in the pause of this next two weeks before we start back up.
Tim: I find that the more space I make in my life, the more opportunity there is to see clearly and then make deliberate choices or even just notice what’s happening in terms of my own growth. The Autumn has been a period of stopping and digging deeper internally into my on life and journey. I’m in a period of life - a solstice of a bigger journey for me - that is requiring some evaluation, looking, learning and recalibration of some of my most intimate relationships, as well as my working relationships, and my relationships with myself and the different traumatized parts of me and so I think there’s been a huge journey of that through this Fall and I think I am in a period of building out from there.
Tim: I’ve been reading this book called “Ancient Wonderlings,” by James Canton and he tells a story about one of the Islands, called Uist, in the north of England and he talks about how these were one of the first people in the British Isles to settle. These folks chose to stay in a place and how that changes people’s relationships with place. Our ancestors left us monuments, or messages, to teach us how to live life now. By choosing not to flee and stay with it and allow monuments to be built from that - what are the messages we send future generations by doing that? And what are the messages that we are leaving that we don’t even know?
Tues: I think I’ve lived a lot of my internal life as a ‘Roman road’ - there’s an issue/trauma; let me go toward it, let me figure it out and come out the other side. I feel like more recently that internal mode is beginning to loosen up or die and what’s being born is a direct relationship to ancestral or spirit. A more organic way to know myself. I think we’re doing it with The Outside too - we’re moving from stone to stone.
Tim: I’m a great believer in what Dr. Martin Shaw calls the circuitous route. Taking the circuitous route lends depth. Growth does not necessarily happen in getting from A to B. If what you are seeking is growth, or something new, or discovery the circuitous route offers something there.
Tim: Think about this in terms of COVID as we gradually begin the journey out. There are going to be challenges to the returning and the reforging of our communities and our organizations and our families on the other side of this that is going to take time and will demand new acts of courage and heroism that we cannot image or predict.
Poem: “Gayatri Mantra” by Deva Premal & Miten
Song: “Here Comes The Sun,” by Richie Havens
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Duration: 45:25
Produced by: Mark Coffin
Theme music: Gary Blakemore
Episode cover image: source