O, Oracle, I feel hopeless about the world

I look at the state of the world and I feel hopeless. It feels like no matter what we do, the good in the world is evaporating.

O, Oracle, what can we do?

Dear forlorn friend,

Your words echo my own sentiment. In asking the Oracle for an answer to your question, I felt the vessel of my own body well up with emotion, a stirring that is both grief and fellowship in dark times.

The Oracle responds with the “two of honey”

a riot of scotch broom in the golden
hour. horde of invasive imperialists.

tender belly of a dying bee, lodged
in the grate of a speeding truck driven
by a woman running away from violence.

dandelions, edible and healing, unassuming,
waiting for her to ravish them. ready to take
flight as seed, if she waits too long.

It is the golden hour of our existence. Our scientists have placed us minutes from midnight on the doomsday clock. Everything should look more beautiful under the light of our extinction; the preciousness intensified by impermanence and the awareness of it. We are experiencing the greatest extinction event of our times. Our children may not have much of a future. Our “leaders” seem hell bent on continuing to amass capital, buying out all the underground bunkers.

It’s okay to be sad. Depressed. Despairing. Devastated. It’s insanity to move through the world as if everything is fine. It’s not. We collectively are an abused creature, running. In a trauma reaction. Gripped by flight. In our hot weeping and reactionary running, we are taking out bees and all their brethren, while the earth offers sustenance we are unable to recognize.

Dandelions. Did you know that white settlers brought dandelions with them as a staple food? We call them weeds, but every part of the plant is edible. The yellow flower, sautéed in coconut oil and smothered with banana. The greens, rich in iron. The roots make for a detoxifying tea.

We know very little of this world that so many of our kind claim to have mastered. For me, the solution lies in quietly sitting by the river, with the wild geese and the sleeping trees, paying attention. And singing, in every moment, a quiet song of gratitude for everything living being. Communion with a world that is more than human.

If we had a real relationship with this planet, would we shuffle through a world of single use plastics and all of our resources devoted to war? Humanity seems to have an unconscious suicidal ideation—one that requires deep healing. Our politicians are simply a reflection of our own hurting collective unconscious—the answer lies in grieving everything every single one of us has lost because of genocide, racism, capitalism, patriarchy. We are all worse off. If everyday we were able to truly grieve our losses, what we wanted but could never have because we were born into an already dying world, then we might be able to make a free choice.

Grief. Gratitude. These are the Oracle’s answers.

The Oracle offers up this ritual:

invite a drone to enter you, skin
embracing stinger. slow the flow
of venom so an area the size of
both hands swells upon you. read
closely the open pores and broken
capillaries. find the hidden map of
your poisoning. stinger marks the
spot. go there.

Our aches are an atlas. Our wounding a cartography of pain. What scares you? Embrace it. As the wonderful Pema Chödrön writes in When Things Fall Apart, “fear is a sign that you are getting closer to the truth.”

But be gentle with yourselves. And remember to take time everyday to feel.