Progress ceases to be Progress when it is incapable of unfettered flight. Opening the door and sliding into a comfortable, roomy new four door sedan only feels divinely "right" when there is seemingly no downside to the journey. Progress must always be making the world a better place in every way or by definition its not Progress. Dreamy rides resulting in global warming and the deaths of our soldiers in far away lands, in the deaths of innocents around the world, result in the spirit of Progress leaving us.
Like an animal that's been used for round after round of lab tests, fossil fuel has given us all it can without dying. Its abused, angry and being protected by more and more violence. Try to reach out to that vengeful feral creature and you will pull back a bloodied hand. Without abundant cheap oil the factories of Progress can neither be remade or retooled. Oil is just too costly, not only in terms of environmental damage, political turmoil and cold cash, but also in terms of the loss of lives both at home and around the world.
Even without this oil problem I think Progress has done its job, that's why its leaving now. Whatever it came to deliver has been delivered. All the nifty gadgets and things we love to dote over were really just byproducts of a larger effort. I suspect it may have come to deliver a few things. Stuff like the internet, the ability to travel to the moon and the science and technology necessary to delve deeply into the nature of life all feel to me like they have a purpose that may be a part of some greater story that continues to unfold. It was never really about iPods.
Yes there will still be new things made. Some of us will be able to collect more stuff than we ever have before, but our children will not feel the delightful surge of Progress the way we did. There will not be more healthy food than we can make now. We will not be able to have bigger families than we can afford to now. We will likely not live longer than we can now. There are no more devices left to make our lives truly better. The end of Progress is upon us.
When I think of Progress I think of my Father. Progress eliminated horrible diseases and suffering from his life. Progress gave him opportunities no generation before him had. Progress fired his imagination with trips to the moon and computers. Progress helped him feed his family and send all of his children to college. Progress protected us as he worked tirelessly with my Mother to raise us and ease our transition out into the world. It may be that Progress has been the greatest tool in his arsenal as a Father. A new Father, I recognize that clinging to Progress may hurt my family in the long run. I don't know whats coming next, I only know it ain't more Progress.
This is an interesting place to stand, at the end of one age awaiting the birth of another. In a workshop on Celtic Shamanism last weekend, I experienced an initiation based in the idea of "Betwixt and Between". In magical thinking thresholds are of great importance, considered by some to be places of extraordinary transformative power. The time just before sunrise or sunset, equinoxes, and even the thresholds of doorways are expressions of Betwixt and Between. Engaging those energies when you're attempting to change something in your life is very potent work.
Working with Betwixt and Between gave me a totally unexpected and profound healing around men. Perhaps it was as one participant Stuart said. Rather than seeing the story we were working with (from Celtic Lore - the Fourth Book of The Mabinongion) as a tale of a young man initiated through various trials, he saw instead a Father redeeming himself by virtue of his quest to empower his son. The Father starts out as a rapist but through his efforts to empower his son becomes a man in service of the greater good.
After our initiation ritual was done I looked around the circle and realized I saw the room differently. There was more space for the men in the room in my heart. There was more room for my own Father in my heart. I was trusting the maleness of me. I was trusting Fatherhood. Though not a goal of the workshop, I experienced a reunion with the maleness of life. The gratitude I'd always felt for my father in the depths of my heart was able to come forth easily.
I've never been comfortable in the age of Progress, I've mistrusted it. Its as if I was born a creature of Betwixt and Between, creating no end of strife between my Father and I. He insisted on college. I went but used as much of the time as I could in extra curricular spiritual pursuits. He focused on Math, I focused on dance. He wanted a career for me, I wanted community of kindred spirits. I've also mistrusted the machinery of Progress. I'd rather climb without aid than trust ropes and tackle made by machines. I see now that my fear and attraction to Progress and my love and fear of my Father were the same thing - ultimately the struggle of becoming a man.
As the age of Progress ebbs at our feet like the waters of a tidal marsh retreating to the ocean, we are truly Betwixt and Between. Last weekend the ancient past stepped to the fore in my life, if only to help in this time of great transformation. I suspect the bones of our ancestors will yield up the information many of us need at this time, likely it will feel both new and old to us. Terrence Mckenna predicted an "Archaic Revival". From where I stand in the muck the tide of Progress is almost gone and it is too soon to tell what the next tide will bring. This mud feels good though, both ancient and delisciously alive.
Perhaps we can best welcome in the next age by being grateful for Progress and the men and women who made it possible. My wife reminds me that when we are grateful we make room for something new to come in. Its almost like gratitude is the final stage of digestion:"mmmmm that was good, whats next!" Many who have championed the causes of Progress have been accused of crimes - both ecological and otherwise, yet they have made many glorious things possible. What an excellent example of Betwixt and Between. I suspect that someday we will truly understand how Progress has called so many to sacred and important tasks.
As this fecund marshy muck gurgles and slides between my toes and covers my feet, I'm making the choice to welcome my Father and and all others of the age of Progress more deeply into my heart. My Dad once told me he never really liked my poetry. "You're a good prose writer, I think that's your strength. But then my poetry Professor in college was Robert Frost. I have high standards." Dad used to play Jazz, his clarinet can be heard on some Benny Goodman albums.
Music and poetry have changed so much since he and his friends spent their weekends making quick cash playing at clubs up and down the East Coast, yet they are both so much a part of our lives.Perhaps the ancient arts of poetry and music can bind us all together in the spaces between the great tides of history, and the smaller tides of our lives. For my Father I make the offering of one of the few poems I've written in the last two decades that I really like. Its a gift from the wetlands not too far from my house.
A Gift From The Elkhorn Slough
I always find this prayerful marsh
sweetly drunk on itself,
eating liars like me
to make our bones true.
