Alert without Urgency!
Urgency. We don’t really have that here. Dogon elder, Guimolo Dolo (quoted in Cynthia Jurs’ Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World)
My people say, ‘The times are urgent let us slow down.’ Bayo Akomolafe (quoted in Cynthia Jurs’ Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World)
Ancient wisdom from another continent.
As Earth Day approaches, war rages, and breaking world systems reveal their weaknesses, we hear increasing calls to act, to contribute, and to ‘do’ more, all with a sense of great urgency. Urgency for what? What if our urgency is part of the problem? What if in our felt sense of urgency we are acting and reacting in the same worn-out ways that perpetuate the problems and keep us on a hamster wheel? Stuck in motion. Moving faster, harder. Not getting the results we want.
These questions rose in me yesterday as I was reminded of a story in Cynthia Jurs profoundly moving book, Summoned by the Earth. I was reminded of the many reflections the book evoked in me a few weeks back. Fodder for future Pivot posts, I thought, especially with Earth Day on the horizon.
This morning, wondering what wanted to be shared, I opened the book. When my eyes landed on the page, I discovered it was just where the story of Jurs experience with the Dogon elder quoted above begins. [Message received. Thank you.]
Urgency. I wondered about the word itself and its origins. And I asked, ‘What might a world without urgency look like, feel like? What might be possible without the angst and outright fear that urgency evokes around almost every issue of our time?’
Looking at the etymology of ‘urge’, I discovered that it is from the Latin urgere – to press hard, push forward, force, drive, compel, stimulate. Ugh! Sounds like the very characteristics of a world of competition, separation, and indeed, war. Further exploration revealed that ‘urge’ may be from a PIE root, urgh – to tie, bind. Hmm … bind … that doesn’t sound like a world of freedom, of sovereignty, of peace.
As I reflected on these origins, I felt a sense of constriction in my body and sensed urgency’s connection to fear. It’s similar to how I feel when I find myself rushing, urgently needing to be ‘on time’ for whatever is on my calendar or to complete a task quickly so I can move to the next.
Habitual, unconscious urgency. An all too familiar pattern that today has a new twist: an awareness that the energy of urgency binds me to these old patterns and habits and to unconscious choices and reactions to circumstances. Urgency limits possibility and minimizes the potential for miracles that emerge from BEing in cooperation and co-creation with Nature, with my natural rhythms, and with the very Source of Life itself.
As Earth Day approaches, I feel curious and inspired to notice when urgency rises and to be at choice in how I respond. I’m curious what miracles may rise in a world without urgency, where we slow down and more deeply connect with Self, with one another, with Source, and are guided from the inside out, not by what we encounter outside of ourselves.
In that curiosity, I leave you with a bit more of Cynthia Jurs wisdom of sacred time and of opening to the possibility, the magic of a more beauty and peace-filled world:
When we go for a slow walk in nature, breathing mindfully with each step and looking up on occasion to notice the blue sky or the clouds gathering; when we suddenly hear the animal calls, the birdsong, or the wind rustling in the trees at the just the right moment; these seem like little miracles signaling the presence of spirit moving between us, inviting us to be aware of something so much larger than ourselves – a relationship of interbeing. These are the moments when an opening to another world is revealed, and if we stop to catch our breath, we may glimpse the light.
The Ziggurat