Featured painting by Indigenous artist Jennifer Napaljarri Lewis
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“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ― Søren Kierkegaard
The creek behind my house seldom freezes. Her flowing waters can be seen from my back porch this time of year through the naked trees. Ridley Creek’s source is about 15 miles upstream from here and she pours out into the tidal Delaware River about 15 miles southeast. Yet, her journey is much longer than mere miles, for she has been a cloud, the tears of a child, and a rainstorm in some of her previous lives and her future is a story still unfolding.
Likewise, here we are at a singular moment. If we could freeze the river of Time, we might skate ahead and learn our fate. We can’t. However, we do know that in this moment the future and past are also present. We hold the past and future within us. Upstream…downstream. Therefore, we can’t explore the theme of our winter edition, Possible Futures, without looking deeply at the past.
I asked author Jeremy Lent, who has spent a lot of time studying human civilizations, where we lost our way as a species that shares. His insights bear reflection if we want to understand where our present trajectory may take us. Read our conversation in The Next Civilization.
Rob Hopkins, a cofounder of the global Transition Town movement, looks back at how his community transformed Totnes in the UK, to become a model for current and future transitioners worldwide. The fundamental ingredient is imagination, he says, as we move from What Is to What If.
There is much more to share — a strong current of hope runs through these features. inviting us to put ourselves into service — like the creek here which supplies 40,000 of my neighbors with about two and a half million gallons of clean drinking water per day. This spiritual quality of givingness is not separate from the creek’s physical existence, and yet it is transcendent. We, too, are this way. The phenomenon of human existence on planet Earth may be imperiled, yet our journey is much longer than mere miles. We are Spirit manifest in a web of Life and meaning, and our future is a story still unfolding.
