Reckoning at the 2043 Cascadia Shaman’s Convergence –
New Myth 28 by Willi Paul
Resilience is best understood as a process. It is often mistakenly assumed to be a trait of the individual, an idea more typically referred to as “resiliency”. Most research now shows that resilience is the result of individuals being able to interact with their environments and the processes that either promote well-being or protect them against the overwhelming influence of risk factors. These processes can be individual coping strategies, or may be helped along by good families, schools, communities, and social policies that make resilience more likely to occur. Commonly used terms, which are closely related within psychology, are “psychological resilience”, “emotional resilience”, “hardiness”, “resourcefulness”, and “mental toughness”.
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The men and women spirit channels hived at a secret crossing along the American River northeast of Auburn, CA. Only Shaman of the Light Network are aware of this geomantic location. A few mature trees that remain in the post-Chaos Era welcome and shelter them. A look-out schedule is posted as they must keep all eyes for the out-stretch hands of the dark troops mutating in the east.
One of the rituals in the Shaman’s Convergence is the sharing of new songs, poems or myths from their territories in Cascadia. Zephyr Canon took-up his turn by showing the group how to use a quartz crystal to refract and dance the fire light to help illustrate the times before the Chaos Era finally ended the founding fathers greed, global aggression, and in-sustainability joy ride.
“The year is 2021, people,” he called.
“They had to hightail themselves out of the cages of the ruling class and toward local circles of resistance and honest barter.”
“The future is of little concern for the poor, the homeless and the ill.”
“Quite so.”
“Many spoke and marched and broke store windows back then but too few took real actions to build a more egalitarian and localized system.”
“Permaculture is fractionized; marginalized by old boy egos and profit-taking.”
“On the surface, many were “acting collectively” but were actually just small businesses preaching sustainable collectivism. Like so many GMO-corrupt farmers markets. “Latino, Asia, Jamaica, African-America, and White neighbors set-up their own booths to take their profit from the community while forced to pay a percentage -taking authority for the right to locate there for the day.”
“Fewer and fewer ate healthy, were safe and had access to tools to build local systems.”
“Who wrote the new myths in the Transition and Chaos eras?”
“The Shamen.”
“Here then is a fundamental paradox: who really needs a new story or vision? And by default: who keeps getting the old ones shoved into their ears?”
“Our challenge is to continue to satisfy the “universal” mandate of myth building – even with so many misplaced souls and twisted spines.”
“The end of the Transition meant that the rich were out of resources and the poor finally understood the value of their gold. The Chaos on all levels was unavoidable.
“Fire is as fundamental to our history, sisters and brothers – and to our Post-Transition future – as Nature herself.”
Zephyr Canon dropped his magic quartz piece into the hands of the next sharer and went to relieve a sister on the perimeter.
