Clearing the Rubble, Part Three

Here’s the final part of the new Tower Time document. I have notes for a shorter piece on tools and will try to get that done soon. For now, I’m getting ready to present at the herb fest at Wisteria in southern Ohio–I leave for that on Thursday. Let me know what you think of these ideas–I really like to read your thoughts on where we are and where we are going.

Right now our work is to clear away the debris from the fallen Tower. If it was actual chunks of stone and wood, it could easily be hauled to a place where it would be cleaned and repurposed. We are dealing with the rubble of failed ideas, of oppressive power-over models that are writ large in all the systems with which we engage. Government on every level, medicine, education, religion—all no longer function in ways that feel human-scaled, caring or even competent. When the rubble is the battered heart of the culture (whatever your culture), how can it simply be carted off in a wheelbarrow and repurposed as a stone enclosure?

It can, and it must. For it was always merely a cipher of our heart, a symbol, sometimes a rallying point. The true heart is in each of us as we reach for a future made with our own hands and not passed down to us as the empty, hungry shell we have been told we must cherish and somehow preserve.

Search your heart. Search without fear. In that place lie the answers.

If we were considering literally clearing off a piece of land that help a decayed or demolished structure, we might first sit together contemplating how the job could be done. Once completed—whatever we decide “completion” looks like—we ponder what the next steps would be. We may choose to create a garden, or a pavilion in which we could gather for celebrations, or we may choose to clear away the remains of the structure and let the land return to a more natural state. Or any one of dozens of possibilities.

What we decide will impact the salvage operation. If we are allowing the land to heal, the rubble will need to be completely removed from the site, except for the bits that can make homes for animals and insects. But if we are creating a new structure, we will be able to reuse muvh of the salvaged material.

I find a plan is usually helpful, completing a chore more efficiently. Lists can be a good tool for organization and I’m a big believer in them. Gathering our tools is next—work gloves and stout shoes, shovels, rakes, wheelbarrows, brooms. Because we are human animals and we have needs, a cooler full of drinks and a basket of snacks would also be on my list of tools.

It seems like so much preparation before the actual work begins but many of us have been preparing for a long time. Seek out those open-hearted and creative thinkers in your group and listen to what they suggest. Add to the suggestions and tweak them for the specifics of the group and its intentions.

Now begin.

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This is all euphemism and story because we aren’t literally clearing rubble. We are clearing up after six thousand years of patriarchal systems and I sorely wish that could be done with a pitchfork and bucket. But it can’t. This clearing requires us to do much harder work that that—it requires us to start small and work out from there. It requires us to think about where we are right now and also about the generations that may come after us. It requires us to talk to and work with people we don’t like and people with whom we have disagreements.

It requires many of us to liberate ourselves from deeply held cultural idea of right and wrong and to look at the culture as a whole. It also requires us to look microscopically at the ways in which the natural world works and to stop being sentimental about the biosphere of which we are a part.