Our unofficial slogan here at Collapse Club is: “All you need is Love!” As the world gets crazier, do we really believe this?
Love is not one thing. Love is an attitude, a way of life, a beacon that calls us to the highest way of living.
A basic kind of love is what I feel for the people and creatures close to me. I love my family, I love my cats. They constitute my day-to-day world. I use my life energy to protect them and provide for their well-being.
Another kind of love is what I feel for Nature: I love the trees, the sky, the animals, the water. This love is tinged with awe and wonder: I love Nature because it is my home, because it provides life for me, and also because it is beautiful in its own right. It embodies a principle and a power, the power of life.
I have a special love for my fellow human beings, even people I don’t know who are in far-off lands living unfamiliar lives. I love them because they are kin, members of the human family. This is love as respect and courtesy, making room for people who are different than me.
The advancing of collapse seems to threaten Love, forcing it into retreat. War is rampant; people are killed for no reason. The natural world is suffering from unthinking exploitation; the fabric of life is shredding. It’s harder now for me to take care of my family, though I am still immensely privileged; I know people who are truly unable to take care of themselves and their loved ones, and who suffer every day because of it.
What does this tell us about Love? Is Love dying, or irrelevant, or a fiction?
No. There is another kind of Love that is not defeated by anything that happens in the world. We often do not see it, because we are not looking for it. It is the wind that blows from every portal, the breath that is heard in every voice. It is the source and substance of everything that exists.
Right now, we see we are in danger and we feel fear. The temptation is to build a fortress in the world, to protect ourselves within the walls of permanence and power. But the world is not permanent; it flows and passes away. This is the meaning of the Hopi prophecy: “Do not hold onto the shore. Let go, and be carried by the river.”
We are the people who choose to participate in the great Love, rather than cling to the illusion of safety. There are many twists and turns in the strange history of the world, but beneath it all is the power that brings life. Sometimes the world is sunk in night, but the Sun rises, throwing light and warmth on the fertile land.
Our virtue is patience and our duty is fortitude. This is the Love that we celebrate and to which we are devoted.
These stories contain the opinions of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Collapse Club members or conveners.
This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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At Collapse Club we gather so that we are not alone. We gather to metabolize our grief. We gather to understand what it can mean to have hope at the end of the world. We have discovered something marvelous! There are as many perspectives as there are people. Everyone has their own ideas, their own practices, their own wisdom. We do not seek for one grand, correct idea; we seek to learn from everyone we meet.
This article explores the cognitive dissonance created by the psychological tension between participating in industrial civilization, all the while, believing in its inevitable downfall (destruction) and how communities navigate and accept this emotionally painful experience.
I have attended Al-Anon meetings for 29 years and I still use this prayer to help me keep a balanced attitude. Can I also use this simple prayer to help me cope with the collapse of civilization? Is it even possible to have “serenity” in these changing times?
