Radical Action. Radical Service. It Begins at Home.

Rebecca Solnit and Terry Tempest Williams

I took what used to be referred to as a disco nap yesterday. After a late afternoon client, an even later long sleep, just so I could stay up to hear Rebecca Solnit and Terry Tempest Williams have a chat about our world at 10 pm Eastern. 

As I write these words, Biden is ahead in the race for the presidency, the Senate is in a dead heat, the House remains Democratic, and the Supremes are hopefully dancing to their own drummer.  

Biden’s transition website went live yesterday. Trump continues to squawk about threatening legal vote counts. We, the American people, wait. As does the world. 

Rebecca Solnit and Terry Tempest Williams are long-time friends who have worked together for decades to influence responses to climate change. Their similarities are cogent. Their approaches are divergent, to say the least. 

In the 90-minute conversation, they each read from a new anthology of essays by Point Reyes Books called The Most Radical Thing You Can Do. Rebecca also read a self-designated rant from her morning post on Facebook. Her approach is intellect-based and hugely inclusive. She mentions marginalized communities across the spectrum with sincerity and ease. 

Terry quoted Gary Snyder’s answer to how to address climate change. “The most radical thing you can do is stay home.” She observed that the pandemic has required that we do just that. Terry’s approach is heart-based and, whilst inclusive, home-centered. She talked about long conversations she’d had with her brother and with a friend who works in the oil industry. 

I was struck solidly by the complementarity of both women’s approaches.  

Intellect-based radicalism.  

Heart-based radicalism. 

In this morning’s New York Times, foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman writes, “I confess that the hardest conversations I had Tuesday night were with my daughters. I so badly want to tell them that all is going to be OK, that we’ve been through bad patches as a country before. And I hope that will turn out to be the case—that whoever wins this election will draw the right conclusion that we simply cannot go on tearing one another apart. 

“But I could not, in all honesty, tell them that with any confidence. I am certain ‘the better angels of our nature’ are still out there. But our politics and our political system right now are not inspiring them to emerge at the scale and speed that we so desperately need.” 

Usually, I agree with Mr. Friedman. His voice is most often a voice of reason. Some of us, like him, would like our better angels to …, uh, trump the political process. To intervene at scale and at warp speed. 

But there’s a reason, and a good one, that they haven’t, Beloved. 

The election results attest to the reason.  

A lot of us aren’t ready for that kind of change.  

Like it, don’t like it. So? It is what’s so. 

Rebecca’s approach and Terry’s approach to what we do now indicate the same thing. A lot of us aren’t ready.  

What might be causing that not-readiness? I think it bottom-lines directly at fear, to borrow from Mother Teresa, in all its distressing disguises. Not everyone has the same fear in this case. Some fear change. Some fear otherness. Some fear redundancy. Some fear the economy. Some fear loss of power. Some fear loss of status. There are as many fears as there are beings. 

At the end of the conversation between these two towering authors, the moderator asked a question from the audience.  

“What do I tell my 20-something children who see only a bleak future ahead for themselves?” 

Rebecca went off on a liberal stream-of-consciousness, sort of first draft of an essay, intellectual flight. 

Terry went off on an open heart, measured, quiet sermon that included patience and deep listening to one another through conversational connecting to find our similarities. 

Their two responses prompted a metaphysical response from me. 

First, let’s acknowledge that we need both minds and hearts to get anything done on this planet of ours, and in this country of ours. We can’t be all intellect and we can’t be all heart. We need the balance of both. 

Second, take the question down to the personal, 20-somethings. (And 30-90-somethings, I added.)  

Here’s my answer to the question: 

Start where you are.
Look around.
What’s breaking your heart?
When you can answer that, hold still.
Search deep within yourself to discover what you want to do about it.
Do that.
Repeat. 

That’s how all futures are made, Beloved. 

Yours.
Mine.
America’s. 

One personal dream at a time. 

“The most radical thing you can do is stay home,” so sayeth Gary Snyder in answer to how we address climate change. 

Let that inform your dreaming, Beloved. 

Stay home inside yourself.

Make a difference right where you are, with what you have right now because those are the actions that taken altogether will invite those angels to swoop in at scale and at growing-to warp  speed to transform all of us—together—for the better. 

Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her website is susancorso.com.