The blizzard of the world

"Tying a rope to the back door to find your way home again"

The blizzard of the world

has crossed the threshold

 and it has overturned

 the order of the soul.

            --Leonard Cohen

“There was a time when farmers on the Great Plains, at the first signs of a blizzard, would run a rope from the back door out to the barn.  They all knew stories of people who had wandered off and been frozen to death, having lost sight of home in a whiteout while still in their own back yards. . .

“Today we live in a blizzard of another sort.  It swirls around us as economic injustice, ecological ruin, physical and spiritual violence, and their inevitable outcome, war.  It swirls within us as fear and frenzy, greed and deceit, and indifference to the suffering of others.  . .

“We all know stories of people who have wandered off into this madness and been separated from their own souls . . . The lost ones come from every walk of life . . .

“So it is easy to believe the poet’s claim that “the blizzard of the world” has overturned “the order of the soul,” easy to believe that the soul—that life-giving core of the human self, with its hunger for truth and justice, love and forgiveness—has lost all power to guide our lives. . .

“But my own experience of the blizzard, which includes getting lost in it more often than I like to admit, tells me that it is not so.  The soul’s order can never be destroyed.  It may be obscured by the whiteout.  We may forget, or deny, that its guidance is close at hand.  And yet, we are still in the soul’s back yard, with chance after chance to regain our bearings. . .

“[The Cultural Butterfly Project] is about tying a rope from the back door out to the barn so we can find our way home again.  When we catch sight of the soul, we can survive the blizzard without losing our hope or our way.  (Emphasis mine) When we catch sight of the soul, we can become healers in a wounded world—in the family, the neighborhood, the workplace, and in political life—as we are called back to our “hidden wholeness” amid the violence of the storm. . .”

From Parker Palmer’s Prelude to his book A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life.

Like that book, the Cultural Butterfly Project is about “tying a rope from the back door out to the barn so we can find our way home again.” In addition to highlighting examples springing up that are giving substance to the emerging new world we are creating, it is also about creating a new cultural narrative in which we can flourish--a narrative of a soul-centered culture for the greater well-being of all in which soul is “that life-giving core of the human self, with its hunger for truth and justice, love and forgiveness”, as Parker describes it.

I’d love to know how this lands for you. You can email me or message me through my website.