Resurrecting Community
What rises, what was buried, and what we must tend to.
Long before the Easter story was told, humanity was already telling it. Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love and fertility, descended into the underworld and returned — and the world bloomed again with her. Persephone rose from the dark earth each spring and the grain rose with her. Osiris was killed, gathered back together, and restored. These are not competing stories. They are the same story, told in different tongues across thousands of years, because the human heart has always known this shape: what matters most can be lost, and its return is possible.
Community is one of those things. Not the word — the word is thriving. It appears in app download pages, mission statements, subscription upsells. “Join our community.” Community as product. Community as the warm feeling that keeps the metric moving.
That is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the older, harder, more demanding thing: the experience of being genuinely known by people who are genuinely present. The kind of community that has a smell. That argues. That feeds you when you are sick. That notices when you are absent.
We did not lose community because people stopped caring. We lost it because we built a world that makes presence expensive and absence cheap.
Community was not lost passively. It was squeezed out — by urban designs that eliminated the front porch, by economic pressures that consume every hour, by technology engineered to capture attention rather than deepen presence. These are not acts of God. They are choices. They can be made differently.
So what does resurrection actually look like? Not policy, not platforms — the small, specific, almost embarrassingly simple things.
It looks like eye contact. A real one, held a beat longer than the transaction requires, that says: I see you, not just the role you are playing. It looks like a smile offered to a stranger on a sidewalk — not performed, but meant. These tiny acts are not sentimental. They are the atoms of community, the smallest unit of acknowledgment from which everything larger is built.
It looks like knocking on the door of the elderly neighbor and asking if anything needs doing. Carrying the groceries up. Sitting for twenty minutes because she hasn’t talked to anyone today and you have twenty minutes. This is not heroism. It is the baseline of what it means to live near someone rather than merely adjacent to them.
It looks like staying. Staying at the block party past your comfort zone. Staying in the difficult conversation. Staying in the neighborhood long enough to be known. Real community is built not in grand gestures but in the accumulated weight of showing up, again and again, in ordinary time.
The spring traditions knew this. Ishtar’s return was not automatic — it was called for, celebrated, met with ritual and intention. Persephone’s emergence was not taken for granted — it was tended, honored, received. Resurrection in every tradition requires the participation of the living. Someone has to roll away the stone. Someone has to be there when what was lost comes back.
On this particular Easter Sunday, that someone is you. The invitation is not abstract. It is the neighbor whose name you almost know. The face in the elevator you have been too distracted to meet. The friend you keep meaning to call.
What has been buried can return. But not by an algorithm. Not by an app. Only by the decision, made again today, to show up — to know and be known, to stay, to tend the small things until the larger ones become possible again.
Happy Easter.
Change or Die
In this crazy year of 2020, we’ve already been forced into some pretty substantial changes. COVID-19 has most of us in masks in public, social distancing and avoiding what used to be commonplace like going to a game or shopping. All changes we didn’t seek, but changes we have to deal with none the less. And that’s just coronavirus stuff.
Change or Die applies to the more active resistance to police abuse. If you’re a person of color, your very life is threatened by systemic racism and cops who want to control others instead of supporting their communities.
We’re seeing Change or Die being applied to the Democratic Convention and we’ll surely see it next week at the Republican. No crowded convention halls, no physical back room deals – it’s all had to change.
Here in Cincinnati we’re having another bout of gun killings. Last weekend 18 people were shot with 4 of them dying. Here’s a piece from WLWT.com about how 2020 could see the most deaths ever, passing 2106 as our deadliest year so far. And this piece was published on August 4, before this past weekend…
These are just a few top of mind examples of the incredible changes we’re facing and hence the incredible strain we’re under. If you live in Eastern Iowa you’re facing even more challenges, as the ‘storms’ there last week devastated the area.
Which points to at least one or two more ‘Change or Die’ points. Climate Chaos is already upon us. The media changed the term to ‘climate change’ from ‘global warming’ because global warming sounded too scary. I guess we’re not scared enough yet. Iowa’s huge agricultural footprint points to another Change or Die – Industrial Agriculture.
Modifying our food plants so they can withstand pesticides being applied to reduce bugs or weeds – what could go wrong? GMOs. And why might that be some disgusting shit to put it our bodies – it is. And this before we mention topsoil loss, ocean dead zones, runoff from factory farms where caged animals live and die for our meat-heavy diets.
Change or Die. It’s a new mantra, a new meme. Alan Duetschman actually wrote a book on the topic back in 2007. A main theme of his? We don’t like to change, and don’t do it much.
I counter that we change plenty when it’s life or death, as we’re doing this year. And yet there’s an even more interesting and compelling context for ‘Change or Die’. It’s how we run our personal lives.
There’s no data on how fearful we are. No pundits who describe a year as particularly full of fear or full of release, minimal stress, etc. That said, 2020 is probably the most fearful year since at least the 1960s, when so many of us were convinced nuclear war was imminent. The COVID-19 disruption. BLM with so many ruined lives from past brutalities and a bully president. Economic desolation with so many of us losing work and/or businesses. The fear level is overwhelming.
Here, at ground zero of our individual lives, we find another ‘Change or Die’ situation. Even in these times where our very species feels threatened, we can choose to live without fear. Now that’s a change. Fear is the conditioned response we’ve been taught as a reaction to pain our whole lives, and our corrupt culture is heavily predisposed to making us afraid because it serves their ends. I could go on and on about the corporate empire we live under, but my concern here is to remind you of the freedom you have within that pretty little head of yours.
Regardless of what the world throws at us, we maintain the power of out intent. We are (potentially) the masters of our intent, so we can choose love over fear this second. (That said, in my case it’s been about a 30 year process.) At least when I started working to rid myself of fear, I understood the real choice, which is how I play it right now, this point where the future becomes the past. This point of Life, Now.
The greatest learning on my quest was ‘A Course in Miracles’, a very curious work notable for lessons like ‘There is no fear.’ and ‘I need do nothing.’ – a far cry from what we’ve learned growing up in this broken culture. This quest is so central to the quality of our lives that I write extensively about fear and love in my book, ‘World 5.0 – We Move From Here’. And if the idea of the Totality of Now seems foreign, I’ve an article on World5.org that addresses The Three Truths.
So, even as our world is crumbling under the weight of all the bullshit in the old culture, a new culture, built on Life Itself, is emerging. Those of us living within the new culture, if only in our personal lives, know ‘there is no fear’.
A Revolution of Love
After generations of abuse from the world’s controllers, the global elite are losing their grip. For those paying attention, there are a host if indicators that their iron fist of control is cracking.
New forms of banking are emerging to challenge the corruption of Wall Street. The fossil fuel industry is losing control as renewable resources come online, we the people rejecting their priority of profits over climate change and the Earth’s health. Organic food is growing by leaps and bound. We could go on and on.
But let’s focus on the new. What is replacing these obsolete systems?
New systems that reflect our human dignity and the Earth. Systems that contribute to our wholeness instead of ill health. Systems that demand equal rights, economic rights, and integrity and transparency.
These are signs of love emerging. But they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
<
In sharp contrast to the devastation being visited on the Middle East by the Empire, on a more personal scale we’re seeing folks find alignment and getting along like never before. We’re seeing a greater sense of empathy, a reaching out to help and an engagement in neighborhoods and communities that is unmatched in generations.
Love is emerging.
And in this crazy election year, we’re seeing a commitment to progressive, human supporting ideas that hasn’t been seen since the New Deal in the 1930s.
Let’s be clear. Love is the deepest human emotion we are capable of. It wishes the best for everyone, without the motivation of personal benefit, like wanting to get laid. Love is the genuine expression of life once fear is removed from our lives. You see, it is Peace that engenders Love, because at are core we are Eternal Awareness – call it Life, God, Allah, The Force – the word is of little consequence. So regardless of the tumultuous nature of our lives, at our core is peace. And by touching that peace, love becomes our natural expression.
What many of us older folk struggle to learn, the younger folk have an intuitive understanding of who we are and what we are about. This is why they flock to Bernie. He’s authentic and holds integrity, rare traits in politicians.
We can thank the indomitable Bernie Sanders for lighting this fire. But it is not his flame. This is the flame of Truth emerging. This is the flame of millions taking action for a better way forward. This is the flame of recognition when we look into a stranger’s eyes and see a friend. This is the flame of revolution. And the revolution is Love.
From Peace Comes Joy
Sadly, among the innumerable failure and deceits of the current culture, one of the largest omissions is the recognition that from peace comes joy. The propaganda, religiosity, and belief codes we’ve faced from a corrupt system have left us traumatized. We do not think clearly. Donald Trump is Exhibit A. Hillary is exhibit B. And yet as the Three Truths describes, our intent is our most powerful tool in interpreting reality and in making decisions that reflect our true selves. So it is ever our decision right now that allows for a sense of peace. An appreciation that we are all here together, and as individuals exactly where life would have us. And so with each thought, with emotion, with each belief code we study within ourselves seeking to understand who we are and how to be happy, we have now the context of Eternity to understand our place. We are Life. We are Union. And we are a whole bunch of freaks each doing our own thing and trying to find ourselves and each other as best we can. Well, now we can. We have the truth. We have the name. With the Bern Movement, we have a base of folks already together to move our selves forward. But regardless, even should we find Clinton or Trump in the White House, our recognition transcends politics. Our peace is grounded in the clear awareness that we are always here. And so, as biological beings with self awareness living in Eternity, why would we not be peaceful? We would and we do. Some might think ‘oh how boring’, but there’s nothing further from the truth. With peace we find Life’s ongoing and constant enchantment. We find this act of being and living a biological life a gift. We find the magic of Life everywhere, which is again but truth. All good. Yet none of the above addresses what may well be the greatest benefit of peace – joy. True joy is boundless, a great stirring in the heart where we trust fully and completely. We know where we are, and it is exactly where Life intends. We know even with the horrific state of our corrupt culture that a great healing is beginning. We know we are all here together, on the great adventure of transforming our Earth. Why would we choose anything else?
Coming Soon
Hi, and welcome to the new World 5.0 website. If you’re new to this idea of World5, you’re in for a treat. World 5.0 cracks the code of who and where we are, and suggests ways forward that will bring you happiness. Read the book and check out the Declaration video to submerse and learn.
And Now (ahem), we have a digital home. Here you find a refreshing retreat from bullshit and ads, a place where you can contribute and express yourself quite easily through the Connect menu link above. We can now finally be heard in a supportive way.
The World 5.0 menu link breaks down the necessary priorities for us to restore our planet and create new global, local and everywhere in between cultures that affirm Life and our togetherness herein.
We intend much more with this site, primarily in creating better tools to connect with each other, but it’s clearly a beginning. The Connect button on the menu will allow you to post articles, add links and videos for starters, and see and comment on recent posts from others. Soon we’ll allow for grouping by topic and other additions to make that side of the site and functional as possible. The World 5.0 side allows you to learn about our new culture, where we appreciate that we’re all here together in Life, and we begin to understand the power of our intent. The Platform suggests transformative strategies based on Peace, Good Governance, Localism, Organic Food and Learning.
We’ll also be implementing new digital tools as quickly as we may to bring our new paradigm into being. Bernie Sanders keeps telling us of the need for a revolution. Couldn’t agree more, and World 5.0 is surely part of this revolution./p>