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Collapse Club
Terry LePage - Being Calm and Courageous In a Time of Chaos
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David B. talks with Terry LePage, who is a facilitator at the Deep Adaptation Forum, a minister with various churches in California, and author of the book 'Eye of the Storm: Facing climate and social chaos with calm and courage'.
Terry shares her visceral reaction to the election of "47," and recounts her search for tranquility, community, and connection to the Earth.
Terry's book: https://opendoorcommunication.org/eye/get-the-book
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This is Collapse Club. I'm David Baum in Seattle. These are conversations with people making an energetic and thoughtful response to collapse. Today I'm with Terry LePage, who is a facilitator with the Deep Adaptation Forum, a minister with various churches in California, and author of the book Eye of the Storm, Facing Climate and Social Chaos with Calm and Courage. Terry and I talked about her visceral reaction to the election of 47 and her search for tranquility, community, and connection to the earth. Here's our conversation. Do you find yourself being upset these days?
SPEAKER_00Yes. I feel myself now, a couple months into the disaster, starting to to reset the baseline of my expectations for better or for worse. But initially, just huge waves of grief and physical symptoms probably for the first time ever. I think I've got a handle on those now.
SPEAKER_01What did you experience?
SPEAKER_00I would do my web surfing before bed. and I would wake up anxious and unable to go back to sleep in the wee hours. Also, I remember one time thinking, this makes me sick. It just makes me sick. And the next day I woke up with the worst case of intestinal distress that I've had in a long time. And then I thought to myself, I'm not gonna let that make me sick. So now preserving my health From getting sucked into the anxiety and grief doesn't hurt my health. I think grief is healthy. But spinning is the word I use to describe it. I'm not a therapist. I don't know the official language. But when I say spinning, a lot of people seem to know what I mean. You know, ruminating maybe is the technical term for it. I'm sure there's a great quote somewhere, but I don't have it on the tip of my tongue. Well, don't let the bastards get you down is one. It's certainly one.
SPEAKER_01What do you do to take care of yourself?
SPEAKER_00Well, I've recently discovered the spiritual practice of napping. You laugh. I cannot sleep in. I get five or six hours of sleep and that's it. The other thing I'm doing is I'm questioning my story. all the time. What is the story that I'm telling myself about this? And a lot of times I spin when I think I have to fix it. I have to do something about it. And I do need to show up, but I absolutely cannot fix the mess. I've got my little piece and I need to have the humility. That's the thought. And it's a balancing act and it's a grief to give away my dreams of making a bigger difference or however I used to imagine it.
SPEAKER_01How do you think we ought to measure our contribution? I
SPEAKER_00don't think we get to measure our contributions. I think that's an illusion. We don't know. And to the extent that When I'm humble, I admit that am I supposed to be prolonging something? Maybe it needs to die. How do I know? So what I do is I do a lot of praying and meditating. What is mine to do? And keep asking that question. And the answers right now are just small day-by-day things. So I'm not judging myself and the world by the same terms that I used to, I'm probably starting to get a little bit of an indigenous consciousness about being less about doing and more about how I'm being in the world. I
SPEAKER_01think you and I share a feeling of disappointment that we can't save the world. That's quite disappointing. If we accept that, then what do you think we do need to do or how do you think we need to be at this point in our story?
SPEAKER_00I want to be really careful about not giving prescriptions for other people. In this mapless territory, I think different people need to try different things and see what works. One guidepost that I have is... A lot of it needs to be done in community, relationships in the human world, in the non-human world. And it doesn't fix anything, but it sets a stage for what I called in my book, Life on the Tideline, for when things get precarious, your understanding, trust, and love for the humans and non-humans in your life is probably the thing that's going to keep you alive.
SPEAKER_01And beyond being alive, do you have any knowledge, beliefs, thoughts about the relationship of our work here in this world related to another world, the world of the divine, or... heaven or god you know what i'm asking is there a religious or a spiritual element to your approach to collapse
SPEAKER_00the answer to the latter question is yes my spirituality has shifted in my time since 2018 i i always have been a pan and theist god is in all all is in god and You know, use a different word if the placeholder God doesn't work for you. The sacred, whatever. So there is an interiority to that. And there's certainly elsewheres than this world. But I just don't find myself much concerned with them other than to believe that the end of life is not the end of everything. I have... imaginings rather than beliefs about what comes after death. What sustains me is a belief that everything is connected. Everyone belongs because non-humans never have a thought like, oh no, do I belong? All the humans belong. And at the heart of it is love. And that, I draw incredible strength from that. And I realize how lucky I am to just trust that, to not have it called into question. There are some wonderful teachers who are all past now who remind me how to bring spirituality and activism into dialogue and how to keep one's spiritual center while doing activism. whatever the activism may be. Since I was in D.C. for the first time, 47 was elected, we did exorcisms and the chain link fence around the White House. I had a little liberal congregation I was hanging out and there would be a half dozen of us out there. Spirit of bigotry, be gone. Spirit of hatred, be gone. Spirit of greed, be gone. Spirit of love, inhabit this place. That kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01May your magic succeed. Well,
SPEAKER_00I figure that if it doesn't work on them, it might work on me, and I'll take it.
SPEAKER_01You mentioned earlier about letting the earth love you. How do you do that? How do you allow that? What are you open to when that's happening?
SPEAKER_00What that looks like for me in a daily practice is just having a relationship with non-humans in which I listen for what they have to say. Obviously not with words, but I've got a pretty good imagination and My understanding of physics is that I don't know where I end and other things start, and I don't need to know. If I get good sense by going out to my garden and letting my garden talk to me in my mind, then I'll keep doing it. And we love each other. We love spending time together. And I very deliberately anthropomorphize. make the garden sound like a person, treat the garden like a person, because I know how to be in relationship with people. I wrote a little about that in the book. And as far as I can tell, most indigenous cultures did the same to the non-humans around them. They treated them like people.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I want to ask, shift gears a little bit. You mentioned earlier about the importance of community and both you and I have been involved in the sort of online collapse community, deep adaptation, I'm doing Collapse Club. How do you think we're doing? Does online community really work? Is it valuable? And for what?
SPEAKER_00Good questions. I think it's good for what it's good for. And it's not a substitute for... in-person community in most cases. So what I've experienced the Deep Adaptation Forum being good for are, number one is just validation, shared reality. When you've realized that collapse is underway and nobody wants to talk about it. And people tell you, no, surely you're wrong. You can get that validation from anywhere in the world, come to our groups and you're not alone. And that's hugely important. And then you don't need to live in our groups. Some people spend a lot of time there and some people just check in and go, oh, phew, I'm not crazy. There are people like me out in the world. I know where they are. I can go talk to them if I need to. And then they go on and live their life and they don't need us on an ongoing basis. Something that it's been good for for me is to broaden my perspective from California, US to certainly not a completely global perspective, but perspective of a lot of other places, mostly English speaking, and recognizing that people experience and tell stories about collapse in very different ways in different parts of the world. And actually, including in the US, I was talking to somebody who lives in a rural area where most of the people are poor. The reality for the people in her community is they've been struggling with one collapse after another their whole lives. They've been living in the tide line on the edge, just fighting for survival. And so they don't wanna hear about the collapses coming. They're like, yeah, tell me something I don't know. Tell me it's gonna get worse. Thanks, that's real fun to hear. But it's not a substitute for local community. I know of collapse-aware people in my area, but those are not the people that I spend time with. The people I spend time with are the helpers. They're the ones who are adopting refugee children, starting green things. Even if I am sometimes dismissive of their particular goals, their general purpose is just dogged and admirable. They're just going to go at it any way they can. And then people who just love to give. People who helped staff a repair cafe recently. So for me, it's not one or the other. I have to do both. And I'm lucky that I do have people locally who I can enjoy being in community with, but they don't want to hear the latest news about collapse, nor should they have to. And It's going to catch up with them soon enough.
SPEAKER_01Do you find it funny or hard to reconcile that the ordinary activities of life simply go on, and in some cases are incredibly rewarding and fulfilling, even as this immense threat looms over the world?
SPEAKER_00The cognitive dissonance, the two tracks to reality... I feel it. I feel it. And it's not, I can't turn a blind eye to the mess that's unfolding. I have to bear witness as I'm able. And I also have to live. I mean, the point is not getting somewhere. The point is being a part of the web of life, being me and you being you. And if I stop doing that because I'm so busy trying to save the world or keep track of all the tabulate, the horrible data that's coming in, I am not fulfilling my purpose, which is to be one little sparkly in the web of life. And it's confusing as hell, but that's where we are. And I really appreciate the people who are with me in bearing witness to the suffering and the foolishness that's happening, the tragedy. And then you have to shift gears and live. Otherwise, you will be part of the tragedy prematurely. And I wouldn't want that.
SPEAKER_01That was Terry LePage, facilitator, minister, and author. Please see the episode notes for a link to Terry's book and other resources. This is Collapse Club. I'm David Baum in Seattle. Until we meet again, farewell.
