New Year 2024: A Time to Dream New Dreams!
Where does the world's deepest need meet my heart's deepest desire?
Where does the world's deepest need meet my heart's deepest desire?
Since I heard this question from Manda Scott on a recent Accidental Gods podcast, it has been reverberating in my heart, tumbling over and over in the surging tide of daily miracles and catastrophes, seeking answers.
What is my heart's deepest desire?
In essence, it's for PEACE. But not for the cold, still peace of the grave—rather, for the warm, generative peace of a world in which all beings are flourishing.
The peace of a brilliant sunrise over steadily lapping waves.
The peace of children laughing and singing, running freely and confidently in the green grass.
The peace of a pair of doves cooing as they nestle together on a branch.
The peace of a flower turning its dewy face to the sun, an apple tree laden with reddening fruit, a cat luxuriously grooming herself, a horse rolling vigorously in a patch of dirt.
The peace of an old woman smiling and waving at her great-grandchildren as they dash past her, laughing and shouting, impelled by the urgency of the game they are happily playing.
My list could go on and on, it's not hard to illustrate the PEACE my heart yearns for.
But then, when I turn my attention to "the world's deepest need," an avalanche of suffering erupts, threatening to bury all my bright images of peace.
It's like the famous Simon & Garfunkel song, "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night," which I remember listening to with a kind of horrified fascination when I was a child, old enough to understand the contrast offered as the peaceful beauty of "Silent Night" is gradually overtaken and nearly drowned out by the cacophony of the nightly newscast, a litany of human-caused disasters we know all too well: violence, hunger, greed, cruelty....
The world's deepest need is that humans rapidly evolve to live up to our potential as creators and stewards of the beauty, freedom and abundance that is the birthright of every living being on this planet.
In 2023 we stand on the cusp of a marvelous new planetary era.
We are moving rapidly away from the paradigms of competition, scarcity and separation that have dominated human relations since ancient times. We know now that all human beings are fundamentally equal. We know that our animal and plant relatives are absolutely essential to our well-being and that they deserve to live well and flourish. We know that the Sun offers every inch of this planet free and equal access to its bounty, and we know how to convert raw solar energy to the electricity we need to power our societies.
We are beginning to understand the deep flaws of the capitalist model of relentless growth based on the industrial conversion of scarce raw materials to disposable products. New, better economic models have been proposed, notably Kate Raworth's "doughnut economics," but so far our planet is still locked in the death grip of the capitalist nightmare.
And this may be "the world's deepest need" in 2023: for humans to reach a tipping point of understanding that will result in the widespread rejection of the unsustainable, devastating destruction of unbridled capitalist greed, which has resulted in a few happy billionaires presiding over a radically destabilized, horrendously suffering planet.
As a writer, the place where "the world's deepest need meets my heart's deepest desire" is in my imagination.
I continue to believe that human creativity has the potential to lead us out of the wilderness of these past few centuries of capitalist imperialist industrialist racist elitist greed, into the sunlight of a new era in which we finally understand that our Mother Earth and Father Sun provide enough for all their children, and that the "peace that surpasses understanding" is truly within our reach.
Human beings have the unique ability to bring our shimmering dreams into reality. Just look around you: everything you see was once a flash in someone's mind's eye.
For too long, we've surrendered our creative powers to the marketplace, allowing ourselves to become passive consumers of the capitalist dreams and nightmares that saturate our media channels.
If, like me, your heart's deepest desire is for peace, abundance and joy, then take up your pen, take up your brush, or just meditate and daydream upon those bright scenes of the happy world that could be.
As we stand on the grim threshold between 2023 and 2024, the world's deepest need is for us to creatively share our visions of world in which all beings flourish and thrive.
What we pay attention to, grows.
The more of us who dream of a better world, and share our dreams with others, the sooner we can make it so.
Yours in the dream of peace,
Jennifer
Come Write With Me Online!
1. The Things We Carry: Writing Transformational Travel Stories
Four Fridays in February starting Feb. 2, 9-10:30 am Eastern.
Hosted by Il Chiostro, $120 for all four sessions.
Find out more and register here.
2. Exploring the Many Faces of Love
Four Mondays, February 5, 12, 26, & March 4, 6 - 8 pm Eastern.
Hosted by the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia; $169 for WFNS members, $234 for non-members (includes membership).
Find out more and register here.
3. Speak Your Truth! Leadership, Writing & Public Speaking for Social and Environmental Justice
Four Fridays in March starting March 1, 12-1:30 pm Eastern.
Hosted by Bioneers Learning; $349 includes discount pass to the 35th Annual Bioneers Conference in Berkeley CA!
Find out more and register here.
Join me for a Californian writing retreat by the sea!
With my lifelong friend Audrey Kalman, I’ll be leading a three-day Birth Your Truest Story Writing & Hiking Retreat in northern California, March 25 - 28, 2024—and YOU are invited!
We’ll stay together at a cozy retreat center, sharing meals, writing sessions and hot tubs, interspersed with invigorating hikes on the nearby beach and up in the hills along the coast.
This will be the perfect idyll to get your creative juices flowing in good company!
Check out all the details here and if you’d like to come along, don’t delay—space is limited and will go fast!
Come with me to Tuscany next spring!
I’ll be leading another fabulous Il Chiostro writing workshop May 25 - June 1, 2024 at the luxurious Borgo San Fedele, a meticulously restored monastery set in exquisite gardens amid a classic Tuscan landscape of olive groves and vineyards.
Our days will unfold in a perfect balance of guided writing and productive sharing; excursions guided by our Il Chiostro hosts to nearby picturesque medieval towns; coming home to San Fedele to relax by the pools and gardens, eat delicious meals and visit with new friends; and taking time for your own contemplative writing and thinking.
You’ll come away from this magical sojourn simultaneously enlivened and relaxed, with a deeper understanding of your purpose in writing memoir, along with many pages of new writing providing a plethora of potential doorways into the story of your life.
More information (and beautiful photos) here.
Ready to book? Click here.
Come Riding & Writing with me in Iceland next June!
Come along with me for an all-inclusive week of RIDING and WRITING in the spectacular Icelandic countryside, in the height of the bright summer season, June 10 – 16, 2024.
Every day we’ll ride out on sturdy, sweet Icelandic horses through the expansive rolling vistas of western Iceland, led by our experienced guides from Hestaland. Once you’ve experienced the exhilaration of the fast, smooth tolt, a gait unique to Icelandic horses, you may not want to go back to the trot!
We’ll eat delicious meals together at the beautiful Hestaland Guesthouse and participate in thoughtful, open-hearted guided writing sessions.
There will also be plenty of time for sharing and discussing your writing projects and visiting the nearby hot spring spa at Krauma.
Learn more about costs and accommodations on the application form.
Whether you’ve been to Iceland many times, or this will be your first experience there, this trip is sure to be transformative!
More information (and beautiful photos) here. Email me with any questions!
Friends, it’s my pleasure and my passion to support you as we stretch towards living our lives creatively and to the fullest.
Are you ready? Let’s go!
Ooh! I love this question:
*Where does the world's deepest need meet my heart's deepest desire?*
Thank you. And thank you, Manda Scott of the Accidental Gods podcast and Thrutopia artists community founder, for posing it.
Like you, Jennifer, my answer lies in my creativity, and just showing up for it on a regular basis. It is as simple and as challenging as that.
❤️
lovely post! Happy New Years!