Summer/Fall 2020
Vol. 33 No. 3/4
Places of Hope
Karen Jaenke & Jürgen Werner Kremer, Editors
The startling array of upheavals during 2020—a spreading global pandemic; policy brutality, racial tensions and social unrest; the rise in autocratic leaders worldwide; the undermining of confidence in the American democratic process of elections; and the ongoing but escalating threat of ecological collapse—together contribute to a pervasive atmosphere of uncertainty, depression, and even despair about the future. In response to the many cracks appearing in the edifice of Western as well as other political systems, this issue of ReVision explores “places of hope” with contributions from visionary authors who see past the current onslaught of dismal news.
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Image: Squaring the Circle, 2020, 24 x 30, Mixed media, by Fariba Bogzaran
ABSTRACTS
Summer/Fall 2020
Vol. 33 No. 3/4
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Callaghan, P., Revitalising Hope through the Power of Story . ReVision, 33(3), 48-52. doi:10.4298/REVN.33.3.48-52
The Old People say. ‘When we leave this world behind, all we leave behind is our story … so make it the best story possible.’ Right now, many people throughout the world aren’t living a good story and the evidence suggests the world itself is not living a good story. This article discusses the importance of story, the importance of caring for our place and how understanding and embracing Aboriginal culture through an understanding of the ‘Lore’ can give us hope that it isn’t too late to revitalise and renew this planet and all things on it.
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Femi, I. The Day the Horses Rode By: Reflections on the Redemptive Potential of Black Practices of Overcoming. ReVision, 33(3&4), 98-103. doi:10.4298/REVN.33.3.98-103
This article explores the story of an event that occurred in the spring of 2019 in Montgomery, Alabama to illustrate the transformative power of African diasporic ways of overcoming. A small parade of all white people, accompanied by horses donned in Klan-reminiscent regalia, passes on the street just outside the room where about 100 intercultural participants have gathered to close out their 3-day pilgrimage to the lynching memorial and the civil rights museum. The spectacle evokes a strong disturbance in the group field, threatening chaos and fragmentation. When black practices of overcoming—including spontaneity, immediacy, expressivity, and reliance upon spiritual power—allows for a redemptive experience in the face of racialized terror.
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Gray, M., Strumming the Strings of Hope. ReVision, 33(3), 72-74. doi:10.4298/REVN.33.3.72-74
Hope is too important to sacrifice on the altar of things we can already identify. When we let the past dictate and define our hopes, then we pull the blinds down on the very source that might restore kindness and heal the damage that our past misunderstandings have inflicted on all living beings. That source of healing is found in the future. But the future cannot be corralled by our expectations like cattle into a feedlot. Hope is only at home in the future, but the future can never arrive. It is an infinite realm of possibility without limit. And if a kinder world is to be restored for all the separated families and if the terrible losses suffered by so many are to be redeemed and to inform our actions–if our world is to begin healing from all the floods and fires, from the isolation and polarization that mark human life on this planet–then we must stop imposing the old solutions which have just perpetuated our problems. We must care again for the most helpless among us, if hope is to nest again in our own hearts.
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Jaenke, K., Loving Life. ReVision, 33(3), 13-23. doi:10.4298/REVN.33.3.13-23
When manmade structures fail, we can return to their deeper source and ground, the intelligent design imbued within the living systems of nature, which form the backbone of our universe. The intelligence of nature, with its 13 billion-year creative evolutionary history, is illuminated by living systems theory, which offers a guide for aligning our personal and collective lives with the principles of balance and vitality that are also the hallmark of indigenous cultures. Living systems theory can be applied to human subjectivity by attending to the feedback loops provided in the processes of affect regulation, dreaming, and the energy circuits of the subtle body. Doing so leads to a grounded hope, rooted in balance, wellbeing, vitality, and intrinsically-gratifying flow states.
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Kremer, J.W., Coming-to-Presence at My Place of Hope. ReVision, 33(3), 34-47. doi:10.4298/REVN.33.3.34-47
Places of hope are located in decolonial and Indigenous spaces outside of the discourse of modernity/coloniality and postmodernity. The ancient Old Norse image of the tree, the well, three women, and three men is discussed as revolutionary flash of memory for the future; as phenomenon emerging from the intra-action of mind and matter; and as integrative state of consciousness overcoming the disappearance of ritual and ceremony in Eurocentered traditions. The principle of hope entails confrontations with personal and collective shadow material as well as intentional choice. Places of hope defined in a decolonial context of ritual performance reframe education and overcome nostalgic notions of the past. The embodiment of flashes of memory facilitates coming-to-presence in specific places with gratitude.
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Mendoza, S.L., Hope Summons: Meditations on An-Other-World Seeing. ReVision, 33(3), 53-61. doi:10.4298/REVN.33.3.53-61
The essay keys off Vera de Chalambert’s piece, “Kali Takes America: I’m with Her” (in the aftermath of Trump’s 2016 election) and Leonard Cohen’s album, “You Want It Darker,” both of which name the times we live in as auguring, in mythic speech, a necessary descent to the Underworld as an initiatory rite to seeing–and being ready then, to act–clearly. Through a retrospective look at her time with the Indigenous peoples of her home country, the author argues for tutelage to those who, at this point in time, might be aptly called “Modernity’s only remaining Other.” Doing so disrupts the dominant narrative’s foreclosures around the emergency’s claim to inevitability and opens up new/old possibilities for a different kind of hope.
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Parry, G.A., Fear, Hope, Love in Covid Times. ReVision, 33(3), 62-65. doi:10.4298/REVN.33.3.62-65
A pandemic is a time of both fear and hope. We hope that the pandemic will end soon; we fear that we or our loved ones will become ill or die. Our hope and fear have a reciprocal relationship. Our hope is our fear unmasked—and our fear is our hope unmasked. What is called for, as counterintuitive as it may be, is to accept what is as a blessing. The acceptance of what is leads to unconditional love.
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Pascal, L., Ecomorphic Eudaimonia: Three Principles Toward a World-Worth-Hoping-For.. ReVision, 33(3), 80-91. doi:10.4298/REVN.33.3.80-91
This personal essay endeavors to capture and communicate unique features of the way in which the author remains hopeful about the future of human civilization and the simultaneous thriving of the biosphere. It is framed around three interlocking principles which are (1) his general philosophical attitude toward hope (2) an ethic concerning the relationship between human systems and nature that can be extended toward an open-vision of an improved world (3) a notion of the kinds of attitudes, practices and personalities that may be needed in order to enact such a path. The tone of the piece is meant to be playful, intriguing, serious and imaginative at the same time.
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Soholm, H., When the Ancestors Call, How Do We Answer? Princess Bari, a Heroine’s Journey. ReVision, 33(3), 66-71. doi:10.4298/REVN.33.3.66-71
The 2020 pandemic lockdown offered a unique opportunity for us to listen to the call of our ancestors and realign to our personal and collective purpose on the planet. However, living in technologically advanced societies like ours without much guidance from the elders have made it difficult to know how one can listen for the ancestors’ call and move forward in living one’s soul purpose. Through the retelling of a Korean folktale of Princess Bari, an abandoned princess, we attempt to ignite the indigenous wisdom of our ancestors to find inspiration for how we can initiate into a new vision that honors our ancient past and wisdom as well as shift towards a sustainable life of healing and connection. The tale of Princess Bari is a story about the patron goddess of shamans or Mudang in Korea, most of whom are women. This heroine’s journey will be used as an anchor to discuss current issues and challenges in our society and assist in creating meaningful changes in our collective consciousness.
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Strobel, L.M., Archiving Hope. ReVision, 33(3), 66-71. doi:10.4298/REVN.33.3.66-71
In this essay about Hope, I am reflecting on the function of Archiving and the memories that the Mind selectively chooses to shape one’s Awareness—both of which are, in turn, shaped by historical narratives. For decolonizing and re-indigenizing settlers on Turtle Island, the dominant narratives of History are often subverted by much older memories that, although not archived (in the Western definition), continue to speak in many voices and stories. In this meditation, the parts of the Self that have not and cannot be archived hint at something else that offers Hope. In this tacit way of telling, there is an invitation to the reader to try a path where one might encounter the parts of one’s self that have not been tracked, archived, and therefore, illegible.
