Convergence

Convergence

is when different pieces of our life begin to cross-reference and seemingly unrelated sectors appear inside each-other. In my life, convergence happens more and more this year.

Convergence happens when my daughter tells me that she is drawn to finding a female lover, my son wears more and more dresses, and simultaneously an acquaintance spontaneously gives me a book aimed at opening our hearts toward the wide variety of expression of human sexuality and gender possibilities.

Convergence happens when my healthy local food group starts addressing community poverty issues, my peer support colleagues are talking about miso soup and kimchee to aid in addiction recovery, and my macrobiotic friends are sharing mutual aid principles.

Convergence happens when I begin a morning meditation practice, and suddenly everyone I meet mentions meditation, and I begin to see references to meditation everywhere. We used to call this the yellow Volkswagon phenomena: I decide to purchase a yellow Volkswagon, and suddenly, every day on the roads, I see dozens and dozens of yellow Volkswagons. Were they always there, unseen and un-noted? Or did my interest somehow reach out into the cosmos of cars and draw them to myself, like a giant magnet of energetic attraction? I am reminded of the inexplicable phenomenon noticed within quantum physics: parts of matter exists only when watched. They therefore have a "tendency to exist", depending entirely on the participation of the observer. Is our attention this powerful?

Convergence happens also, currently, when Crisis' overlap: the health crisis of obesity and diabetes crashes into a worldwide Corona virus pandemic which propels and feeds the financial crisis of growing poverty-level households, supporting corporate food structures to feed the least healthy food to the poorest people, thereby making them sick and unable to work productively or care for their families, which contributes to the personal crisis of addiction, fueled by systemic racism and built-in poverty, which is worsened by police brutality, and feeds politically motivated violence; which causes us to ignore the environmental crisis of climate change and increasing life threatening storms and fires, which is partially caused by corporate greed and economics based on the fallacies of endless productivity, which underlines poverty stressors which lead to addiction, and which erupts into social unrest and violent political divides which creates an ineffectual response to a worldwide pandemic, which may have been caused by ignoring environmental common sense, and is made more dangerous by existing health conditions and economic inequalities. Which came first, and where does the cause/effect chain begin and end? Its a spiral of chaos which renders no one subject safe from all the other subjects crashing rudely in, screaming, ADDRESS ME FIRST! I need attention and support, NOW!

Convergence at this level leads to overwhelm, and, as we fall apart, and our society falls apart, we notice unknown and unfamiliar strengths coming forward at the very same time. It's as if, within ourselves, we have a core that only firms up when it really has to. These converging times will, inevitably, lead to deep seated change for those of us who are going through these times together. Suddenly, I am willing to step up and lead my community in a direction I feel it needs to go. My voice is heard, because others have the same impulses. Slowly, yet surely, we voice the pain we have been ignoring, and we take mini-steps toward righting what feels unsafe. Like a rising tide, these different conversations begin to resonate in the different sectors of our societies, and like the passengers on a sinking ship, the people begin to see that we must band together - even with the ocean - to survive this perfect storm. Like the yellow Volkswagons, openings begin to appear in the blur of strangers and ideas that blow by - openings which pause, and invite, and dangle possibilities and synchronicities and connections that cannot be explained without understanding quantum physics. Our attention is powerful.

And so,here is a song, which somehow reminds me about the every day miracles of convergence.

In solidarity,
Eliza Eller