Find The Outside

For episode eleven of season two, Tim and Tuesday reflect on how hope can — and must — co-exist with an acknowledgement of where we are, even in crisis or struggle. If we are to respond massively to an emerging future, and grapple with our current reality, what steps can we take to preserve optimism?

Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.

• Tim: There’s a Thomas Merton quote about finding rightness in the work itself, to surrender the hope of results. And I came across this quote from William the Silent: “It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere.” There is one story that I’ve come across in our work - how important hope has been to persevere.
• Tues: The quote that comes to me is a Toni Morrison quote: “You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” I believe my ancestors, on both sides, had deep hope as they left their shores - that there was something different, something better.
• Tim: I feel like we are in the midst of a level of crisis that is now beginning to truly impact the middle and middle-upper classes in a way it hasn’t before in such a pervasive scale, scope and reach. I think that’s a piece of the class response that I want to identify and have some compassion for and not pretend it’s not a product of privilege. It makes me think of the quote from Rumi: “Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk, and this is the edge of the roof.”
• Tues: I wonder about my own lens and perspective; I feel there is no lack of material for hope for me. My vantage point is of people who are actively working and trying.
• Tim: This kind of analysis that becoming acquainted with despair, but still maintaining hope, is an issue of how insulated your life has been.
• Tues: Whose going to make it and who is not? Disaster capitalists are moving into Puerto Rico right now and beginning to set themselves up for when it all goes down and the question is what will happen to the Puerto Ricans who are there?
• Tim: What does it mean to not prioritize engaging with the emergence of consciousness among the privileged classes and the fragility that comes with that? This kind of awakening to the level of despair, because you are experiencing it… I am intrigued by that. How this get’s integrated into how we think about significant change happening. I also don’t want it to be the thing that slows us down.
• Tues: It’s not do we engage it or don’t we - it’s how and when and why. Everyone gets to decide what their own energy level is.
• Tim: When we go into those stories that are so intimately connected to us, we find both the “You are drunk, and this is the edge of the roof” and we find the hope, the gift, the power to stand in the face of it and take the next step.

Poem: Build the Arks (King Kong Song) by Tim Merry

I just read about the coming of the ice age

Earth’s rage

The mighty mother, the sage,

Turning another page

Of evolution

A natural solution

The vibration

Of creation

Melting ice caps into the gulf stream flows

The European heating system blows

Beyond repair

My mother, father, sister, brother live there

Stop, bear witness, take a long good stare

Digest our reality and start to care

The planet is movin’ on

We all be livin’ in the final swan song

The future’s comin’ on strong

Like King Kong

We all be the hapless maiden

Looking in his big brown eyes

Beginning to realise

It’s all beyond our control

Bigger than we’ll ever be

See?

Fuck the swan song,

This is the King Kong song

We ain’t got no choice but to go along.

No more prizes for predicting the rain

The pain

New starts

Time to build the arks

What’s my contribution

At this crazy time?

Am I gonna whine

Complain

About the pain?

The fact we all seem to be going insane?

No!

Trust in surprise

Integrity has no compromise

Release all ties

Open the eyes.

Our survival seems hit and miss

Like the world is taking the piss

A final good night kiss

All this material wealth

The illusion of bliss

It’s a big mis –stake

Time to rake

The fallen leaves

Autumn choices

Winter bereaves

Not everyone will make it

We can’t fake it

There’s no hiding

From this colliding

With the end of an era

It’s never been clearer

Some will get left behind

Linger in our minds

Their remains to find

In millions of years

As we learn again our evolution

From homo-confusion

Homo-luminum

No more prizes for predicting the rain

The pain

New starts

Time to build the arks

Gather now at our community centres

With friends and mentors

And Elders

We all be the welders

Of fragmentation

On the edges of the new creation

The builders of the New Space Station

Right here in the arms of the mother

Where the heroes gather undercover

Sensing the future with sonar sound

The builders of boats abound

Readying for the coming storms

Trainers of the warriors who break the norms

Yield to the field

Drop the shield

What are the skills we need to survive?

To be one of ones alive

Who looks back

Thinking

“holy shit how did we survive that?”

What does it take to make the warrior caste

To see our king kong future comin’ on fast

Then look back and know it as the past?

This ain’t about seekin’ thrills

We need to know the survival skills

Get into training

I’m not exaggerating

I wish I was

This is real,

now

here

It’s time to get clear.

There’s no more prizes for predicting the rain

The pain

New starts

It’s time to build the arks

Song: Faith’s Hymn by Beautiful Chorus

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Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.

Duration: 47:20

Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good Studios

Theme music: Gary Blakemore

Episode cover image: source

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