In the fall of 2021 we began to emerge from a collective initiation and rite of passage. The world-wide Covid pandemic has given us the first two parts of a rite of passage. That is, we experienced separation from our normal lives and we have gone through an ordeal of collective death and illness. It can be likened to a caterpillar emerging from its cocoon where it totally dissolved and emerges as a butterfly. We are now emerging into a new world and can bring with us the wisdom we’ve learned from this ordeal. We have the opportunity to widen the circles of our lives and see it with new eyes. This ordeal can serve both to awaken the creative spirit of individuals and to re-create meaningful forms of community. For example, there is a need for an acknowledgement of the over 650,000 deaths in the pandemic without family around them and who even were buried without a funeral. Meade has a recommendation of how to make a prayer remembering the sorrows of the world as we live life more fully. This deep dialogue explores this critical moment of renewing, not only of ourselves but of the culture in which we are embedded.
