Imagining and Welcoming a New Story
Following Session 3: Imagining and Welcoming a New Story
December 10, 2025 – January 12, 2026
Synthesis Statement
This session offered an opportunity to examine how we have come to organize our lives with an overemphasis on the wrong values or qualities of reality, or, perhaps more accurately, a misunderstanding of the hierarchies in which we live.
Many of us implicitly take the Market Economy as the primary driver in our lives. And in daily experience, it can often feel that way. However, more foundational than the market economy is the Human Economy. It is our human minds that created markets, as well as communities, systems of care, compassion, and expressions of wisdom. And even these are nested within an even greater Natural Economy, where the forces and rhythms of nature govern our very existence. And so, we have it backwards. We should instead ground our strength and understanding of reality first in the natural world, and then allow our modes of existing to align with that. This framing of nested economies is articulated by Vandana Shiva.
When we fail to see the forest for the trees, our limited vision drives decisions that generate disharmony. That disharmony is now threatening our collective well-being, and even our continued existence within these systems. At the time of writing, we see rising inflation, persistently high levels of economic insecurity, mass incarceration, widening gaps between the haves and the have-nots, and increasingly turbulent weather events occurring with greater frequency and severity.
The path to course correction lies in immersing ourselves in recognition and practice of different foundational qualities: respect for one another, an appreciation of the world as sacred, an openness to larger natural rhythms
Report on Practice
This period was a bit different than the others – not because it was more profound, but because it was messier, slower, and more constrained by life as it actually showed up. I was quite ill for more than half of this period, and it unfolded amid the chaos of the holidays. My wife returned from her extended travels, and we had a readjustment period with another person living in the house.
One goal this period was to select from a provided list of ‘foundational qualities’ and live into them personally and professionally. While we had reviewed and discussed these qualities as a group, choosing which ones to focus on in my own practice was itself a provocative endeavour. Do I go with what feels familiar and accessible? Or do I push farther outside of my comfort zone and attempt to engage what feels most foreign? What might be the healthiest for me long term? What might be best for the program? What might be healthiest for me in the long term? What might be most generative for the program? What might open my eyes in ways others would not?
I went back and forth for some time. Eventually I quieted down and allowed a few qualities to speak to me. The truth is most of them resonated as true and meaningful. Many were qualities I felt I already felt I lived into in various ways – not perfectly, but not superficially either. Still, there were three in particular that called to me just a bit more loudly during this cycle.
Non-Hierarchy
This quality posed the greatest challenge for me. The idea was that today’s hierarchies are problematic for a multitude of reasons and that a healthier future will function in a much more non-hierarchical way. I offer this reflection primarily to highlight my own struggle.
I was not able to discover a non-hierarchical truth here. Perhaps I will one day. I can agree deeply that our current value hierarchies are misaligned with structures that would be more globally beneficial. And yet, hierarchies seem inevitable in nature itself: atoms into molecules, into cells, into tissues, into organs, into systems, into bodies, into families, into cultures, into, into, into. It’s turtles all the way up, and down.
Bureaucracy, for better or worse, becomes a necessary tool for organizing complexity at scale. Can we do better? Yes. Should we? Absolutely. Does that mean looking deeply at our current structures and potentially disrupting them? Certainly. But does that mean that hierarchies themselves are inherently bad? I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway.
Oneness
Can we include all people as we think through problems? Can we make decisions that treat everyone equitably? We certainly should try. How do we value everyone and everything for what it is – as a foundational orientation – before we begin making decisions? This feels like a noble effort, and one I attempt to embrace in my work as an elected official.
I tried to meditate daily on this idea, and to notice where my openness to oneness breaks down. I thought of professional experiences in which people failed to honor commitments, cheated, lied, or acted out of greed or self-interest. In situations where I experienced myself as the “victim,” it was those individuals with whom I struggled most to feel a sense of oneness. It is easy to feel that “we are all in this together” in the abstract. It is much harder when someone has taken from you, overtly or covertly.
In a conversation with my program partner, we discussed this struggle, and he reminded me of the value of forgiveness. That immediately clicked. Forgiveness became a doorway to oneness.
As I reflected further, I realized that not forgiving is a way of holding onto the past. It keeps turbulent emotions alive within me, while the other person may not be thinking about me at all. Much of my pain, I noticed, was actually anger at myself for not seeing warning signs, for not protecting myself, for how I responded in those moments.
In that sense, forgiveness is largely about forgiving myself. It allows me to move forward without forgetting what happened. I can remember who those people showed themselves to be and choose not to give them what I once did, while also recognizing that they, too, are living in their own limited worlds, shaped by their own interpretations of life and reality. And in that, we are the same.
I am not fully there yet. I know that certain situations may still bring emotional turbulence. But I am closer to oneness than I was when this practice began, and for that, I am grateful.
Living in Harmony with Time Rather Than a Strictly Linear View
Throughout my life, I have had many experiences that have broadened my perspective of time. I have experienced moments of déjà vu where I recall memories (sometimes even recalling the memory of having the memory) only later to find myself living through the event. I have also experienced moments where intentions or desires manifested not through effort or force, but in their own time, when they were naturally ready to come about.
A recent and relatively mundane example helped clarify this distinction for me.
For some time, I had anticipated the need for an additional car. My son is now driving and needs transportation for school, extracurricular activities, and time with friends. We had been sharing cars, but it reached a point where doing so created more conflict our schedules could comfortably support. So, I began shopping for a car and eventually made a purchase in the second week of December.
Because the car was out of state, it needed to be shipped. I also authorized the dealer to send temporary plates so I could drive the car while awaiting for permanent plates – a fairly standard process. Around this same time, I became quite ill, likely with some form of the flu. Despite this, my project management instincts kicked in. I tracked timelines, followed up with the dealer repeatedly, monitored shipping details, and pushed to resolve outstanding issues such as registration paperwork and infotainment system pairing.
Despite my efforts, progress was very slow. The dealer was at times unresponsive, and it wasn’t until the second week of January that everything was fully complete: the car was in my driveway, the system was connected, and the temporary plates arrived.
Looking back from a broader perspective, I can see that during the holidays my family’s schedule was more flexible. While I was sick, I wasn’t driving much anyway. When I actually needed an additional car, there was one available. By the time school resumed and schedules tightened, everything was in place. In other words, we had exactly what we needed, when we needed it.
I don’t share this to suggest that one should never intervene. In fact, the dealer made an error and failed to process the temporary plates until I followed up. But the larger rhythm of events unfolded differently than the timeline I believed was necessary. The car became legally drivable when I truly needed it, and not before.
When I widen the lens further, this pattern appears elsewhere in my life. After the stress of nearly losing my wife to cancer (she is thankfully in remission), the loss of my daughter, and deep vocational burnout, I needed the world to slow down. And in many ways, it did. I was given time to step into a meaningful role on the City Council, time to be more present with my son, time to grieve, and time to begin reimagining how I want to live the next chapter of my life.
That work continues. Daily meditation helps me stay present – feeling what I feel, thinking what I think, evaluating options, reshaping habits, and slowly stepping into a New Story. I still don’t know exactly what that story is, but I am becoming more comfortable with not knowing.
In our last session, someone shared the idea of emptying ourselves so we can be a vessel for input from Spirit. I am finding increasing comfort in that emptiness. We also heard the words: I don’t need to see. I don’t need to know. I only ask to be of use. That feels like one of the only sane aspirations in a world that so often feels absurd.
Poem
Finally, this period, we were asked to write a poem that expresses our sense of our collective need for a new story. Here’s mine:
Nurture has dominated Nature.
The masses are exhausted.
I am exhausted.
What do you see, little bird, as you look down upon the world?
Do you see the angst? Do you see the confusion?
Animals pushed out of developments.
The “unsophisticated” pushed to the margins.
Culture pushed out for power.
It’s cheaper to feed than cage,
but caging feeds the powerful,
and the powerful are hungry.
And where is healing? How do we find solace?
It’s here.
It’s now.
It will be present,
when enough people are too.
If this reflection has been of value, you’re welcome to support the time and care that go into this work.