Transitions

On my way out of Utah—en route to California—I stopped at the salt flats north of Great Salt Lake. This landscape is somehow the climax of all that Utah has been for me: extreme, devastatingly beautiful, and largely uninhabitable.

There was an unexpected softness underfoot when I walked out onto the salt, my eyes tracing the prolific cracks. This breaking of the earth is the result not only of the drying effects of salt, but also the fact that the floor of the Great Basin is actually being pulled apart. Geologists say it has been stretched to 100% of its original width. 

Maybe we all feel a little bit like this right now—stretched thin, maybe beginning to crack a little under the tension of the moment. It’s nice to know that the result of this type of discomfort can be so sharply beautiful. Certainly the hard edges and unrelenting pressures are making us into whatever it is we need to be: more humble, weather-worn, closer to our own natures. 

Transition: “the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another.” 

My personal transition exists inside a much larger collective transition. I think this is important: a transition requires unequivocally leaving a former state or condition, to arrive at a new place—physically, emotionally, spiritually. Implied in this is loss or sacrifice (voluntary loss). It is potent to be embedded in a concrete form of transition.

Moving tends to push me into the painful (and sometimes enlivening) reality of the ephemeral nature of everything. It often feels like a door is closing behind me—one I cannot ever enter again. Even if I were to return, the variables would be different. The experience cannot be repeated. The many moments and memories collected in the decade I spent in Utah will not open again. 

I think this is the place we are at collectively, as well. The shape of life that we had become accustomed to is already becoming a memory. The door is quickly closing on the time when we could carelessly ignore the devastating exploitation of people and planet. The terrain on the other side of this door is fundamentally different. 

Something about the squeeze in walking firmly through this doorway of time will sweeten us, I am sure. Hard edges, numbness and stupidity may surface first, but this type of churning is going for the gold and will not stop there. The transits, as I have written previously, show us that we are at the end of a 200 year cycle, and the beginning of another. These Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions show us the rise and fall of civilizations, and are not something to be taken lightly. 

In moments of transition it is helpful to get yourself on the side of what is coming, so that you don’t get so stuck to what is leaving that it holds you back. It is extremely human to want to cling to what was familiar and comfortable, and can feel a little like death to say a firm goodbye. The pain is increased when you have pieces of yourself on both sides while the door is closing (as you can imagine), so the practice will be to carry all of yourself across this threshold. 

This brings to mind the story of Lot’s wife, who became a pillar of salt when she looked back at Sodom as it was burning. There was some kind of longing in her gaze that decided her fate. The task of the moment is a refocusing of that longing for a past that was more comfortable, more predictable and carefree to the tasks of the moment—and there are many. What if we applied our longing to a future worth living in?