Stuck At the Top

Both summer and society; so what comes next?

This one’s free and I’d love to hear from you at the end. If you want to subscribe it would make me super happy but no pressure. There’s a lot going on right now. Do what feels right.

I picked August’s theme in a heat wave. Or rather—as it usually does—it picked me.

The word that arrived was zenith. A neat word. Fun to say. I’ve always liked it.¹

Astrologically, the zenith is the point directly above the observer. Colloquially, we use it to mean the high or culminating point. Another definition: the highest point reached in the heavens by a celestial body.²

To me, it feels like that’s where we are seasonally in the northern hemisphere but also it’s where we are as a society. What staggering heights we’ve reached! The tiny computers in our pockets! Text, music and “art” being automatically generated without a human needing to toil! Unimaginably rich white men leaving earth’s atmosphere! Incredible!

But having immersed myself in the model of cycles for a bit now, immediately I think: What goes up…must come down.

Still though, for now we are at the top and personally I find it a little dizzying.

I was not enjoying the mid Atlantic’s high summer, particularly not when I picked August’s theme. We were in a stretch of 90+ degrees Fahrenheit most days. Nothing, of course, compared to the likes of Arizona, but still. That heat is also paired with an oppressively high dew point, making it feel like the air is trying to squish us. It hasn’t rained…well, I can’t remember when that last happened.

During this, my time outside was curtailed and when I did go outside it was not refreshing. My main mode of movement is 3+ miles of walking and that wasn’t happening. I was starting to feel pretty trapped by the heat and humidity, particularly since there’s no where around here to swim safely. It took my mood to a pretty low place and I started to wonder if I have seasonal affective disorder that strikes in summer, rather than the typical winter.

I was struck by how this mimicked how I feel about the society in which I live, which I think is enamored by this idea of endless summer. But I find it too much of some things, not enough of others. We’ve reached a high point of society and development—or we did a while back—and it feels to me like we’re collectively holding onto it even whilst it starts to burn.

And so, for August: we’ve reached the zenith. We’re stuck at the top. The view from up here is wild.

I’d already settled on this theme when two essays from two very different Substacks came into my inbox. For me, they both bring up points that go like: Isn’t it all too much? And too little? And how can we do things differently?

The first was one from

Sarah Wilson

, who I don’t always love but I do like that she really just says the stuff she wants to say.³ The second was from…well, another tough lady who just says shit:

Nadia Bolz-Weber

.

Sarah’s essay is titled “Want to imagine Our Better Future with me, the one we'd choose after the apocalypse?”

I find that Sarah Wilson sometimes makes some unique, boldly proclaimed observations about culture and the world, often articulated in ways that may make me view it differently (though I might not come to the same conclusion). In this essay, she talks about how many of us are feeling like things aren’t going great just now and she presents some ideas for how we might do things differently. Included in them is: returning to craft work, glorifying not being busy, and doing climate collapse differently. (I’ve got another one for you, Sarah: living cyclically.)

I’ll put the opening paragraph here:

I’m acutely aware just now that many of us are feeling that the old ways of doing life are not much chop and that we might just have to do things very radically differently going forward. And that we might just have to start doing the different way ourselves. Living it now, not waiting for the Powers That Be to catch up.

In contrast, Nadia’s essay “Ziggy Stardust and the Future of The Church” is predominantly about the decrease of church attendance (she is a pastor, after all). This is a topic that interests me because I proudly stopped attending church a few years back, as did the core group of young folks I went to church with. Part of what Nadia is doing is sharing her thoughts on an Atlantic article which I’m unable to read in full because—sigh—The Atlantic. But thankfully she quotes one bit that struck me:

The problem in front of us is not that we have a healthy, sustainable society that doesn’t have room for church. The problem is that many Americans have adopted a way of life that has left us lonely, anxious, and uncertain of how to live in community with other people.

Many Americans have adopted a way of life that has left us lonely, anxious, and uncertain how to live in community with other people.

Think about that. We have “adopted” (I’d quibble with the use of that word) ways of living that make us lonely, anxious, and struggling to live in community with other people. Among other things.

The bit that I’ve plucked out is beyond the scope of Nadia’s essay (and assumedly the Atlantic’s) but I find it pretty poignant. I don’t think many of us feel we chose to live the ways we do—the ways that make us isolated—right? And what do we do now that organizations we would have previously fallen back on, like churches, aren’t up to snuff? Nadia suggests that the church, like many other institutions and people, have chosen the bigger things, the shinier things like “real estate, budgets, executive staff, membership, colleges and camps with our denominational brand on them, influence in society” And how’s that going? Maybe what we need, Pastor Nadia says, is the small, intimate stuff. Like Sarah Wilson asks: how can we find a Different Path whilst we are still in this one?

These are questions for the month ahead.

Know anyone else who’s feeling left high and dry right now? Maybe share Peace of the Whole with them?

What I find interesting about having settled on the word zenith for this month is what I found out when I started to look into the word more. It apparently derives from an inaccurate reading of the Arabic expression سمت الرأس (samt al-ras), meaning "direction of the head" or "path above the head.”

Direction of the head.

Now, I know this isn’t at all what the intention of the original phasing was, but it struck me that the zenith we’ve hit here in 2023 is because we’ve followed the directions of the head. We’ve followed what the brain—reason, logic, disembodied information—has told us rather than the wisdom of the body or the earth or the way those two are one and the same.

So expect a bit of that this month.

I come to you this August feeling a little different than I did when the month’s theme arrived. My personal struggle with the summer changed when I followed my body’s lead.

I found myself putting together small bouquets for neighborhood folks to take for free. One minute I was making flower arrangements for around my house and the next I was intuitively crafting bouquets—not really analyzing, just being with the flowers, plants and colors, with my bare feet on the ground. And knowing that this would bring embodied joy to other people. There’s nothing like getting flowers when you didn’t expect to. It helped me come into the present and stay outside even on a hot, heavy afternoon.

It made the current season more bearable and I started looking forward to this time next year. I want wider garden beds and more cut flowers. Maybe a small stand for my free bouquets. I started dreaming about a practice of making rainbow bouquets a couple mornings through the summer. I wondered who I might meet because of giving away flowers.

One sunny day, I put a chair on the edge of our property, made a sign that said “Free bouquets: help yourself” and set the flowers out in leftover glass jars. Every time one disappeared it filled me with joy. I got to interact with neighbors I’ve never met in the three years I’ve been here. It brought me here, to summer.

The next day, the heat broke.

Are you enjoying summer? What’s it like in your neck of the woods?

Are you “lonely, anxious, and uncertain how to live in community with other people”?

Recommendations for flowers I should grow next year? In zone 6b. Need flowers that hold up well in heat.

Come tell me in the comments? I want to know!

1. In my mind, I learned it from a Decemberist song but this seems to not be true. I’m perhaps thinking of “panoply,” another good word.

2. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/zenith

3. I’ll be honest, her whole “I Quit Sugar” stuff really threw me as a young person. Now, she brings up some interesting points, even if she arrives at some conclusion I find narrow minded. Her book on mental health I read whilst deeply depressed and I did not enjoy it one bit.