Blog #3: September 22, 2008

Okay, enough politics– time for the long view! So how do I pull back far enough to get perspective? Well, for me, it’s a pretty far back into what I call “The story of the Story.” About six months ago I got deeply fascinated with the journey of humanity—the hike out of Africa those of us not currently living on the Mother Continent—have been on for about 100,000 years. 

I came across this information first in 2004 while researching chapter 3, “Tending our Fire,” in my book Storycatcher, Making Sense of our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story. Then, I was interested in how the brain is neurologically wired for language—and how Homo sapiens have always had a language center in the neocortex, and therefore have—it seems—always spoken.

Now, I’m interested in our capacity for survival, and how often survival is associated with someone making a wise (or lucky) decision at the right moment. When looking at the map of this hike, immense patience is required—for until the last eye-blink it’s all happened on foot—and some willingness to accept scientific speculation on how humanity jumped from one dead-end to a new beginning. However, the more we hear about global warming, environmental collapse, the possibilities for unceasing wars appear in the Middle East and elsewhere, and the more moronic the political debate rages in what is supposed to be the leading nation among nations—the more willing I am to look for signs that we have been at such choice points before and somehow made it through.

So imagine for a moment, that it is 60,000 years ago, give or take 10,000 and your ancestors are among a group walking up the green fields of the Sahara basin, following the Nile to the Levant—the crescent area bordering the Mediterranean sea. There they faced the chilling impact of the European ice-shelf and turn east, beach combing along the Saudi peninsula and onto the edge of India. Everything goes along well enough and about 40,000 years ago Mt. Toba explodes, creates such a global dust storm that in 6 years another Ice Age begins… and the human population crashes to about 10,000 survivors.

But during this hiatus, some folks get in grass boats and sail off to become the Australian and Polynesian peoples, some eventually head inland and become the Asian people, some learn how to head over the eastern steppes and become the European people. The messageis: we made it. And we continue to make it.

I’ve been talking about this story with incredibly diverse groups in the past few months—and universally  we arrive at a point of hope! It begins to dawn on audience after audience that the conditions we face right now—locally to globally—while seriously needing our attention, are not worse than conditions our ancestors have faced in the past. This IS the story of humanity! Our presence here is cyclical, like everything else.

So, right now I’m at the Western Women’s Conference of the United Church of Canada in eastern BC, and 350 women who on the outside don’t look so radical, and are on the inside great explorers of spirit, are experiencing a sense of how their faith journeys fit into this long, long story, and how they can actively preserve stories of values, belief, and strength in the generations surrounding them. We are having great fun with the idea–and my lovely 88 year old mother is among those in attendance.

Next week I’ll be taking another version of this message to a group of elected city officials… the story is changing–but it isn’t over!

(For some wonderful maps, information, and downloadable lectures and videos on all of this check out the following sites: www.nationalgeographic.com and www.bradshawfoundation.com.)

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.

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