New Tribe
by Don Hynes, February 17, 2008
Admittedly I was slow to come around. I had seen my daughter emerge from her mother’s womb, first her head and shoulders then a gorgeous pirouette as her trunk came free
into the waiting hands of our midwife. Her eyes were wide open, deep and focused in an uncanny way for a new born. She looked right into my eyes as I lifted her and the entirety of our journey together, now thirty four years long, was contained in that first prescient gaze.
Now on her recent birthday, sitting among forty of her closest friends – she’s that kind of woman – I was amazed at the diversity and reach of relationship. In the sixties we threw open the locked doors of convention although the cultural regression of post Reagan America has worked tirelessly to jam the magical rabbit of freedom back into the ill fitting hat of conformity. The ethos of liberation pioneered however faultily by their Woodstock haunted predecessors has found an understated yet authentic expression in this generation.
Here on the “left coast” as we are proudly known, the late twenties to early forties crowd isn’t a counter culture as much as a new tribe, not as much interested in going against as growing toward, and in that evolution is real hope.
As a sixty year old I’m more used to a conventional player roster: so and so is married to so and so and these are their children, their schools, their careers; somewhat clear dividing lines and demarcations. Divorce changed much of that landscape but coexistence between separated spouses has usually been an uneasy truce, “for the sake of the children,” with the Maginot lines of suburban normality remaining relatively stable.
Yet here I was in a group most unusual; beyond the various and colorful skin art, facial jewelry and eclectic clothing an astounding set of inter-relationships that doesn’t so much defy previous norms but rather has grown beyond them. Separated spouses with differing partners and children from their various relationships all gathered within a caring concern, united by a tribal fire of gently intimate context.
At the center of the hearth this evening was a new mother and her several days old daughter, happily nursing the infant between many rounds of us all holding and touching and welcoming the new baby. I have been something of a surrogate “dad” for the new mother and her partner and now a “grandpa” beyond blood line or legal identifier, bonded instead by the intrinsic and undeniable pathways of volition and soul.
Don’t wonder what I’ve been smoking. These are real people with the manifold problems of being human: relationships gone sour, growing up yourself while raising children, struggles with money, temperament, shared irresponsibilities, the full boat.
There is a keen interest in politics among this new tribe - although music and art are their stronger suit - because awareness is a commonly ascribed virtue. They don’t see the Neanderthal militarism of our present government so much an obstacle to their way of life as a view receding in their cultural rear view mirror, a dinosaur stubbornly grazing as the ice flow overtakes it.
This new tribe is one of the groups that young Obama is speaking to and for, neither a tribe of power over nor of segregation; not ethnicity nor class; not acquisition nor status; it is not a tribe of dogmatic belief. It is a tribe of compassion and artistry, of unity in diversity, of caring through difficulty, of freedom.
Their feelings and concerns have been around since ancient times and are finding expression in our body politic because this is their time, our time together I would offer, across the generations, beyond the blood lines, the class and racial divisions, the ethnic and religious warfare, the divisive ideologies and destructive technologies.
There is clear and certain evidence that a new time and tribe are underway, gathering in small circles and in the larger groupings of nation. It can be a time of hope despite all the terrible destruction of the first seven years in this 21st century, with a new spirit rising, best expressed by one of their most eloquent spokesman: “yes we can!”
Candace: We have had lots of new 5d and above folks incarnating for a round of adventure in the planet. There are now 200 million of them, mostly young.