I have no idea why these lyrics are running through my mind. And I am dating myself if nothing else. We will see what the day brings.
In this post I will be hopping around here, there and everywhere and hopefully making sense.
I now follow the Pledge for Canada and I am one of the 75,000.
Just over 75,000 people committed to the Pledge's principles. The period for signing is now closed. Signatures having closed, the Pledge for Canada continues as a free publication and associated newsletter on the Substack essay platform. The goal is to promote a conversation on the Canada we want and how to get there. A planned three times per week, Pledge co-coordinators post pieces (that are then automatically emailed to subscribers as newsletters) to explore how to make real the Pledge principles and, we hope, to provoke needed conversations and debates. Click here to go to our Pledge publication on Substack.
Judging where the US is on the continuum and trajectory of authoritarianism by Craig Scott
AUTHORITARIAN ROGUES’ GALLERY: A selection of recent and current leaders of regimes in countries that had real, however flawed, democracies before they came to power to layer in autocratic rule of different degrees and kinds Each country continues as a hybrid of formal democracy and autocratic threat: (right to left, clockwise) Bukele of El Salvador, Modi of India, Orban of Hungary, Duterte of the Philippines, Trump of the USA, Erdogan of Turkey, Ortega of Nicaragua, Netanyahu of Israel, Bolsonaro of Brazil.
There is work to do to forever keep Canada off this list. It is my intention to invite family and friends to commit to the Pledge's principles. And I will invite those who decline to share their reasons as that is something I would like to understand.
Tia Levings posted a note that got my attention.
I was in a benign Christian cult from 1970 until 1995 and I share these concerns. It did not take much research to learn that CREC is the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. And we need to be on guard in Canada.
The Pledge states:
We must develop an all-of-Canada approach that is built collaboratively, engages Canadians, and balances to the extent possible our shared and diverse interests.
I would like to connect this to an item from Angus Reid that concerns me.
Canada across the religious spectrum
My intuition is that Pete Hegseth and a sizeable number of the MAGA cult in the USA believe that freedom of conscience and religion are becoming weaker in the USA as they themselves work overtime to reduce true freedom. There is probably some of that attitude in Maple MAGA. I am concerned by that 66% number in the Evangelical Christian column.
Hopping along, most Canadians probably do not know who Lyman Pascal is. He is both Canadian and metamodern. And he has an update for those of us who are Metamodern Wannabes.
THE “SUBTLE" THROUGH A LIMINAL LENS - Metamodern Spirituality Lab Spring '25
IT HAS BECOME CUSTOMARY for the Metamodern Spirituality Lab to convene in Vermont each Spring and Autumn. Our official goal is to unfold something that is both
(a) legitimately part of the transformational, developmental and regenerative ethos of coherent pluralism, and
(b) authentically religious in its aspirations and practices.
What does that mean on the ground? It means a combination of collaborative ritual building, collective multi-perspectival deep dives into particular chunks of religion & spirituality, inner practices, story-sharing, immersive field building, relentless and beautiful conversations, permacultural service work, intersubjective experiments, sacred readings, ecological mysticism, emergent ceremonies, and distributed guided practices. And, on the side, continue with culture building, relationship deepening, and pushing the main developmental metatheories toward their next mutation.
I am very interested in coherent pluralism, particularly now in Canada. Pluralism is the easy part, at least for those of us who are not True Believers. Cohesion is the hard part and that is our work to do.
Another Canadian who is not well known outside of the metamodern bubble is Peter Limberg.
Less Foolishism Part 1: Inquiring with Unknowing
Now, six months into being 40 and with hundreds of inquiries behind me, I have enough clarity to begin mapping the contours of what I do with greater confidence—formalizing my inquiry process while still honouring my five questions of puzzlement.
I greatly enjoy Peter’s journey with life which he shares so freely. Reflecting on my own life, I had great clarity at age 18 but twenty-five years later it collapsed. I regained new clarity at mid-life but that collapsed in retirement. And now I have a clarity that I try to hold lightly while realizing that no one individual can clearly see all that needs to be seen. Check out my version of UNKNOWINGS.