Category: deep adaptation

Reclaiming “Kyrie Eleison” this Christmas

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by chiyo hiraoka

From a plea for pardon to an invitation to heal within a universe of unconditional love. 

Across centuries of liturgy, the solemn chant “Kyrie Eleison”, often translated as “Lord, have mercy,” has echoed through churches and cathedrals. It is one of the most recited phrases by congregations of Christians around the world, and can convey the idea that believers are penitent persons before an omnipotent judge. I heard it regularly during my childhood, in Anglican, Catholic and Evangelical contexts. After I stopped going to church, for decades I didn’t think about the meaning of the phrase. Not until I was in a field in Thailand, with two hundred people from different faiths, as we sang and moved in prayer. That set me on a journey into the meaning of the phrase “Kyrie Eleison”, and a discovery about the loss of Jesus’s original message, as quoted in the Gospels. This realisation is opening up the possibility to reconnect with my roots in a new way, through a Christianity more mystical than the institutions of religion convey. 

To understand the true meaning of the phrase “Kyrie Eleison”, it helps to journey back before the Gospels. It had been a common Greek plea, where “Kyrie” invoked a divine power. They had many to consider, from Asclepius to Zeus. The word “eleison” had a poetic meaning, because it was not only the verb “to forgive”. Our dance leader in Thailand explained it sounded similar to ‘elaion’, which meant oil. In ancient Greece, as in modern times, oils were used for various forms of healing, including wounds and aches. Thus, “eleison” meant something other than a cry for forgiveness from a sinning or guilty person. Instead, it was a plea, or an invitation, to “anoint me, soothe me, and heal me.” It is important to remember that the worldview at the time, across many cultures, regarded illness as a symptom of spiritual or relational disorder, rather than a random physical misfortune. To cry out “Kyrie Eleison” was to ask the divine to restore a person’s wholeness.  

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Let’s not become attached to collapse

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There are moments when life confronts us with such undeniable pain that our hearts split open. For many people I know, that moment came with the realisation that our civilization is unravelling – that the seas are rising, the forests are dying, and the systems built to sustain our comfort are breaking. In that shock, there can be a strange grace. For a time, we awaken from the trance of consumption, routine and ambition. We see more clearly the suffering of the Earth and of each other. That often inspires compassion, and a yearning to live differently. It is a process I’ve often described in my past writings. It is why I encourage people to talk about societal collapse more openly, including our desires to reduce harm. Which is why, when I founded the Deep Adaptation Forum in 2019, I proposed that its ethos would be to “embody and enable loving responses to our predicament, so that we reduce suffering while saving more of society and the natural world.” Over the years I have witnessed people of all races, creeds, and economic classes, find their own ways to pursue that noble goal. It’s something I celebrate in the newly released video of Chapter 12 from my book. However, I have had to accept that something quite different can happen when we awaken to collapse, which might suppress presence, service and creativity. I wonder if that happened in me and others who participate in communities formed around an awareness or acceptance of collapse. If you are in such a community, I hope the following reflections on not becoming attached to narratives about collapse will be useful. 

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A Personal Message on Covid-19

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I was surprised recently that someone close to me likely had Covid-19 again less than 3 months after her previous infection. She didn’t take a test for it either time, but the symptoms suggested it wasn’t the flu. Fever, headache, lethargy, loss of smell, but no sneezing or phlegm. As the initial symptoms didn’t put her in bed, sick, we didn’t take it too seriously. But this second infection has lingered, and created recurring lethargy and insomnia, while also bringing back some old health problems. That encouraged me to look into the latest information on Covid-19. What I found concerned me. I am sharing about it here for the same reasons I did so in the past. Since looking into it more closely in 2021, I have thought that the policy orthodoxy on Covid-19 has been counterproductive. Additionally, I have been concerned that most commentators in the environmental field are aligned with the orthodoxy and thereby turning many people away from the environmental cause. Thirdly, pandemics have often played a key role in societal breakdowns and transformations in the past, and so the risks of the Covid-19 pandemic, and future ones, is within my field of analysis and comment. Looking back, one sad aspect of speaking out over the last four years has been that many people assumed that questioning the orthodoxy means caring less about this disease, or public health in general. Such prejudice was produced by Big Pharma and their supporters in politics, the medical establishment, and mass media. In sharing on Covid-19 now, I don’t expect to have much influence, but if some of you, my readers, take the following ideas seriously enough to check them out for yourself, then at least a few of you might benefit. 

My past essays on the topic were always well referenced, and I provided links to credible sources, such as official data sets or peer-reviewed papers. I wanted to be as factual and precise as possible, and avoid the misleading spin from various commentators. This post will not be like that. I write not to influence agendas but to nudge those of you who follow my blog to act to be healthier than you might otherwise be… that’s if you look into the information for yourself and agree. You could use an AI chatbot to check some of my statements that will follow and look for relevant data. I think if we don’t do our own checking then we don’t convince ourselves enough to change behaviours. 

Anyway, here goes, with my personal message on Covid-19…

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“Resilient Life” oracle cards for challenging times

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Given what’s happening in the world, it can be tiring to stay engaged. But if we don’t remain involved in community life and some forms of political organising, then are we being true to ourselves? For me, the ongoing issue is how to stay engaged and maintain some balance in life. Over the years, I’ve benefited from knowing people who have found a deeper source of calm and creativity. They have helped me to both broaden my own activities and continue to engage in societal conversations, through my work on societal disruption, ‘metacrisis’ and collapse. My wish to help other people with similar intentions in this disruptive era moved me to create something I could not have imagined in my previous life – a pack of oracle cards for challenging times. 

Some of my friends have found resilience through spiritual teachings, while others learned from surviving various forms of suffering and tragedy. One such friend is Dean Powell, who I play devotional music with. He made a set of oracle cards for our ceremonies. They became helpful daily prompts for me to come back to what’s most important in life. So that inspired me to make a set of cards with him, so we could help others to find more resilience and resolve during challenging times. 

The “Resilient Life” cards also integrate some ideas from the frameworks of “Deep Adaptation” and “The Work that Reconnects”. Unlike other oracle cards, they don’t assume, or pretend, that our situations are stable and everything is possible. Instead, they help us find a realistic positivity, whatever the situation.  

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Heartfullness: The Way of Contemplation

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In a time of metacrisis, disruption and collapse, many of us yearn for deeper spiritual meaning but aren’t attracted to institutional religion. We also sense that growing recognition of humanity’s predicament could prompt a spiritual awakening, at least for some. This means many of us aren’t sure where to turn to find either advice or community, or to invite others together for that. That has been my situation. Personally, I have benefitted from Buddhist and Daoist philosophy and practice, nature-based Indigenous wisdom, and mystic strands of Christianity, as I shared in a ‘Buddha At The Gas Pump’ interview and now integrate into my music. I now want to go deeper and further with others. In the New Year, we launch the Metacrisis Mentors programme, where we will draw upon a variety of wisdom traditions to explore, in challenging times: what is mine to do and how am I to be? 

In January, we will announce more about the programme, which will be open to all members of the Metacrisis Meetings initiative. One of the key texts will be Heartfullness: The Way of Contemplation by Reverend Stephen G. Wright. A former palliative nurse, academic, and ordained inter-faith minister, Dr. Wright has cultivated decades of wisdom at the intersection of caregiving, contemplation, and mystical inquiry. His voice is deeply rooted in the lived experience of guiding seekers and spiritual nomads — those who feel estranged from dogma but still feel the call of the sacred.

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Summary of Breaking Together

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Portuguese is the fifth language that my book Breaking Together is available in. Many at the launch in Lisbon last month travelled from the countryside where they are working on community resilience. For them, the book Juntos Na Rutura provides a useful explanation to others about why they are promoting community economics. One of the interviews around the launch was with the Portuguese degrowth network, which is available on video.

After that inspirational boost, my next speech was to a more general audience in the UK, and I discovered how my analysis on the causes and implications of societal collapse can be easily misconstrued.  Therefore, I wrote a summary of the foundational concepts in my work, including concepts like Deep Adaptation, the Metacrisis, the Great Reclamation and Ecolibertarianism, to appear here on my homepage. In addition, I worked with a colleague to prepare a summary of some ideas in each chapter of Breaking Together, which I publish below.  

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Mary Magdalene and the Mariam Mantra

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If we are truly in a situation of ‘metacrisis’ then the foundations of our understanding of life and death are being challenged. It feels that way for many people who conclude that the upheavals of recent years are aspects of a breakdown in ‘normal’ life. Such a deep disturbance can be fertile ground for rethinking dominant ideas we received from our culture. For some, that can involve rethinking our relationship to religion, spirituality and the divine. That has brought me to a point of recognising that the cultural mis-shaping of our shared interpretations of personal experiences of non-separation and existential gratitude, are at the root of widespread destruction and exploitation. Even without the scandals and violent histories, institutionalised religion has a lot to answer for. Beyond that, exploring an enlivening and empowering spirituality can be an amazing outcome of the metacrisis. It doesn’t make the bad stuff go away, but it can change how we respond to it.

I was born into Christianity, in the Anglican tradition. It took me until my 50s to look into the content of those Gospels that were excluded from the official canon. One of those is the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Upon studying it, I composed a mantra that draws from one of its phrases about the sacred interbeing of all that exists. I performed the mantra at a musical gathering, or Kirtan, which occurred on the day of the feast of Mary Magdalene (July 22nd, 2025). The band had not heard it or rehearsed it before, but as we had Ezca dancing with us, I wanted to record the occasion – and the video follows below. The result is a bit messy, musically, but I think it conveys some of the feeling of the moment. The chords and words of the mantra follow at the end of these reflections.

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