Laura Dawn: I was watching the Living Beautifully retreat, that you co led with Pema Chodron, who’s also been such an inspiration in my life. And you shared about the Hopi prophecy, and

I’d love to hear the origin story of how this Aligned for you to start teaching about that particular prophecy.,

Meg Wheatley: So I first encountered this prophecy in 2000 when it was issued.

But, It’s when we were doing all this work on Y2K and preparing for massive system breakdowns with the change to a four digit year and a lot of people prepared and nothing really bad happened. And I let it go and then it came back to me as I was writing Perseverance. I kept seeing water image and in fact the book Perseverance.

which is just like a day to day guide of how to persevere. Um, it, it does now have water image along the whole bottom. Cause I kept seeing that. I went to visit a friend who was, uh, Hopi pipe carrier. She’s, is British and American in her eighties. And she had been initiated into the Hopi tribe and nation.

And, and she was. A pipe carrier, which means you have full authority and do rituals and you’re the carrier of the wisdom tradition. And her name was Ann Dozier. And I went to see Ann and she had just been to ceremony on the Macy’s in Arizona. And , I asked her, I said, so what did the elders say to you?

And they said. pay attention to the prophecy. And there have been many people before then who had said, well, it’s not authentic. Someone wrote me that, no, it’s, I wrote it and it has all these other parts and so it’s, origin was a little

unknown until Anne said the elders told us to work with the prophecy. And then I knew it was authentic and I knew that was the water image that I’ve been seeing for the book.

Laura Dawn: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

How often do they put out a prophecy like this?

Meg Wheatley: Depends on the, it depends on the nation, it depends on their, their, um, stewardship.

So the Hopi are responsible for the Earth, and so are the Kogi, I think. Mm

Laura Dawn: hmm.

Meg Wheatley: But each nation, indigenous nation, feels it has a particular stewardship. And many of them, I mean, there’s a long tradition of United Tribes going to the UN, not being allowed to speak.

Finally being given an opportunity to present their call to action, their view, their horror at what’s happening to the earth.

But, uh, it is a terrible history and just not listening to them. And, um, I was recently rereading a poem by a Canadian Indigenous academic who, the last line of her poem is that her teachers told her, when everything is lost, then they will listen. Um, but now there’s a great resurgence of Indigenous wisdom coming forth.

It’s too late. And that’s what the Kogi in their last film recognized. It’s too late. It tried to warn us early on.

So , the Hopi prophecy for me is so perfect. Because it describes our actions in the face of this unstoppable climate catastrophe that we’ve unleashed on ourselves, but is now irreversible. And the last line of the poem, before I read it, is, We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. That, in and of itself, has a beautiful lineage.

It’s the last line of a poem by the African American poet, Poet June Jordan, who wrote a longer poem in honor of the women of South Africa, who in 1956, I think it was, marched 40, 000 women and children on the capital of Pretorius. To oppose, stand up against the new banning laws, which were severely restrictive, just as apartheid was really gaming ground.

And somehow they communicated. There’s no internet, no phones, just literally word of mouth. And they all showed up that day. And it’s a seminal event in the history of South Africa. I think they still have it in front of their, uh, nation’s home page. But she ended that poem in tribute to the feminine spirit and the rising of the women and the feminine spirit.

She ended that poem with, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. But she wrote that many years ago and then it was taken and used again. I mean, it’s a gorgeous poem. Important phrase, so yeah, Alice Walker has a whole book with that title and they’re beautiful songs with that phrase.

this poem is dedicated to my fellow swimmers.

And it comes from Oribe, the longest inhabited village in the U. S., and it’s on a mesa in Arizona. Here is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid, who will try to hold on to the shore. They are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know that the river has its destination.

The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river and keep our heads above water. And I say, see who is there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For the moment we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves, banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration, for we are the ones we have been waiting for.

Laura Dawn: I have,

Meg Wheatley: of course, worked with this prophecy and wanted us to know it, to identify ourselves as those brave ones who push off into the middle of the river and keep our heads above water. And that’s harder and harder as we’re confronted with all these overwhelmingly destructive, mean spirited and evil dynamics now that have destroyed possibilities, have destroyed human lives, the lives of thousands of species.

And the mother planet, so pushing off into the river, this prophecy also gives instructions. Gather yourselves, you know, the time of the lone wolf is over. We can’t do this alone. And the part that has been most challenging, confronting to me is banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.

uh huh.

Meg Wheatley: All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. So I keep reminding myself of how to be in this work of being a warrior for the human spirit, taking on this very noble historic role that is only ever a few people who step into it in order to preserve community, in order to be exemplars of the best of human possibility, our best qualities.

And, um, We can only do it together and t