War, Conflict & Violence

Vs the Village Well

There are 32 ongoing conflicts in the world right now ranging from drug wars, terrorist insurgencies, ethnic conflicts, and civil wars. The intensity of each brings us face to face with the blueprint of anger, division, violence, power and control. Each one a village whose leaders and influencers are hungry for ownership, and whose actions have stripped the community of its commonality, and so poisoned the village Well … from the inside.

In the eye of this current eclipse portal, we have been asked to navigate a flood of graphic war imagery, a difficult conversation here on our own shores, and growing uncertainty all over the world. It has certainly felt like a time out of time where the living opportunity for reframe and reset is palpable.

No one said the collapse of Rome would be pretty or smooth, and as Pluto, the demolition guy, sends his wrecking ball through the final degrees of big business and industry-aligned Capricorn, it’s possible we may have another year or two yet to witness.

Thinking back to any difficult life experience lived through on a personal level, we can all attest to the valuable accelerated personal growth that wouldn’t have happened under more mundane circumstances. A dark night-of-the-soul principle that can be aptly, and more globally applied to these powerfully evolutionary times. A good reason to continue and the source of the thin flame of hope in our hearts.

Before we lived in concrete highrise we farmed and lived close to the land, the stars, the seasons and each other. At the centre of every village, we would find the Well, the symbol of commonality from shoemaker to medicine man to royalty, and the one thing that was absolutely essential for life. It was the watery heart and building and maintaining it was a task shared by all, its condition the index of the social health of the community it served. Patchworked across the land its underground aquifers united and strengthened communities, and kept them living close to God (Source, Spirit) and the codes of nature that kept us all in check.

However, as taps began to flow water into houses and the great leveller of the village well began to be replaced with swimming pools for some, and dirty drinking water for others, we lost our connection with nature and our shared humanity within and among it. Instead, we began to think it was possible for us to control, have power over, exploit and own it. With that came an unhealthy sense of yours and mine, of boundaries and borders, of good and bad, of clashing Gods and man’s law as opposed to natures Lore.

Everything that separated us became the fabric of our societies and the cloth that made us the same fell away, out of fashion, a primitive and barbaric way of life that no one missed as they drank for an unquenchable thirst.

Now this simple and literal understanding of the role of the village Well is deeply applicable today and offers a more far-reaching symbolic interpretation that can help us better understand and learn from these times. When we see the restless divide among our friends and family, on social media, in conversations in shopping malls or at school pick up we also see a village Well in desperate need of repair.

You see the Well is the means through which a village reaches what truly sustains it - Water. Ordinary life carries on across the fields while the Well-shaft connected our daily activities to another, far bigger life-giving dimension. It is our friendships, social connections and shared roots, as much as it is our depths and the reservoir of our personal and collective resource. It is not yours or mine, but a wonderful living symbol of what is ‘ours’ beyond the tangible, measurable and boundaried.

”The eight fields represent daily routine but the ninth field required a sacrifice if one would draw from its contents.”
- I Ching

Have we forgotten that the Well must be maintained and that we are each and all responsible?

In ancient times there were occasions when a village or town had to move because the need for deep and resounding change presented. When this happened they would take with them all the comings and goings of everyday life, with the exception of the Well, for this connection is not something you can own: it must be recreated afresh in each new place, and no amount of politics or media spin changes its essential nature. It cannot be owned by any one individual, or controlled by an elitist few, and the fact that some among us luxuriate in swimming pools while others die from thirst speaks volumes to the state of our global Well at this time.

As we all struggle to cross this threshold from the old world to the new, the role of the village Well remains relevant and unchanged - even if more symbolic than actual. It is as if the Well shaft itself had been dug at right angles to time, reminding us that our cooperation and harmonious communion as a village lies at the centre of our quest for peace, harmony and an end to conflict. Anything less will leave us increasing the divisions among us and thirsty on every level of our Being.

So there is work to be done at a grassroots level among our streets and towns as we rebuild what pulls us together. In the same way that we recognise the way nature’s diversity is what holds it together and gives it richness, through war and conflict we are being asked to address the heart of the boundary wound in a place where we don’t have to ‘make sense’ of it. Are we not tired of the joyless wrangling and intellectualization of everything around us? Of the heavy fog of pros and cons, debates and endless minutia.

When will we look to the broken space where we once gathered in sameness at the village Well, we understand that through our separation and discord lies the medicine most needed at this time. Oneness.

Throughout all mythology, we are shown the hero as the one who must visit the darkness in order to bring back the gift of life. In the tale of the times, the ‘hero’ who brings back the water is US, you and me. It’s a whole society, working steadily and practically together to keep their Well, their village and so the whole aquifer in good order.

Now we can choose to live in the endings or we can make a conscious choice to be inspired by the beginning. The best any individual can do as we cross the timeline of old and new is to throw themselves behind the future. Dig the shaft, prepare the wooden frame, reweave the rope, mend the bucket, and feed the craftspeople as they toil. Call everyone to the centre of town in celebration as only together will the village reclaim its community, and the whole world its peace.