Bert Hellinger called them Ordnungen der Liebe: The Orders of Love. These are the principles that family systems, at their healthiest, seek to organize themselves around. The list of orders is short – it includes who gets to belong, who has seniority, how to deal with transgressions, and balancing giving and taking.
But the first and most important Order of Love is ‘Honor What Is’. It’s not hard to see why it’s so critical. When there are secrets, exclusions, forgetting, papering over, or other ways of ignoring what is actually happening (or happened) in a system, it becomes unhealthy for everyone in it. The simplest version of this that most of us know is “the elephant in the room” – a fact that is blatantly present, and which is shaping everything, but which no one can acknowledge. We also know the power that comes when the “elephant” is finally named and given a good place; the energy that had gone into not talking about the huge thing can now go into working creatively on responses to the situation.
Right now, in some ways, the deaths of 300,000 Americans, and 1.5 million people world-wide over the last nearly-year, is our elephant in the room. For some, it’s completely in their faces: families who have lost loved ones; people who’ve gotten mortally ill and barely made it; healthcare professions that are dealing with overflowing emergency rooms and who have watched people die with no one holding their hands. But as in our recent wars, when young men and women bear the greatest burden for us all so that we don’t need to see what is being done in our name, for many Americans, the physical impacts of this disease are somewhat distant.
How are we going to mourn and acknowledge this national- and global-scale loss? As of mid-December, we are losing a 9/11’s worth of people every single day now (that is, at least 2-3000 deaths daily, plus all of the collateral deaths and losses that come with this crisis). How will we come to grieve the immensity of what’s happening, of what’s happened? When and how will we Honor What Is, as a full community, not leaving it to just the most highly-impacted? Will we find a way to do that?
The First Order of Love points to the cost when we cannot do this. Like every un-grieved and un-acknowledged trauma, if we are unable to find a way to honor what’s happened, regardless of our political perspectives, the cost will continue – on us, on our children, and our grandchildren.
All religious traditions honor the place of mourning, lamentation, and repentance. These are honorable community responses to massive, large-scale tragedies. When these are enacted in community, we are then more free to engage usefully and creatively to the situation.
All of constellations work is about this important and sometimes difficult work. In particular, the upcoming online Intensive series, Falling Apart to Come Together (see details below), is designed specifically to honor and creatively respond to what is taking place for us in the pandemic. In less direct ways, my upcoming Advanced Constellations Training and online constellation gatherings do the same thing. Please join in, and share the extraordinary shared experience of honoring realities that shape people’s lives, and which deserve our deepest respect.
I don’t have anything like easy answers to our situation. I grieve and struggle alongside all of you. Let’s find ways to Honor What Is in community, out of respect for all of our fellow humans, and for ourselves.
How are you Honoring What Is, or struggling to find a way? Please share your stories and other creative responses on my blog, below.
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