What Time Is It Now?

I have a dear friend—an unwavering activist for social justice in these turbulent times of polycrisis—who often begins gatherings with a simple but powerful question: “What time is it now for you?” He’s not asking for the hour on our watches. He is inviting us to pause, to notice what our body and mind are holding in this moment, and to ask ourselves what we are called to feel and respond to. His question reminds us that we are not living in ordinary times and that our responses must be rooted in the truth of what is unfolding in our hearts, our families, our communities, our countries, and our planet.

For me, it is a time when historic, climate‑crisis driven cloudbursts and historic floods are swallowing villages across India. Global plastic treaty talks failed last week. Several parts of the world are becoming unlivable for humans, birds and animals due to heat. Roads are melting due to excessive heat. Birds and bees are disappearing all over Earth. But leaders across the world have their heads buried in sand. It is a time when live images of starving children are streamed across screens while our tax dollars are directed toward violence and cruelty. It is a time when fascism is tightening its grip, when even conversations with beloved family members about justice and compassion have become fraught. It is a time when the sound of a neighbor’s child playing breaks my heart, reminding me that the very air and water we are poisoning belong to this child. It is time of polycrisis.

And yet—blessedly—it is also a time of what Joanna called “The Great Turning”. It is time when record number of people are organizing in underground ways, listening deeply, and turning inward to source the courage required for radical forms of action. It is a time when young people are turning away from extractive systems and planting new ways of growing and sharing food. Neighbors are exchanging seeds and tools. Communities are reviving ancestral practices of mutual aid and gift economies beyond the grip of mainstream capitalism. Though mainstream media may look away, millions are standing against policies of cruelty across the globe. Artists are lifting their voices to nourish collective imagination. More and more people are returning to the forests, rivers, birds and soils of their own regions—remembering that to belong means to care in the spirit of reciprocity.

So I ask you, dear reader and listener: What time is it now for you? What is breaking your heart—or perhaps being pushed down so you can keep functioning in this world? What unexpected sources of hope are finding their way into your life? Where are you drawing rest, equanimity, joy, and what Joanna Macy calls Active Hope where hope doesn’t depend on optimism, but rather a practice of choosing to participate in the healing of the world — even when the outcome is uncertain.