Issue 1: The Loneliness of seeing things clearly
Welcome
Dear Collective,
Before we start a movement, I'd like to express my sincere gratitude to you all for being the founding members of this community. In a world that is at its breaking point, you decided to show up because you believe that it can be saved. And you know, that no one of us can do that alone.
If you found this collective, it means that you know what it is to understand the world in ways people are just waking up to. You know what it means to be isolated from your friends and family because you never really fit in. You know what it means to not belong anywhere. You’re too spiritual for the woke world, and too woke for the spiritual world. And living in the in-between is isolating you; it’s making you doubt yourself and your vision.
That's who I'm building this for—you. Because you know what it means to truly walk alone and think that you're going to stay in that place of isolation forever. But I'm here to tell you, that you don't have to walk alone anymore. You don't have to build alone anymore. You don't have to create in isolation anymore.
You’re part of a collective now; it’s up to us to hold each other accountable for making the world a better place.
But what does that mean, practically? As a founding member of this community, the first 100 subscribers will get:
Named permanently on the website as a founding member of the collective
To decide on the weekly theme
Private access to a Slack channel with your fellow founding members and me. This is where you'll get to help me build The Wide Awake Collective in your vision (stay tuned)
A first look at the next phase of the vision of The Wide Awake Collective—it’s already in the works
This is the start of something completely new, and you're, once again, ahead of the curve. But you and I both know that can be lonely. Which is what inspired this week's theme--the loneliness of seeing things clearly. This is where it begins. Wide Awake, Now What?
There were no submissions this week from the collective aside from myself. If you’d like to submit for next week’s topic, keep reading for the theme and link to submit.
Collective’s Submissions
Dissonance
by Bethany Rose Morris
When I was about 14-years-old, I met a former mobster turned follower of Jesus Christ at my town’s local megachurch. In Odessa, Texas, the opening of a chain restaurant causes cars to line up around the block. So you can imagine the ruckus that redeemed ex-mafioso Michael Franzese caused in the dusty gravel parking lot. I went with a couple of my middle school friends, and I remember the feeling of dissociating, though I didn’t have the vocabulary for it then.
As a kid, I was always the mature one. The one who got straight As. The one who adults talked to like a fellow adult—at least until it was convenient for them not to. And maybe that was due to being self-sufficient at a young age. But I don’t think that’s the entire picture. For my entire life, I’ve known what most people only caught up to in 2020: that our own sense of individualism would be the death of us.
Mobster with a Gun
Looking back, knowing that would make me an odd kid. But at 14-years-old, what I wanted more than anything else was to fit in. It caused a sort of dissonance in my identity that still lives there today. I think the mobster recognized that dissonance within me. It makes sense; he, too, lived a dissonant sort of life. One foot in the kind of visceral violence that makes good fodder for Martin Scorsese. And one foot in the future, knowing that this life would either make him or send him to his maker.
Before his talk, he sat in a booth so he could meet members of the congregation before his talk. When my friends and I got to the front of the line, we exchanged neutral pleasantries before his agent whispered in his ear that it was time for the show to begin. Pleased we had been the last in line to meet him, we went into the theater (it was too big to be a nave), and took our seats—mine on the aisle.
Applause started from the back row, and as everyone realized the aberration, we all craned our necks to see Michael walk down to the stage. And as he approached our row, we turned around to face the front. And in the moment that he got to our row, he paused. It was just for the briefest moment, but he took the time to put his hand on my shoulder before continuing to the stage. I couldn’t tell you if he was a good public speaker. The only thing I really remember is that moment. And that’s no accident.
When the dissonant meet each other, it’s often a brief moment of recognition in passing. Then we are once again isolated in our own worlds until, by chance, we meet another one of us again.
Closing
But something is happening—the future that we knew was going to come is here. The ones who have been awake, the dissonant, the in-betweens, the ones who never quite fit in, have recognized the patterns. It’s time for the dissonant to come together to create something bigger than ourselves, something for the collective. Because the world needs us to work in harmony, not in dissonance. Thank you for being a part of the first issue of The Wide Awake Collective. This is just the beginning. There’s so much more to come.
-Bethany
