At a panel discussion last year, I was asked where I saw the “tip of the spear,” the next battle to be fought – presumably with a righteous goal in mind. It was not until this question was posed that I realized my complete disinterest in it, even dismay. I was yearning for someone to ask, What is newly possible? Where are new connections forming? What is worth seeding for the future, even if we are not here to see the sprouting or the fruiting?

Instead I was being asked – again, still, only – to name adversaries. Enemies.

This all came whooshing back to me at a terrific public conversation this weekend between Nora Bateson, Bayo Akomolafe, and Alex Forrester, through the Schumacher Center for a New Economics. One word that arose in discussion was “insidious” – where the particular danger is not just that something is harmful, but that it is sneakily so, twisting and growing and gaining strength before it is recognized. 

Friends, what is the opposite of insidious? Multiple thesaurus entries say “harmless,” but that’s not enough – surely the opposite of insidious is not just neutral, but something wonderfully positive. If poisonous tendrils can proliferate underground, so can generative mycelium.

Dear ones, what are the subtle sneaky awesome things that we can nurture, gathering elegance and beauty and strength along the way?

We might not have tidy answers, and we might still be developing the methods. But we do know that spears alone are insufficient. We need the shovels, too.