On January 21, co-founders Lynne and Bill Twist joined Resilience & Possibility in These Times for an annual reflection. Their words landed amid the all too familiar noise of unrest, violence, and urgency. Their voices didn’t make the noise recede, but were like a tuning fork, revealing the true pitch of reality.

As Bill reminded us:

“Over four and a half billion years, something’s going on that moved us from molten rock to opera, and that’s still going on.”

Whether it’s opera, your grandchildren’s smile, or the magnificence of a sunrise, a living world continues to generate intelligence, relationship, and possibility through immense pressure. To remember that larger reality is an act of discernment—even resistance to the urge to surrender to cynicism. It restores agency, steadiness, and the capacity to choose how we participate in what is unfolding.

The Initiatory Crucible of This Century

Lynne noted that the shift from 2025 to 2026 marks more than a new calendar year.

“Going from 2025 to 2026 is really going from the first quarter of this century into the second quarter,” she said.

From this vantage point, the turbulence of recent decades with their political divides, the ecological damage, and social breakdowns, come into focus as a formative passage. 

We find ourselves in what Lynne described as an "initiatory crucible.” This global pressure is "forging something in the deepest part of who we are as a species." It is a threshold where the myth of the separate self is tested by the "experiential demand" for interdependence.

“I think we’re in an evolutionary leap,” Lynne reflects. “When the first fish crawled up on land, then elephants and eagles became possible... It's like that right now because we're at a species transformation.”

This "grinding and the difficulty" is not a sign of collapse, but of a species coming of age, learning to "stay grounded in ‘we’ rather than ‘me.’"

Rising Capacity in the Face of Pressure

It’s easy to read the growing scale of global crises as evidence of humanity’s failure. Bill offered a different reading, shaped by decades of work in the Amazon and in movements around the world. While the challenges facing humanity are real and intensifying, he has observed a parallel maturation in our collective capacity to respond.

“Our capability is growing faster than the problems,” he said.

That claim is grounded in lived experience. On recent journeys to the rainforest, Bill witnessed Indigenous communities facing serious pressures, from environmental pollution to health crises. There are, as he acknowledged, “more problems.” Yet what stood out was the quality of the response.

“It’s not a problem we’re getting behind,” he reflected. “We’re actually getting ahead.”

What is emerging is a form of capacity rooted in connection.

“The tools we have to address issues that Indigenous people are facing are tools that actually connect us more with the world,” Bill noted. 

Across health, justice, and environmental efforts, once-separate work is converging through widening networks of shared responsibility. In this convergence, Bill sees clear evidence that “we’re becoming so much more capable.”

Proactivism and the Shape of Power

Lynne Twist defines her lifelong stance as a "dharma" of proactivism: the commitment to being “an activist for, not against, particularly at a time when there’s so many things to be against”.

For her, this is no retreat into sentimentality; it is a discipline of maintaining agency and avoiding being trapped in the "clutter and noise" of the present.

For Bill, he grounds this orientation in a moral and strategic firmness. In moments when power is abused, he said, “we need to stand up and hold a line,” and we need to do it nonviolently. What gives that stance its strength is not force, but a deepening humanity.

“That’s the thing that’ll attract broad coalitions,” he explained. It will come from becoming “more human, more connected, more listening for the guidance that’s there.”

The Crucible That Teaches Us to Sing

The same unfolding that moved this planet from molten rock to opera is still at work. It is shaping us through pressure and consequence. This moment is a crucible within that long arc, one that invites us all to align with the deeper intelligence that has carried life this far.

The opera is not behind us. It is still being composed, and the crucible is how we learn to sing.